alt Hacker NewsI've tried Mistral a few times, at first it seemed promising (though lagging) but at some point it seems like they stopped focusing on AI and shifted their focus to being a mouthpiece for EU policy and pushing for regulation. I can't really take any of their announcements seriously anymore.
A couple of weeks ago they were calling for a European AI tax to pay creatives.
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I lived and studied in France. So it's only natural for me to try out Mistral's every major updates. I had the same sentiment with you, that their models were just a bit lagging. But on the other hand, I understand their shift. Their value is not in SOTA coding, math, or puzzle solving performance in my opinion. They will catch up. To me it makes sense that they focus on something else, how to scale through talents and propagate their models with policies in Europe.
They are making some very good specialised models, like Voxtral
Why do you say they "stopped focusing on AI"? I see a pretty consistent release of pretty good products - particularly in speech and OCR.
If they want to improve but find that European regulations are the main obstacle, it makes sense they focus on that.
Sounds like the tax on recordable CDs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy
Ridiculous, and it didn't take money from the right people or give it to the right people. I would expect the same from an AI tax.