Niall Larkin retweeted
Hello from Dublin airport as I'm leaving the International AI Summit with something close to existential dread from being exposed yet again to the parallel reality in which much of Europe’s political establishment appears to be living.
The summit was literally organized around the theme of European competitiveness. Yet from the plenary stage, I heard from mostly American companies (fair play to them, Ireland is home to their international HQs) coupled with European politicians advancing claims that the AI Act, DFA, CADA and other digital rules somehow make European startups more competitive and that regulation is what will stop AI agents from “escaping their sandboxes."
Meanwhile, you could walk around the innovation hall and struggle to find any of the major European AI companies that are actually trying to compete at the frontier.
Panel after panel returned to the same comfortable and boring platitudes about trust, values, guardrails and responsible innovation.
There is an huge disconnect from the real world. In a desperate pursuit of sovereignty for sovereignty's sake and an ever-growing digital maze of bureaucracy, Europe will fall behind in AI. We will have fewer frontier companies, less capital, less compute and dramatically less appetite for risk than the US or China. We will also be incapable of grasping (or, at a minimum, understanding) the opportunities ahead of us.
Instead, we keep congratulating ourselves on having built a telegraph cable in the 1800s (!?) and now the world's most elaborate regulatory framework and call that a competitive advantage.
One of the few genuinely refreshing interventions came from Siemens CTO and Chief Strategy Officer Dr. Peter Koerte, who spoke frankly about some of the real obstacles European innovators face.
I will keep saying this until I'm blue in the face: Europe does not have an AI values problem, it has an AI competitiveness problem. But I’m increasingly worried that many of the people supposed to solve either don't have the intellectual capacity or curiosity to do so.
To end on a positive note: the event was super slick, and the logistics were very straightforward. Congrats to the Irish government for their ability to put together a great experience for their guests, for being so welcoming, and attracting a very high caliber of speakers.
#AISummitIE #Ireland2026EU
Imagining a movie called “The Great Misalignment” and trying to come up with taglines.
@grok suggests ‘Welcome to Day 0 of The Final Autocomplete.’
Niall Larkin retweeted
Personal update: I've joined Anthropic. I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time.
Niall Larkin retweeted
You have no experience.
You’ve never started a company.
You’ve never had a full time job.
Nike is going to kill you.
You’re a kid.
You don’t have technical skills.
You shouldn’t build hardware.
Apple is going to kill you.
You can’t build hardware.
You can’t measure heart rate non-invasively.
Athletes don’t care about recovery.
Under Armour is going to kill you.
It won’t be accurate.
You don’t listen.
You’re an ineffective leader.
You can’t recruit great talent.
You’re going to have to pay every athlete.
You can’t measure sleep non-invasively.
It’s too expensive to research.
Athletes are a small market.
The product costs too much to make.
The product costs too much to sell.
Your valuation is too high.
Consumers aren’t going to want it.
Hardware is too hard.
You should measure steps.
Fitbit is going to kill you.
You can’t build a marketing engine.
You can’t raise enough money.
You need a real CEO.
Google is going to kill you.
You can’t be a subscription.
You can’t build a brand.
You can’t do consumer in Boston.
Your valuation is too high.
You shouldn’t make accessories.
You shouldn’t make apparel.
Lululemon is going to kill you.
You can’t predict Covid.
Stay in your niche.
You are going to run out of money.
You can’t build a health platform.
Amazon is going to kill you.
You can’t measure blood pressure.
You can’t get medical approvals.
The market is too small.
You don’t understand AI.
The market is too competitive.
It won’t work internationally.
The supply chain is too complicated.
You can’t build an AI.
You can’t raise enough money.
It’s too competitive.
Healthcare isn’t going to want it.
…
Just keep going ✌️
Niall Larkin retweeted
Just had an urge to tell a cloth to wipe up my spilled coffee.
Too much Claude Code and Wispr Flow and too little sleep will do strange things to a man.
Niall Larkin retweeted
One of my favorite lessons I’ve learnt from working with smart people:
Action produces information. If you’re unsure of what to do, just do anything, even if it’s the wrong thing. This will give you information about what you should actually be doing.
Sounds simple on the surface - the hard part is making it part of your every day working process.
Niall Larkin retweeted
FT: 🇭🇺 2-3 🇮🇪
An emotional Troy Parrott reacts to securing a play-off place for Ireland in Budapest.
'This is why we love football because things like this can happen... I love where I'm from, my family are here, this means the world to me.'
📺 @rte2 @rteplayer
Niall Larkin retweeted
I wrote a piece for the @IrishTimes on why Ireland can’t build anything these days, and how to fix that.
John Collison of Stripe: Ireland is going backwards. Here’s how to get it moving irishtimes.com/life-style/pe…
Niall Larkin retweeted
incentives to rewrite founder career history or investment track records within venture firms has never been higher
Jensen worked at two chip companies LSI & AMD prior to Nvidia - but in our narrative driven world reality is less of a hook then the ‘busboy to ceo’ story
Niall Larkin retweeted
HBAN is honoured to be named Europe’s Best Performing EBAN Member 2025 by @EBAN_org at EBAN Congress in Copenhagen.
All-Island Director Niamh Sterling accepts the award on behalf of HBAN's team, acknowledging their trojan work.
Become a HBAN angel: hban.org/angel
Niall Larkin retweeted
Agreed. Social media incentivizes these bland generalizations wrapped up as counter culture edginess. The irony is that it has become mainstream for a certain kind of wannabe internet famous moron.
Niall Larkin retweeted
RDI Hub makes a €250m economic impact on its region - Kerry-based start-up and scale-up powerhouse RDI Hub marks five years and embarks on €1m AI for SME programme
#kerry #munster #tech #startups #scalingbusiness #ai @RDIhubIreland @Entirl @Fexcogroup
thinkbusiness.ie/articles/rd…
Niall Larkin retweeted
Nothing will get you more hyped about business cards than this lad. (wait until you see his card, it's ~everything)
Amazing news @synthesia. Plus the final 10 seconds of this clip will make rewatching Black Mirror S6E1 'Joan is Awful' even more thrilling next time around.
Ok so we’ve raised $180M Series D — but what does that actually mean for our users? 👇
Thanks for having us, @TomMackenzieTV and @BloombergTV.
2025 is going to be wild 🚀
Niall Larkin retweeted
i think that banks are secretly communist. like really, have you ever gone into a bank? they have like 10 tellers behind bulletproof glass doing exactly the same thing. it's like a scene out of 1984. and yet we give them our money?
I’ve hallucinated a Healy-Rae version of a Dylan classic as: “The Climate Is Always A-Changing.” (Inspired by this election flyer. )
Come gather ’round people, wherever you roam,
And don’t blame the engines, the cars, or the phones,
..
And remember the stories of ice and of stone.
It’s all part of the weather’s arranging.
The floods and the famines, the droughts long ago,
For the climate is always a-changing.