Speaker unverified: uncertainty

Transcript context

…So it looks tenable if Europe was more powerful, right? So imagine Europe was what US is now, right? And Anthropic was in Paris and OpenAI was in Berlin and like the whole AI ecosystem was in Europe. Then of course Europe could say like, well guys, the way you're handling your pre-training data is not really fair to whoever creator created it. So we now have new laws around that or the way how you take data from people that use your AI models, we now have new laws around it. The problem is that currently, if you don't really have a seat at the table, it's very hard to regulate this technology, right? So I care a lot about safety and governance of AI. I think this is one of the biggest problems in our time, right? How do we actually have effective governance? How do we make sure that these AI systems are safe, especially if they start improving themselves? So I get a lot of questions in Europe. Well, In the US, you seem to be very pro sort of being stricter on safety and governance. And then in Europe, you seem to be this accelerationist. And the way to sort of, for me at least, to be both at the same time is that in Europe, we first need a seat at the table to have any regulatory power, right? And now we just don't. And I think we can't just keep regulating because at some point we will no longer have access to this technology. If the European regulators make it too difficult to serve the European market, that the AI companies might simply just not bother at all or maybe make a sort of a token effort. And I think that assumes, tell me if I'm getting any of the strategic analysis wrong, but it seems like that assumes that there's just going to be enough demand to keep all the GPUs running hot from other markets such that the power this time is inverted. The companies can say, well, I actually do have an alternative to your market. So if you're going to make this difficult, we'll just let the US and other buyers around the world bid up the GPU prices. We don't really need you to do that. ly do have an alternative to your market. So if you're going to make this difficult, we'll just let the US and other buyers around the world bid up the GPU prices. We don't really need you to do that. And currently we are in a massive compute crunch, right? And labs operate in a way that they care more about their future models often than about current revenue, right? So like, we don't really know what the compute split is and how it's used, but sort of some numbers that are going around is like 1/3 on your sort of big run, right? And then 1/3 on doing sort of experiments and 1/3 on serving customers. Now, it's probably been so crazy with AI agents that maybe like revenue takes a bigger part of the compute pile. But if you think that revenue is only maybe 1/3 or maybe half of your compute, and then European revenue is a percentage of that, like then suddenly if you can go faster on the developing future models and moving towards recursive self-improvement by giving up a European market, that seems like a rational trade. So that's one side of the coin. The other side is that sort of they can still, as long as the playing field is leveled between the American labs and there are no European labs that sort of have some unfair advantages, then they can maybe all serve slightly weaker models to the European ecosystem and still get revenue in Europe without actually having to worry too much about like them regulating their models, right? So as you say, Nathan, they could do a token effort and could have some like a smaller, I don't know, compliant model that they're serving specifically for European customers. Why should European leaders even care? Why not just sit under the US umbrella? Similar to how in many cases they have sat under the US umbrella for nuclear kind of deterrence. You have only I think 2 European powers, the United Kingdom and France, with actual nuclear weapons. And the other European powers are clearly technically capable and competent. Enrico Fermi was from Italy. Like they're technically obviously competent and capable, but have chosen not to acquire those capabilities. So why not just sit under someone else's umbrella? competent. Enrico Fermi was from Italy. Like they're technically obviously competent and capable, but have chosen not to acquire those capabilities. So why not just sit under someone else's umbrella? So that's obviously the strategy we've been taken sort of for decades now. And I think like nuclear weapons and AI are slightly different because yes, AI is a very important military technology, but above all, it just gives you a lot of competitive economic power, right? So like you can imagine that if AI becomes the sort of dominant source of new scientific discovery or of new like goods and services that are trying to globally compete, then there might be a scenario in which the US says, well, it's not like we're still happy to protect Europe, maybe military, like in terms of defense. And we're still part of NATO, but economically, we are going to keep the best models for ourselves. And so there, I think the nuclear sort of analogy breaks down because right? Like for using your nuclear power to protect Europe doesn't really come at an economic loss. So I think to avoid those kind of scenarios or to at least balance things out more such that it's less in US interest to take these kind of measures, right? And so that's on like, why not sit under the US umbrella? Then what can middle powers effectively do? So The Netherlands, for example, has ASML, which plays a critical role in the supply chain. Taiwan has TSMC. Japan has like important materials for the semiconductor supply chain. Korea has high wind with memory. So I think collectively, we're actually quite well positioned to play an important role in this AI ecosystem. I do think the middle power coalition, therefore, is going to be important. There's also a scenario which I think was highlighted in Dario's recent essay, where we have some kind of coalition of democratic countries where maybe we sit together with the US, right? So middle powers plus the US or sort of democratic powers worldwide, and where like one of the principles is that we give each other access to frontier technology. So yeah, there are, I think, scenarios where this middle power coalition could work well, and collectively I do think they have some important assets.…

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