Europe launches 'AI Factories' initiative in hopes of competing globally Europe's supercomputing body has officially added a new pillar to its strategy – to develop and operate AI Factories to drive "a more competitive and innovative" European AI ecosystem. The European High Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC JU) Governing Board met at the end of last week to amend its Work Program to …
I thought not. It was a 1990s thing, Fujitsu, Hitachi, and others were bandwagoneering for this new great thing which was the wave of the future, and going to be the salvation ("salivation"?) of the software industry.
It was all fur and feathers, but no meat.
Icon for, "seen this before."
This sort of comment is *exactly* why we left. It’s an article about the EU taxpayer stumping up money on some project. One can have a rational discussion about whether it is a valid goal; whether the execution is likely to be sound; and whether it would be value for money. I have worked on, and managed, a large number of these EU programs, so I have relevant opinions and observations about that.
But in fact you are *entirely uninterested* in the project output, as is the EU in general. All you want is to hold a toy aloft, and poke the child next to you “nobody’s having my toy”. If we were inside the EU, that’s all we would get - a chance to hold the toy in the air, and yah boo, China/USA sucks, eat deez nuts. If you’re rational, that’s a very bad deal.
Name some advantages that have affected the field of AI that the UK has benefitted from after leaving the EU.
Name some big wins for British AI in general.
We are sliding into oblivion. But hey, at least the borders are secure and there are less immigrants coming into the UK. So everyone is happy and yhere's no social/civil untest in the land any more.
“Name some advantages”
Not having the EU AI Act. Specifically, not having to hand over your proprietary code and weights to the EU Commission for “checking” and “consultation”.
The company that I own, designs and uses AI for internal purposes. Not chatbot, or code completion, or HR, or security, or “fintech”, or “language” at all. Not do we sell it, or export it in any way. It’s NOYDB how we use it, and that’s my point. We are rather profitable, and thats all you need to know.
As far as I know, we are probably compliant with all the “low-risk” gubbins. But I have no interest in finding out how that mission will creep. If there were even a sniff of us signing up to that BS, I would simply shut that part of the company down, 9am Monday, and set up a satellite office in USA. End of story.
I’d absolutely wipe our UK servers too, to make sure the Commission didn’t get their hands on unearned wealth. Again, I have no interest in handing out our IP to potential competitors. We dont trade with EU, although we otherwise sell globally, over half is Asia Pacific, rest is mostly Americas, so we have no value at risk.
..... devoid of exhilarating peer pressure from an almighty Eastern concoction, an AI Factory leader/chief/CTO/CEO/Mega MetaDataBase Boss will also be able to apply for a grant to develop an optional system/partition focused on the development of experimental AI-optimized supercomputing platforms with the stealthy silent goal of such platforms being to stimulate the development and design of a wide range of technologies for AI-ready takeover and makeover of supercomputers.
Methinks however, the likelihood of that being a field of endeavour and obscene enrichment for no more than one is an absolutely ridiculous and risible notion.
And one of the greater uses to which such an AI and IT takeover and makeover of supercomputers will be put is sure to be extremely supportive of the realisation of the following notion which I'm certain you would not disagree is not something any old Tom, Dick or Harry or Susan and Sheila can do or arrange to be simply done ......... Do you ever get the feeling that we’re living in a postmodern fiction? To certain A.N.Others though, so clearly presently way beyond current human popular comprehension and intimate understanding, it be just as a complex party trick and second nature to them.
Don't you know? You are not alone and you simply be as a spectating passenger in any number of the myriad moving future picture shows that constantly erupt and evolve and eventually die all around you.
A better alternative to dedicated Cloud processing may be to distribute AI processing across the net using torrenting networks. All users do a bit of processing for each other. Competing front ends can handle the same data differently, rather than everyone doing everything on their own clouds.
Just as with distributed searches, data can be processed and held to be of use to more than one user/AI app, across the distributed network, or on sites that hold content. As AI should really be attributed to sources, attributing to websites acts as a user draw through AI-related search, and as a form of meta ad.
Distributed search should be the basis for distributed AI processing, but nobody is really doing distributed search. Too much innovative stuff is not being done, as GAFA is run by lawyers.
... is not a business plan, although it is a money funneling plan. To quote Goldman-Sachs ... despite these concerns and constraints, we still see room for the AI theme to
run, either because AI starts to deliver on its promise, or because bubbles take a long time to burst. [GEN AI: TOO MUCH SPEND,
TOO LITTLE BENEFIT? June 25, 2024].
How could AI start to deliver on its promise? For the sake of argument, if we hold the results of current generative AI constant and consider energy usage as the variable to optimize, then even current AI ability could become profitable - and that would be a huge, HUGE, milestone. For that to happen ASAP it should be prioritized as a goal - that's something the EU can do and can use a measuring stick for progress, thereby leapfrogging the US hypester crowd (who are betting that AI will be so expensive to run that only the big boys can play). That's an R&D story much better than "AI factory". Although application of AI -to- factories should be part of it. It most certainly is already part of it in China.
I use the github copilot $10/mo + donating my soul to the machine, and it's a good deal (my soul isn't worth much). It's scary to think how much MS is losing on that. Well - not that scary, but without AI cost performance improvement $10/mo copilot is eventually either going to be dumbed-down or bumped up to $100/mo, or both. [Microsoft reportedly is losing lots of money per user on GitHub Copilot, neowin dot net, Oct. 2023 ]
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