It’s an interesting article but I think its more likely that the ratings are calculated differently. The title makes it sound as if there was some real-world data proving that Samsung is better, but the only data source is the number they put on the energy label.
Let’s go!
Yeah, I’m not against AI research fundamentally, I just think they are (i) investing in the wrong kind of AI research and (ii) investing more in AI than desirable given the numerous other challenges which are under-funded in comparison. I’m going to argue this in a bit more detail:
According to this article referenced by OP’s article the EU is going to spend about 35% of 200 billion, so 70 billion, for AI. Imagine they’d invest just 1 percent of that into FOSS. The German sovereign tech fund, which is hugely successful, has a budget of around 20 million euro per year. That’s literally nothing for a government. With 1% of the 70 billion, the EU could invest 700 million euro in digital sovereignty, which is more than SUSE’s 2022 revenue and more than double the Linux Foundation’s 2024 budget (around 290 million USD). Additionally, leading robotics company KUKA (meanwhile bought by a chinese firm) had just 4.4 billion USD revenue in 2022. All of the above ventures would provide better returns in terms of (a) improving labor productivity and (b) sovereignty versus USA’s big tech and Chinese manufacturing. These 500k NVIDIA GPUs will become outdated within a few years, meanwhile it’s still unclear if and how they will facilitate any benefit at all to EU citizens.
Now, IMO there are also decent ways to invest in AI: Invest in academic research and invest in under-developed areas of machine learning. Not every machine learning problem is an LLM problem. Today’s transformer-based LLMs are only a small subset of the thinkable architectures of neural networks, let alone machine learning in general. Robotics (e.g. controlling robot arms in a more dynamic manner), medicine (e.g. protein folding), infrastructure (e.g. predicting failures, optimized planning) or economics (e.g. coordinating production processes to optimize cost/emissions/latency/fault tolerance) are all very concrete, high-value targets for research funding. Regulations like the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive are currently very expensive for small to medium size companies due to the bureaucratic overhead, but a EU-driven standard for digital and automated tracking of supply chain metrics could reduce the running cost to near-zero if implemented well. Companies like SAP (34 billion USD revenue in 2024), which is a leading company in enterprise resource planning, have the potential to co-develop and implement such standards to provide affordable yet precise enforcement of regulations. Also, if the EU defines such a standard, it will likely also be adopted by global suppliers because they need it to sell to EU customers. This would of in turn give EU software and cloud companies a huge advantage globally.
To summarize, both better AI and non-AI investments compared to the EU’s planned AI/LLM training datacenters.
Sorry for the long post, but I feel it is neccessary to properly make my point. Am I making any sense? 🙃
Exactly!
Tesla is by no means the go-to for EVs in europe, not for a long time. I think Renault, Dacia, Fiat and VW make decent EVs. Especially Renault and Fiat also still produce most of it (I think including batteries, but not sure) in the EU.
VW is also decent but I am somewhat shocked because they still introduce and advertise non-EV models. WTF?
Sadly all the EVs are overpriced massively compared to combustion engines. Even more sadly, the EU and its member countries have failed to create a truly pan-european high speed rail network with affordable pricing. In Germany at least, a one-person train fare is comparable to the price of using a car (with only one person using the car). WTF. It should be 3-4 times cheaper.
This is a nothing burger, they are only proposing it in hopes that tech giants will negotiate and make concessions on their own.
Just introduce the tax. Companies should have zero say in this.
These datacenters planned by SAP, Telekom etc. appear to focus on AI datacenters, not general digital sovereignty. I think LLM training is much, much less important than getting governments, companies and individuals away from american tech giants.
Also, who will get most of the money? NVIDIA, an american company. Buying 500k american GPUs for billions isn’t the grandiose step towards sovereignty they make it out to be.
Why not invest the money in EU chip design? Why not EU hardware design and manufacturing? Why not industrial automation and robotics? Installing renewables, improving infrastructure? There are other challenges which are more likely to be useful than power-hungry slop machines. I have yet to see LLMs being used for non-trivial tasks reliably. The most frequent use for LLMs I have seen is to relieve people from thinking critically or putting in the effort to learn skills properly. Which are both extremely bad and dangerous things that will actually reduce productivity and quality in the long term.
In terms of preservation, digital media is surely superior if you use it right (i.e. using long-lasting storage media, backups and error detection).
But, some people prefer physical books just for the experience. Also physical books don’t need electricity.
Also, a DRM-free ebook may still miss some layout or images compared to a printed copy, depending on the format and how good it’s made.
All in all, I still prefer e-books.
It alienated me.
Most queer people identify with the label “weird”.
That’s fair actually. When I first heard it without context, I also felt kind of alienated by it.
I think you can be weird in good and bad ways, context matters in this case. I think it’s fair to call out fascists for being “weird” in the sense that they are evil, crooked and - crucially - not relatable for the vast majority of voters. The “weird” thing is about the fascists not being “like us” - and thus very instinctively not trustworthy.
At the same time it’s also possible to be “weird” in an individualistic, relatable and validating way. Most people have insecurities or fears on some level and accepting this “weirdness” can be validating and actually show likeness. I think it’s very clear that Tim Walz didn’t mean it like this.
He didn’t call them weird out of the blue, but rather to sum up his other points about their unrelatable, evil behaviors. The message was something like: “The fascists are not real, believable people. They don’t seem driven by everyday worries like us. They don’t seem to have the same kind of feelings like us.”
And I think that is actually exactly the message that wins elections in this political climate. Debating the issues is getting you nowhere if your opponent has no actual beliefs to debate against. Calling them out for being fake people with no actual beliefs is a better strategy.
I don’t think Bernie will run again in 2028, but he is still relevant right now because nobody else is taking the lead. I hope people like Walz will step up and try to turn the DNC around. It’ll be an uphill battle even with the DNC, not to speak of the actual election.
Turns out holding back the things that work (like calling fascists “weird”) while not breaking with some of Biden’s unpopular policies was a terrible idea… who would’ve thought? At least Walz is honest enough to admit it. I doubt the DNC will let the social democrats like Walz or Bernie take the lead though… establishment dems would rather stand by and praise Reagan while Trump dismantles the constitution.
I marked all unread emails as read without reading them… FOR THE GLORY OF THE EMPIRE!
I don’t know, but even if they were I can’t imagine it’d be easy to prove that the labels are wrong. After all, I’m not aware of any data collection on degradation or failures of batteries at the required scale and precision. And I don’t think the ratings constitute a warranty, i.e. I don’t think you’re entitled to anything if your particular phone falls short of the after the 2-year warranty expires.
But I sure would like there to be some standard that allows collecting these kinds of metrics in a way that’s privacy-preserving and can’t be fudged by manufactureres.