LLMs are something everybody can reproduce with enough money, as shown by Musk itself recently: in one year they have Grok3 which is a SOTA model, without having particular talents or innovations, just following the recipe everybody else is using (and this is why you see new companies competing with established companies: all are training transformers with a lot of tokens, basically). So Europe can have their LLMs as well: the important thing is to relax this stupid AI act, that the biggest countries in Europe didn't want (Germany, France, Italy) but that somewhat passed (and it is not impossible that there are external influences and corruptions). About the search engine: Google at this point is almost a joke, to the point it is simpler to redo it right than trying to fix it from the internal. Remember that a lot of key technologies are created by europeans: from Python to Linux, to MySQL and so on. Europe has all the potential needed if the right choices are made to do everything needed.
> So Europe can have their LLMs as well: the important thing is to relax this stupid AI act
But you're kind of showing here why Europe doesn't have the software innovation America does.
Americans are not inherently smarter or more capable of doing innovative things than Europeans. It's just that whenever a European wants to do something interesting, there's a handy European regulation making it harder or less profitable to do it.
If this American administration is the impetus for that to change, that would be good! But I doubt it.
I believe that certain drives for certain regulations that are clearly shooting themselves in the feet were approved with less clear processes than needed (remember corruption cases of certain European politicians recently for the Olympics? If it happens for minor stuff like that... go figure). This was acceptable even if many countries were unhappy as long as the US were believed to be a strong partner. Now this changed, and it is likely that certain regulations will be relaxed.
It's more likely that Europe will double down on its politics as they always do. If it doesn't work, try harder with more of it: more rules, more laws, more exceptions to rules, more special cases, more Switch and If/Then/Else.
Think technical debt with 0 refactoring ever, because you can't break the existing system, only grow it.
A refactoring, that's how I see what the government is currently doing in the USA.
The problem is, the refactoring being done is optimizing for 1) destroying the capability of any agency that was potentially impeding Musk's companies e.g., by investigating illegal activities, 2) implementing cultural war measures to distract the populace, and 3) decapitating and threatening institutions that are normally independent in democracies to serve the executive, as in fascism
Not exactly a healthy refactoring, and it'll take decades to undo the damage if ever possible.
I see where you stand, and I hear a lot of negative anticipation. What happens if things actually go well in the end?
1- I think the previous administration used various agencies to avoid justice quite a lot. Heard of a laptop maybe? If agencies were shields for the last admin’s messes, why assume they’re pure now?
2- I wouldn't say republicans started the cultural wars over progressive ideologies
3- The US still votes, judges rule, hardly a dictatorship. Fascists charm everyone, while Trump and Musk two just piss half off
Seriously? Please read just a little bit of history and civics, and stop making false equivalences.
These moves are straight out of the bog-standard authoritarian playbook.
Under well-functioning democracies, the branches of govt (legislative, executive, judicial), and the branches of society (press, industry, business, academy, religion, sport, social, etc.) are all independent with a relative balance of power
Under fascism, all of these institutions are coerced or corrupted to serve the will of the executive.
Every move already done (not anticipated) is a decapitation or coercion attack on the institutions to force them to serve the will of the executive.
Over seventy moves already done have been challenged in court, and the judiciary, even those appointed by appointed by the same President, in the preliminary rulings have been ruled illegal.
No other administration has ever sued or prosecuted a Press organization or journalist for coverage they didn't like. This one already has in the first few weeks in office. That is not anticipating, that is observing fascist moves in real time.
The administration has already challenged the legitimacy of judges' rulings ("who are they to tell the executive how to rule?") and threatened to not follow judges' rulings. Again, in the first few weeks, and utterly unprecedented.
Russia and Venezuela also "still vote". The Rs have already introduced a bill, the SAVE act, which will disenfranchise most married women (require them to register to vote with a birth cert matching their current driver's license name). And that is only one attempt to disenfranchise anyone not a white male.
>> I wouldn't say republicans started the cultural wars over progressive ideologies
I would say they did. What you call "progressive ideologies" is simply living up to the ideals of the country — equal treatment for everyone. It does not take rights away from anyone, only allows everyone to have the same rights in public spaces, employment, healthcare, etc. It is the right wing who turned it into a culture war. It sure as hell was no one but the right-wingers who politicized and turned simple scientific public health measures like N95 masks and vaccinations into a culture war.
>>Fascists charm everyone
Seriously, the fact that Trump and Musk are not charming is your argument they are not fascist? You seriously think Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot, Chavez, Maduro, etc. etc., etc. charmed everyone? They managed to create chaos and barely get elected before corrupting their countries into their dictatorships.
Again, please get real, read some actual history, stop posting misleading nonsense and looking like a Useful Idiot (in the specific Vladimir Lenin sense).
Our children are already being bullied with deepfakes. Democracy is already being weakened. Artistic pursuits are already being devalued. And I'm told the best thing to do is embrace it... the prison has already arrived.
I'm more worried about sexual harassment, the decaying value of truth and creativity, and increasing the power of the surveillance state than I am about job loss.
