
Can the EU become another AI superpower? - PretzelFisch
https://www.economist.com/business/2018/09/22/can-the-eu-become-another-ai-superpower
======
Ftuuky
Apologies if this rant makes no sense but I'm somewhat frustrated with this AI
thing.

One thing I've noticed in large EU corporations (where I and friends of mine
worked as data analysts/"scientists"): upper management decides to invest in
AI because they don't want to miss on this, so they create a new department
("AI/Robotics" or something cooler) and fill it to the brim with smart PhDs in
mathematics and physics. They're all data scientists and ML engineers now,
which means all the data mining, cleaning/preparation and labeling is going to
be beneath them, it's not cool or impressive in their LinkedIn profile. They
all want to work with the latest thing and each one has a different opinion
and held to it pretty strongly. Nobody pays attention to product/project
managers, they don't want to spend time creating PowerPoint presentations and
dashboards to communicate and align with stakeholder. Discussing ethics in AI
is a hippy silly thing. Then you end with something similar to what happened
in my company: you create a bot to parse through CVs and decide which ones are
better for any given job description. It took 4x more time than planned, and
it's racist and discriminatory because it mirrors what the company did until
now: hiring only certain kinds of people that studied specific degrees in
specific universities that learned which keywords are good on a CV even if it
means nothing. Nobody noticed or discussed this beforehand despite being so
obvious because everyone is busy troubleshooting Keras or complaining about
their GPU cluster.

~~~
gaius
_They 're all data scientists and ML engineers now, which means all the data
mining, cleaning/preparation and labeling is going to be beneath them_

You have absolutely hit the nail on the head there and this mirrors my
observations of what's happening in the wider industry. Data science and AI
are super cool viewed from the outside but the reality of the work day to day
is that it is not _fun_. Getting a result and making a meaningful impact is
very satisfying, but getting there requires careful, painstaking, meticulous
work, getting the data and getting it into a format you can use is the vast
majority of it. It is essential of course, but noone enjoys spending weeks (or
months) decoding exactly what the fields are in this big weird CSV file you
got from the mainframe and how exactly they marry up with the XML you got from
this other system then doing that 100 times to mash up all your data sources,
there's no documentation and the people who programmed it originally are long
gone and get something that you can finally feed into your ML step. And then
you come up with some recommendations which are immediately shot down because
they are actually illegal and noone in the business can believe you even
suggested it because that gets taught in Compliance 101 (I have really seen
this happen).

Someone with the patience and the good attitude to do the data prep, and who
has a bit of basic domain knowledge, armed with even the most rudimentary ML
techniques will in any practical sense run rings around any rockstar
researcher who just jumps in straight away with the AI. You would hope that
PhDs who spend literally years doing research before writing up would
understand this but it seems to be the first thing they forget!

~~~
Ftuuky
>Someone with the patience and the good attitude to do the data prep, and who
has a bit of basic domain knowledge, armed with even the most rudimentary ML
techniques will in any practical sense run rings around any rockstar
researcher who just jumps in straight away with the AI. You would hope that
PhDs who spend literally years doing research before writing up would
understand this but it seems to be the first thing they forget!

You articulated so well something that I've been trying to say to my managers.
Thank you for your post.

------
LeanderK
Excellent article. I don't think the possibility of success is that bad, but
they have to take it seriously and also seriously invest (germany doesn't...at
the moment!). I think in contrast to other technologies, the EU has a few
thing going for them (from a german perspective):

\- There are some important industries that are very much interested in AI
(for example the automotive industry). So serious private-sector money could
be raised.

\- Europe has the ability to pull of large-scale research projects and has the
experience to do so. From LHC to the various institutions, like the Helmholtz-
society or the DKFZ in germany (the EU also made some errors in preview large-
scale research projects to learn from).

\- The brains are there. I see many (very!) talented and dedicated students
and researchers here and the research infrastructure (universities, non-
university research agencies) is also established and quite diverse.

\- I see that there's an understanding that entrepreneurship and non-
traditional industries is an area in which the EU has been falling behind. I
feel like it's improving.

I also don't think we're too late yet.

I see two main obstacles:

\- lack of serious investment from public and private (this requires realising
what a significant investment looks like). This is at the moment quite obvious
if you follow the bmbf (german federal research agency). It seems like they
don't realise how insignificant creating a few research groups is.

\- no coherent strategy. Spreading everything thin without a thought where to
reach critical mass is wasting time and energy. This is a problem especially
in germany and, of course, the EU. We need a physical, European AI research
hub with enough things like conferences and exchange to the other research-
institute to get traction.

