> At the same time, the press service states that some of the staff will continue to have access to a special platform for AI assistants, which the Government Offices themselves developed, and through which they gain access to ChatGPT and Claude.
Sounds like they just want to maintain control over the outbound traffic which sounds rather sensible to me.
The contracts are really worthless if for example Trump wants to share the transcripts with Putin. At this point I don’t understand why governments would outsource any of their data services to 3rd parties (I.e outside of the EU). EU should establish an EU gov cloud program and just run the models themselves for all the EU countries(under license of course). They would probably get better bargaining power as well.
You’ve leapt to the most extreme scenario to declare these contracts worthless.
Of course something like what you describe could happen. But under the central case, ensuring some privacy (with the ability to seek damages if breached) whilst still providing access to frontier models seems like a reasonable trade-off with a lot of value.
When it comes to government data, contracts are often much stronger than you may be used to in the private sector, as mishandling the data can be criminal in nature. And data sovereignty requirements are common. This stuff is table stakes when selling to governments.
Such a thing would require building data centers, i.e. industrial compute factories, but the EU is politically paralyzed from doing that because electricity is already outrageously expensive and there is just sort of a general popular outrage about the prospect of it.
> the EU is politically paralyzed from doing that because electricity is already outrageously expensive and there is just sort of a general popular outrage about the prospect of it.
That is called democracy. Where the good of citizens is valued above what big corporations want. To push up pollution and power prices so big American tech companies can play with AI seems something that only a mad king would do.
If AI can find cancers faster than a human, which they've already proven, it's tradeoff that's worth it. It's only getting better and there's no telling how else it will benefit humanity.
Governments are always at least a decade behind when it comes to technology. Just don't complain when they have massive data breaches weekly, because they decided their principals were more important.
Your latter point belies the former: The the trade-off is only worth it if the data centers are used for purposes that benefit humanity. As yet, all we've seen them used for is wealth consolidation (through labor force reduction), mass surveillance, hacking, and other antisocial behaviors. There's no reason to believe those won't persist as the profit-maximizing use cases.
It's not democracy. People don't want high energy prices. It's just their only voting options are all politicians who will give them high energy prices.
Big corporations are only big because they provide what customers want. They don't get to extract money from people's work, the way politicians can.
Germany spent most of the last two decades shutting down nuclear power plants while blocking renewables because the politicians were sponsored by coal and gas companies.
Citizens are dumb though, the stupidity of the public killed nuclear. Not every decision needs to be democratic. Certainly not core infrastructure decisions.
It's also so easy to astroturf to manipulate public opinion. If I were China, I'd post so much anti-datacenter content everywhere in the West to gain a leg up in the race to superintelligence, because we are dumb enough to let our citizenry influence these decisions.
Imagine if we did the same thing for the nuclear race. ASI is winner-take-all, the first one to ASI can just lock everyone else out.
The recent growth of LLMs is a black swan. Any future prediction you attempt to make has massive error bars.
Europe is in a very precarious position. If LLMs actually play out and lead to economic booms (I'm not saying for individuals, note that), the EU as a whole will get absolutely trounced economically and likely experience a shrinking economy for the next 20+ years along with a shrinking population in most of the member countries. They are so far behind on power and compute of the US and China there is not any current path to catching up.
The US itself is in a precarious position with the amount of debt it has accrued, it could be right that LLMs are what leads to future economic booms, but be so far in the hole it takes decades to recover.
China is really in the best place at the moment. Trying to build up power and compute as fast as it can, copying American innovation at the cheap, and having a mountain of US and EU money to spend on it.
So our technoverlords should decide for us? All these arguments to go back to the middle ages and feudal systems are based on the idea that we should be oppressed and our opinion should not count. That thinking destroys enlighten societies and bring inequality and poverty.
It would be a mistake to blindly assume that democracy can survive the technical future. The rise of democracy went hand in hand with the importance of skilled labor. If the need for labor dies, at least in my eyes, democracy dies with it.
If I was a American oligarch who became president due to my ties to social media platforms and influence I would also advocate european governments use American AI services.
How is electricity outrageously expensive? We get power in the most flexible of forms (electrical) delivered directly to our homes at a rate that no human in history would have ever performed voluntary physical labor for (the equivalent of thousands of horses or people for a few hundred bucks an hour, assuming <500$/MWh). Even complete energy autarky has become feasible for private individuals if you are willing to invest.
Just because power used to be even cheaper in the recent past, by doing non-sustainable shit and pushing all the resulting costs onto others/the future does not mean that was ever appropriate, necessary or desirable, and everyone advocating for chasing that model is a greedy, selfish asshole in my view.
AI is local. They need to invest in procuring hardware, which means making it themselves if that is the only way to get a card in every computer that can do the job.
If cloud based AI is any good, they will sell versions that can be hosted locally just like every other service since the beginning of the internet.
I think one of the AI 2027 videos covered this pretty well. EU cannot make nor really afford the compute they need to buy. All they really have the ability to control is UV machines for making masks which is going to get politically hot very soon.
The US and China have claimed all production for years to come.
No, they use OpenAI with deployment in the Swedish data centers, which keeps inference local. Azure and GCP already offers this. No idea about Claude though.
Maybe it's what you meant, but let me underline that "local" does NOT mean under your control. As long it's with Microsoft, it will fall under the exactly same Cloud Act, so it can be shut off or copied over the pond on a whim.
