European Commission3d ago

Europe, the AI Continent.

One year ago, we launched the AI Continent Action Plan. Since then, we have made huge strides:

✅ 19 AI factories are now live across EU countries.
✅ We established the AI Skills Academy to train experts.
✅ The AI Omnibus is cutting costs for business.
✅ We have earmarked €1 billion to support AI adoption in industry.

We are building a secure and innovative AI future for Europe.

Here's how 👉 https://link.europa.eu/nj3VH9

Show threadDavid Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)2d ago

@EUCommission

I don’t know if this account is actually monitored, or just a publishing place, but you may have noticed that this post has received almost overwhelmingly negative responses.

You could disregard this as Mastodon bias, but keep in mind that the biggest bias on Mastodon is that people who understand and built core parts of the information technology that you use every day are massively over represented. This is probably the only place you will get a lot of replies from people who both understand technology and do not have a financial incentive to hype things to get large amounts of government funding.

EDIT: I should add, I used machine learning during my PhD and there are a lot of problems for which it is a really good fit. But, in the current climate, it’s generally safe to interpret ‘AI’ as meaning ‘machine learning applied to a problem where machine learning is the wrong solution’. It isn’t a technology, it’s a branding term, and it’s a branding term used almost exclusively for things that have no social benefit.

Show threadDavidson1d ago
@david_chisnall @EUCommission The EU is tasked with the difficult challenge of balancing democratic values with maintaining economic parity with undemocratic superpowers. Initiatives like these are usually aimed at ensuring that the EU doesn't fall behind. What are you proposing? No AI infrastructure with data sovereignty for the EU while other superpowers use AI to optimize every facet of digital infrastructure? What is the incentive for the EU to risk sitting out a technological leap?
Show threadsidereal
@davidsonsr @david_chisnall @EUCommission Hi, AI is demonstrably worse than useless (eats up more money in resources than it brings in, proven by multiple studies), and anyone who avoids it is setting themselves up for success.
2:48pmWeb
Show threadDavidson6h ago
@sidereal @david_chisnall @EUCommission Companies have been successfully replacing human tasks with high value/low complexity AI queries for a long time, and as far as I know no studies specifically target these use cases rather rather than discussing the total energy impact of AI (around half of which is seemingly estimated to be coming from recreational use rather than productivity based on the limited data that's currently available and that's also not excluding wasteful commercial projects).