EDIT: What makes me really angry and frustrated (because in the end I am more
or less powerless) is the complete waste of potential in germany. We have many
great universities here with a lot of great faculty. But most of the
universites are seriously underfunded and not really well-maintained. Some
universities are so poorly maintained that their buildings are uninhabitable
because of danger of collapsing. It's crazy, it's just laying waste. I think
that we in germany wouldn't be in this situation if our universities could
seriously compete and could enable all their potential.

~~~
Eug894

      So serious private-sector money could be raised.

Only after Elon's Tesla have a comfortable win over them again, I guess...

------
light_hue_1
I'm a European AI researcher in the US. I've seen both sides of the pond.

The EU needs serious reforms if it wants to be competitive in AI.

Academia in Europe is far behind academia in the US on average. And will be
far behind China in a decade or so. European academics generally don't adapt
to new technology. They have no reason to with fairly few links to industry, a
funding that's based on personal relationships and politics rather than
research, and an academic environment that doesn't really emphasize novel
research. The same people, do the same things, for decades on end, with little
to no progress or change. European academics don't put in much effort to get
industry funding since your students are funded by the university much of the
time.

Faculty hiring is very local and incestuous. German universities hire Germans,
and only from a few places. English universities hire the British. French
universities hire the French. etc. There are exceptions but it's rare.

The European PhD needs to be fixed. 3-4 years isn't nearly enough. It's
hurting everyone. The moment someone gets productive they graduate. It's a
total waste of time. They need to move to an American-Canadian style 5-6 year
PhD. The fact that students are generally not funded by projects and
researchers, but departments, also puts a big damper on people's motivation to
hustle and publish.

Funding for startups in Europe is a disaster. It's really hard compared to the
US and Canada, raising multiple rounds is harder, there's little
infrastructure for doing it, and universities are little to no help. Rich
people just don't have an appetite for risk, better to sit on your old money.
This should be fixed by tax laws.

Pay is terrible in academia in Europe. Around half of what it is in the US and
Canada at many ranks. When you can't live well, why would you stay in
academia?

The tenure system is a disaster in many places in Europe and drives anyone
good away to the UK, Canada, or the US. You have a lot of unpleasant steps
where you aren't autonomous.

European research is also very closed. Europeans cite europeans, who go to
european conferences, and do research with europeans. There are a lot of
communities like this that are very closed and 2nd tier compared to
international ones.

I could go on. Nothing will change any time soon unless governments take
action to revamp the university system, university funding, and the tax code
to encourage investment/risk. The next century won't be Europe's sadly.

~~~
bad_good_guy
I just want to point out you are wrong on one point: UK universities have an
extremely diverse faculty of researchers, with researchers from both various
European and Asian countries common

~~~
light_hue_1
Yup. This falls into "There are exceptions but it's rare."

The UK, Norway, to some extent Denmark, are much more open than say Italy,
Germany, Spain, or France. Top-tier places in the UK are very open and
international, mid-tier places aren't as diverse as mid-tier US or Canadian
universities.

------
singularity2001
Related rant:

That is the third time I hear Merkel utter this disgusting sentiment:

“In the US, control over personal data is privatised to a large extent. In
China the opposite is true: the state has mounted a takeover,” she said,
adding that it is between these two poles that Europe will have to find its
place.

It might not be that clear from above statement but a similar one left no
doubt that some leaders have told her: For AI we need data and for data we
need tracking/surveillance. So please look at ways to abolish privacy in the
EU.

It's not lack of data which hinders business in the EU, it's overtaxing small
businesses, cronyism, top-down-approaches, Google or something else which is
hard to grasp. Lack of ambition? Lack of youth? Foreign espionage/sabotage?
Negativity?

Angela, (if you read this, which I'm sure you do), you did a fantastic job
protecting us from Cheneys torture doctrine, and much else afterwards. Erosion
of privacy leads to erosion of societies. Don't mess it up in your last
months.

~~~
eksemplar
The American paradox is that you often have very good governments, but trust
them very little. Where as you often have very evil companies, but trust them
very much.

Europe is the opposite.

The EU is working hard to secure citizen rights though, but that doesn’t mean
it isn’t working for ways that you can share your data. The EU just wants
transparency and ownership to remain with its citizens.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _the American paradox is that you often have very good governments, but
> trust them very little_

