The Next Generation Internet initiative has supported Free Software projects with funding and technical assistance since 2018. Despite its proven success, the European Commission made the decision to cut this funding in the current draft for the Horizon Europe 2025 Work Programme.
The reasons for this shift in budget away from funding Free Software and the NGI initiative seems to be an allocation of more funds for AI, leaving internet infrastructure by the wayside.
It’s a justification, they know full well it’s not some future revolution.
But it’s a very good device to hijack discourse and funds.
It seems obvious that people who get to the top are smart, just not in the good way. They know the potential of various technologies. If they don’t understand the subjects themselves, they have hundreds of experts willing to lecture them. Even if they pretend to not have understood a word, in fact they do gain knowledge.
As long as public money -> public code, this could potentially be a net positive for stopping predatory AI practices from Microsoft and buddies. Still, taking away funding from other projects could also be catastrophic for everything else.
Also
Good old AI bubble strikes again.
It’s a justification, they know full well it’s not some future revolution.
But it’s a very good device to hijack discourse and funds.
It seems obvious that people who get to the top are smart, just not in the good way. They know the potential of various technologies. If they don’t understand the subjects themselves, they have hundreds of experts willing to lecture them. Even if they pretend to not have understood a word, in fact they do gain knowledge.
As long as public money -> public code, this could potentially be a net positive for stopping predatory AI practices from Microsoft and buddies. Still, taking away funding from other projects could also be catastrophic for everything else.