You're right in theory, but it doesn't mean the US gov has unrestricted access to the data. There needs to be a legal process in place and there are safeguards that prevent accessing the data without that. This will happen to any company within US jurisdiction, as authorities can compel any provider to give them the required data.
You say that but that's not reflected in the law, and historically the us government has repeatedly created such sweeping surveillance systems. It's highly unlikely they only made it legal, and aren't using it sweepingly considering theyre on record doing so before it was legalized through the act before too...
And as that's international law... It's always kinda a coin toss whenever anyone actually pays it any attention. No real recourse if violated after all.
danck 1 day ago
Sounds like they just want to maintain control over the outbound traffic which sounds rather sensible to me.
lucumo 1 day ago
Yeah, and probably also forcing Zero Data Retention contracts on those service, instead of the consumer variants.
theplumber 1 day ago
abm53 1 day ago
Of course something like what you describe could happen. But under the central case, ensuring some privacy (with the ability to seek damages if breached) whilst still providing access to frontier models seems like a reasonable trade-off with a lot of value.
java-man 1 day ago
abm53 1 day ago
I’m not saying it won’t happen, I’m saying it’s outweighed for most by other concerns.
kube-system 1 day ago
petcat 1 day ago
Frieren 1 day ago
That is called democracy. Where the good of citizens is valued above what big corporations want. To push up pollution and power prices so big American tech companies can play with AI seems something that only a mad king would do.
elmer2 1 day ago
Governments are always at least a decade behind when it comes to technology. Just don't complain when they have massive data breaches weekly, because they decided their principals were more important.
InitialLastName 1 day ago
philipallstar 1 day ago
Big corporations are only big because they provide what customers want. They don't get to extract money from people's work, the way politicians can.
Kamq 1 day ago
Vaushite 1 day ago
Kamq 13 hours ago
This is, however, one of the reasons Germany is hit so hard by the current spike, I'll give you that.
Frieren 1 day ago
Big corporations are big because they purchased all competitors. I recommend that you read the book Enshitification.
xvector 1 day ago
It's also so easy to astroturf to manipulate public opinion. If I were China, I'd post so much anti-datacenter content everywhere in the West to gain a leg up in the race to superintelligence, because we are dumb enough to let our citizenry influence these decisions.
Imagine if we did the same thing for the nuclear race. ASI is winner-take-all, the first one to ASI can just lock everyone else out.
ruaraidh 1 day ago
pixl97 1 day ago
The recent growth of LLMs is a black swan. Any future prediction you attempt to make has massive error bars.
Europe is in a very precarious position. If LLMs actually play out and lead to economic booms (I'm not saying for individuals, note that), the EU as a whole will get absolutely trounced economically and likely experience a shrinking economy for the next 20+ years along with a shrinking population in most of the member countries. They are so far behind on power and compute of the US and China there is not any current path to catching up.
The US itself is in a precarious position with the amount of debt it has accrued, it could be right that LLMs are what leads to future economic booms, but be so far in the hole it takes decades to recover.
China is really in the best place at the moment. Trying to build up power and compute as fast as it can, copying American innovation at the cheap, and having a mountain of US and EU money to spend on it.
BubbleRings 1 day ago
It’s time to decide your stand. But if you want to make an informed decision, you probably want to:
- Read up on the possible dangers until you get it,
- Learn about the advantages and breakthroughs already happening, and,
- Do some extensive work on a real project with at least an Opus-level LLM, so you really understand what an astounding new thing it is in our world.
Frieren 1 day ago
So our technoverlords should decide for us? All these arguments to go back to the middle ages and feudal systems are based on the idea that we should be oppressed and our opinion should not count. That thinking destroys enlighten societies and bring inequality and poverty.
pixl97 1 day ago
xvector 1 day ago
interactivecode 1 day ago
myrmidon 1 day ago
Just because power used to be even cheaper in the recent past, by doing non-sustainable shit and pushing all the resulting costs onto others/the future does not mean that was ever appropriate, necessary or desirable, and everyone advocating for chasing that model is a greedy, selfish asshole in my view.
consumer451 1 day ago
https://gcping.com/
pixl97 1 day ago
consumer451 7 hours ago
InsidiousWombat 1 day ago
consumer451 1 day ago
Now, do we have DCs with "temporary gas generators" operating 24/7 that were thrown together in the last 2 years? Probably not.
roosterIllusi0n 1 day ago
If cloud based AI is any good, they will sell versions that can be hosted locally just like every other service since the beginning of the internet.
pixl97 1 day ago
Ooops, too late.
I think one of the AI 2027 videos covered this pretty well. EU cannot make nor really afford the compute they need to buy. All they really have the ability to control is UV machines for making masks which is going to get politically hot very soon.
The US and China have claimed all production for years to come.
erwald 1 day ago
toss1 1 day ago
So only mildly surprised on reading the article to read they are intentionally forcing them onto a specific worse model.
laurentiurad 1 day ago
soco 1 day ago
laurentiurad 1 day ago
ffsm8 1 day ago
You say that but that's not reflected in the law, and historically the us government has repeatedly created such sweeping surveillance systems. It's highly unlikely they only made it legal, and aren't using it sweepingly considering theyre on record doing so before it was legalized through the act before too...
And as that's international law... It's always kinda a coin toss whenever anyone actually pays it any attention. No real recourse if violated after all.