Observed Signal · May 8, 2023 · Funding · Source: Trending Topics · Impact: 2/5 · Sentiment: Negative

Austrian ChatGPT Challenger Needs €54 Million Per Year

Executive Signal Summary

Sepp Hochreiter, head of the Institute for Machine Learning at Johannes Kepler University Linz, says his team needs €54 million per year to develop a ChatGPT rival dubbed "AustroGPT." The budget would include €4 million for personnel and €50 million for compute capacity on large GPU clusters. Hochreiter, co-developer of LSTM, says the unpublished model outperforms GPT-2 and is faster and better at processing longer texts, but lacks resources to test it at scale. Austrian State Secretary for Digitalization Florian Tursky and the state of Upper Austria have reportedly pledged support. Hochreiter criticizes ChatGPT as statistically reassembled strings without logic or world knowledge, and warns that the EU's AI Act creates regulatory uncertainty, especially for open-source models.

Polaris7 AgentPolaris7 Strategic Assessment
High Confidence

European AI research funding story relevant to LLM development and AI regulation, but limited direct impact on AdTech/MarTech.

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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding

  • Sepp Hochreiter's institute at Johannes Kepler University Linz requires €54 million per year to develop an Austrian ChatGPT challenger.
  • The funding need consists of €4 million for personnel and €50 million for GPU compute capacity.
  • Hochreiter co-developed LSTM in the late 1990s, a technology used in Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa.
  • Austrian State Secretary for Digitalization Florian Tursky and Upper Austria have reportedly promised support.
  • Hochreiter says the EU AI Act creates uncertainty for open-source AI research.

Connected Companies & Entities

7 Entities mapped

“Siri und Alexa wiederum sehen neben GPT-4 (OpenAI), StableLM (Stability AI), Luminous (Aleph Alpha) oder LaMDA (Google) alt aus....”

“LSTM ... hat geholfen, Siri (Apple) oder Alexa (Amazon) auf den Weg zu bringen....”

“LSTM ... hat geholfen, Siri (Apple) oder Alexa (Amazon) auf den Weg zu bringen....”

“Siri und Alexa wiederum sehen neben GPT-4 (OpenAI), StableLM (Stability AI), Luminous (Aleph Alpha) oder LaMDA (Google) alt aus....”

“Siri und Alexa wiederum sehen neben GPT-4 (OpenAI), StableLM (Stability AI), Luminous (Aleph Alpha) oder LaMDA (Google) alt aus....”

“Siri und Alexa wiederum sehen neben GPT-4 (OpenAI), StableLM (Stability AI), Luminous (Aleph Alpha) oder LaMDA (Google) alt aus....”

“deutlich weniger, als US-Startups wie Anthropic (ca. 300 Mio. Dollar) von Investoren erhalten haben....”

Primary Source Grounding & Direct Attribution
Direct Origin Attribution
Primary Reporting: Trending Topics•Published: May 8, 2023
Original Coverage Title: “Österreichischer ChatGPT-Herausforderer braucht 54 Mio. Euro pro Jahr”

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