How about not making these unenforced laws in the first place so that European companies could actually have a chance at competing? We're going to suffer the externalities of AI either way, but at least there would be a chance that a European company could be relevant.
The AI Act absolutely befuddled me. How could you release relatively strict regulation for a technology that isn't really being used yet and is in the early stages of development? How did they not foresee this kneecapping AI investment and development in Europe? If I were a tinfoil hat wearer I'd probably say that this was intentional sabotage, because this was such an obvious consequence.
Mistral is great, but they haven't kept up with Qwen (at least with Mistral Small 4). Leanstral seems interesting, so we'll have to see how it does.
Because the AI act was mostly written to address issues with ML products and services. It was mostly done before ChatGPT happened, so all the foundation model stuff got shoehorned in.
Speaking as someone who's been doing stats and ML for a while now, the AI act is pretty good. The compliance burden falls mostly on the companies big enough to handle it.
The foundation model parts are stupid though.