That distrust is a reason why our government has been stable over the past 200
years, despite a series of technological, economic, geopolitical and cultural
changes.

~~~
adventured
The two party system also results in dramatically greater stability, typically
at a cost trade-off of dynamism. It's hard to change a two party system, so
hopefully if you've got one of those, you have something worth maintaining
underneath. Systems with lots of parties are far less stable over long periods
of time by contrast and are prone to rapid change and takeover. Australia for
example, with its 13 parties with parliamentary representation, lately can't
keep a leader for more than a year or two, with six prime ministers in a
decade. In that extreme case it's causing policy stagnation however, as none
of them are managing to tackle big, urgent problems before they're tossed out.
Europe's typical preference (excluding a few countries like Russia) toward
lots of parties has also resulted in neo-Nazi groups acquiring increasing
government power and representation, another downside to that approach.

------
novaRom
I lived and worked in different places of the world (Bay area, MA, middle
east, Japan). For me, Europe is simply the best environment if you have a
family and you care about your freedom, privacy, and comfort. Decisions made
by EU authorities have significant implications on everything, but the way it
works it's really democratic process, with long term implications and with
significant transparency. In some regard living in Germany is similar to Bay
Area, but with much more emphasis on social well being of the whole society
which in fact affects your everyday live, your safety, your comfort, your
family.

------
Barrin92
"Yet look beyond machine learning and consumer services, and the picture for
Europe is less dire. A self-driving car cannot run on data alone but needs
other AI techniques, such as machine reasoning, which is done by algorithms
that are coded rather than trained—an area in which Europe has some strength.
Germany has as many international patents for autonomous vehicles as America
and China combined, and not only because it has a big car industry."

Important point. Not only see I more hope for deep innovation in the
manufacturing sector than in selling people the most targetted ads, this also
has the potential to create much more equitable outcomes for everyone in the
economy.

I don't really understand the concept of a 'AI superower' at all. Superpower
at what, warfare? Concentration of wealth as AI returns flow to only a handful
of people? Have Americans and the Chinese pondered whether there is some
higher goal to the development of AI or just competition for competition's
sake?

As a European(and German) citizen, I am much less concerned about taking the
slow and steady route here. I have no interest in seeing Europe destroy its
privacy or using AI to malevolent ends just to stay ahead in some fictional
horse race.

People told us in the 80s that if we didn't move ahead with the service
economy we'd be stuck in an archaic industrial society, and Thatcher was
hailed as the reformer. I see parallels here to the AI debate. Now, where has
this gotten the UK outside of London? For me, AI looks more and more like the
hype around finance and services around that time. I'm okay with being a
somewhat slow and bureaucratic grumpy German, if we get to be the guys who put
advanced technologies into boring machines without much fanfare that's fine,
people seem to keep buying them.

~~~
ben_w
> I don't really understand the concept of a 'AI superower' at all. Superpower
> at what, warfare? Concentration of wealth as AI returns flow to only a
> handful of people?

In principle, in the sense of being able to give all of your citizens the
ability to complete any task which previously only experts could achieve.

Google Übersetzer ist oft schrecklich und schlechhören(?) oft meine Worte,
aber es ist immer noch deutlich besser als ich auf Deutsch, obwohl ich das
Äquivalent einer guten Note an der High School habe.

> Have Americans and the Chinese pondered whether there is some higher goal to
> the development of AI or just competition for competition's sake?

Americans certainly have; its part of both utopian and distopian fiction. This
fiction has been a guiding force with regard to what the AI looks and acts
like in many cases, for example Alexa’s adverts were clearly trying to sell it
as the ship’s computer in Star Trek.

~~~
Barrin92
>In principle, in the sense of being able to give all of your citizens the
ability to complete any task which previously only experts could achieve.

I'm not concerned on the consumer side of things. We're all part of a global
economy. If you want to buy AI services in Germany you can do that easily,
just as I can use Google without a problem despite Germany not exactly being
at the forefront of the tech. Having Google or Facebook physically located in
your country, from a consumer standpoint, actually doesn't really matter at
all.

Honestly this whole arrangement has always puzzled me from an American
perspective. Americans sacrifice quite a lot in terms of equality, privacy and
so forth to be at the forefront of this stuff, and we can just use it all the
same because we're good customers. I'll be sad the day the US decides it
doesn't want to be in charge!

~~~
ben_w
Ah, I think I see the point here.

Software (including A.I.) developed outside of your culture won’t reflect your
culture. We already see this problem with regard to racism and sexism — A.I.
which cannot detect black people at all, or hand-written healthcare software
which cares more about insulin than periods — so for example, if you leave it
to America and China, you won’t have any education software (with or without
A.I.) which can cope with the difference between a Gymnasium, a Realschule,
and a Hauptschule.

USA companies are also already having a lot of trouble with the cultural
difference between the “easier to seek forgiveness than ask permission”
attitude they’re used to in America as compared to anywhere which enforces
rules because they exist for a reason. Google Street View in Germany, for
example. I don’t know about Chinese companies, but I assume they also have
cultural assumptions that won’t apply outside China.

------
rcarmo
I see this as unlikely in the same way that having the next Facebook in the EU
is unlikely. Companies in Europe tend to bet more on B2B instead of B2C, which
leads to a lot of data siloing and many attempts at building ML models with
tightly focused legacy data within a specific domain.

The article doesn’t make a very clear distinction between academic and
business AI, but I can’t see any inherent advantages for the EU in an academic
perspective either-there are fields of AI that are under-represented in
current consumer tech, but... I’m skeptical.

(I live in the EU and work in AI and ML-there is so much low-hanging fruit in
terms of just making companies aware of what they can do that I seldom have
deep enough engagements to step outside prepackaged approaches)

------
baxtr
Thanks HN for all the rants and the honesty about this topic (and in general).

Contrary, whenever I open LinkedIn people seem to be naively super excited
about Europe becoming an AI superpower (whatever that means). While I’m not
against excitement, I can’t support it because it seems so detached from any
real problem that we want to solve. And ultimately, that should be the driver
for AI. Of course we can still engage in basic research, but we won’t become a
AI superpower just because we want it.

------
PeterStuer
Let's say Europe against all odds succeeds in creating the seeds of some
promising AI scale-ups. How will they prevent the US, Korea and China from
cherry-picking and buying those out just like in all the previous IT-tech
waves?

~~~
snaky
They will fix it European way.

> BERLIN (Reuters) - The German government is taking steps to counter a surge
> in Chinese bids for stakes in German technology companies, including the
> creation of a billion-euro fund that could rescue such firms in financial
> trouble, a government source told Reuters.

~~~
petre
Maybe they shouldn't have taxed the crap out of these companies in the first
place?

Most succesful EU companies are 100+ years old due to taxes, bureaucracy and
big company bullying. I find posts about the startup scene in most if not all
EU countries laughable. Western Europe is too regulated and expensive (taxes)
and Eastern Europe is too corrupt and politically unstable. Southern Europe is
too hot and distracting. Maybe it has mafia as well. 20% VAT? Come on, that's
outright theft. Hungary as 27% VAT. Portugal has 23% VAT. France has 20% but
they also tax the crap out of companies and private citizens, especially if
you're well off. Germany is over regulated, even the dogs barking hours is
regulated. How do you expect tech startups to survive in this environment? Oh
wait there's Ireland which gets lots of rain (people are cool working indoors)
and has small taxes, except for VAT which is 23%. That one could work.

~~~
pavlov
Taxes in USA are not meaningfully lower, except for state-local sales taxes
vs. European VAT.

But the thing about VAT is that it’s unimportant for most businesses. When
selling B2B you just subtract all the VAT you paid from the VAT you owe. The
only kind of business that is seriously affected by VAT is highly price-
sensitive B2C, and technology startups usually aren’t that.

~~~
jstanley
I don't think you understand VAT.

If you buy some computers for $100, do some work, and manage to sell your
services for $1000, you get to reclaim $20 of VAT but you have to pay $200 of
VAT, so a 20% VAT rate costs this hypothetical business 18% of its revenue,
which is hardly "unimportant".

And a typical tech company would be taking in far more than 10x in revenue
than what they are spending on VAT-able goods.

EDIT: But see below.

~~~
cuban-frisbee
He litterally just said it only matters in a B2C setting and not a B2B.

Can you name even one AI product that is sold directly to consumers? Most if
not all is B2B and there VAT is not used as it is a tax on consumption levied
at the consumer, not other businesses.

~~~
petre
Amazon Alexa? Wait, the AI there is meant for vendor lock in. Roomba vacuum
cleaners? Spotify? As a business you stll have to buy stuff to recover VAT and
sell your product 20% inflated.

~~~
cuban-frisbee
On of the most succesful EU businesses (spotify) does not seem to support the
assertion that VAT is a undue burden. Also I don't know if spotify uses their
own tech or if they are uses stuff from another vendor.

Do also remember that all your competitors are bound by the same rules, so
from a purely economical standpoint prices in a given country with VAT will
just appear x% higher accross the board, and then the real question is more of
disposable income.

To be perfectly honest I am no expert in VAT, but I do know that a country
like Denmark with 25 % VAT is also ranked in the top 5 countries to do
business in.

Also don't know what you mean by "As a business you stll have to buy stuff to
recover VAT" but oh well maybe you can clarify.

~~~
jstanley
> prices in a given country with VAT will just appear x% higher across the
> board, and then the real question is more of disposable income.

In other words, "if you can't make at least a 20% profit on the value you add,
you're not allowed to make a profit at all". This stifles innovation at the
margin.

------
m00dy
As a turk, migrated to EU 5 years ago, I put my bet on EU politicians. I hope
they are going to find a sweet-spot in this at-least two poles world.

