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Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

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Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#241

Post by gizajob »

ignoramous wrote: post #99
jordanb wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They really are shameless aren't they? Makes one think that this was the plan all along. I think they saw how SVB went down and realize that if they're reckless and irresponsible at a big enough scale they can get the government to just transfer money to them. It's almost like this is their new business model "we're selling exposure to the $XX trillion dollar bailout industry."

> They really are shameless aren't they? Makes one think that this was the plan all along. Not really. Sundar is still pretty bullish on GenAI, just not the investor excitement around it (bubble). Pichai described AI as "the most profound technology" humankind has worked on. "We will have to work through societal disruptions," he said, adding that the technology would "create new opportunities" and "evolve and transi…

Yeah the profundity of the slop churned out by Sora is really something to behold. Veritably the pinnacle of millennia of human art and creativity.

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#242

Post by eli_gottlieb »

jitix wrote: post #164
Demiurge wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the 60s it was possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children. Every kind of a man, or woman? > Do people really think more technology is going to be the path to a better society? Because to me it looks like the opposite. Well, this probably why statistics exist.

Thanks for pointing out this skewed view of economic history common in North America. The short period of boom in 50s/60s US and Canada was driven by WW2 devastation everywhere else. We can see the economic crisis' in the US first in the 70s/80s with Europe and Japan rebounding, then again in 90s/00s with China and East Asia growing, and now again with the rest of the world growing (esp Latin America, India, Indonesi…

So you're saying that working-class living standards are a zero-sum competition across capitalist countries, even negative-sum as competing national economies grow their total output and hourly productivity?

That sounds like a really shitty system.

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#243

Post by gizajob »

rvz wrote: post #5

Most of all of Big Tech, especially Google are doing just fine, making $100B a quarter. Startups and other unprofitable companies however...

You do have to question the usefulness of Big Tech burning all that profit to the ground in order to buy GPUs though.

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#244

Post by palmotea »

jitix wrote: post #235
palmotea wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thanks for pointing out this skewed view of economic history common in North America.... > In short, its easier to have high standards of living in your secure isolated island when the rest of the world (including historical industrial powers) are completely decimated by war. So, what's your point? That the plebs shouldn't expect that much comfort?

A common maxim across all cultures is to "manage expectations" for happiness. And while comparing societal standards expand the time horizon to 100 years, not nitpick one specific unnatural era of history. An automotive engineer in Detroit in 1960 was a globally competitive worker because most of his counterparts in other countries were either dead, disabled or their companies bankrupt. The equivalent in today's worl…

> An automotive engineer in Detroit in 1960 was a globally competitive worker because most of his counterparts in other countries were either dead, disabled or their companies bankrupt.

> The equivalent in today's world would be aerospace engineers, AI researchers, quantum engineers, robotics engineers, etc who arguably have the same standard of living as the automotive engineer in 1960s Detroit.

You know were not really talking about top-end positions like automotive engineers in Detroit in 1960. I think we're talking more about automotive factory workers in Detroit in 1960.

> Economic and technological standards evolve - societies should invest in human capital to evolve with them or risk stagnation.

You need to be more explicit about how you think things should be for the common man.

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#245

Post by jitix »

palmotea wrote: post #234
jitix wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Except for free/subsidized healthcare, didn't the US already have those things during the post-war boom? Yes, but education system is being dismantled piece by piece at all levels. I work in edutech and our goal is to cut costs faster than revenue. Enrolments are down, students are over burdened with student loans, and new grads can't compete in the market. Also, do you think kids going to K-12 in the US can compet…

>> Except for free/subsidized healthcare, didn't the US already have those things during the post-war boom? > Yes, but education system is being dismantled piece by piece at all levels. So? That's not really relevant to the historical period you were referring to when you said: "It's a shame that US didn't invest all that prosperity into social capital that could have helped create high value jobs." At the time, Amer…

> How were they supposed to predict things would change and agitate for something different without the hindsight you enjoy?

By comparing themselves to their counterparts in other countries. By 1955 there should have been alarm bells ringing as Europe re-industrialized. Same with 70s oil crisis but the best that US could do was to cripple Japan with Plaza Accords.

Americans even now have a mindset that nothing exists beyond their borders, one could assume it was worse back then.

> Exactly why do you think it is it unnatural?

Because only two industrialized countries were left standing after WW2 and those two countries enjoyed unnatural growth until others caught up - first the historical powers in Europe then Asia.

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#246

Post by kazen44 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #180
TulliusCicero wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also possible it'll be more of a deflation than a pop. That's what I'm personally hoping for anyway, would rather the economy avoid a big recession.

Without AI bubble the economy is already mostly in a recession.

which is kind of sad to think about. The US could have invested all that money to actually invest in its infrastructure, schools, hospitals and general wellbeing of its workforce to make the economy thrive.

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#247

Post by FloorEgg »

jimbokun wrote: post #176
FloorEgg wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this all just looks like a big frothy chemical reaction playing out far beyond any one person's control. With that view, many things oscillate over time, including game theory patterns (average interaction intentions of win-win, win-lose, lose-lose), and integration / mitosis (unions, international treaties, civil wars),etc. So my optimistic view is that inevitably we will get more tech whether we want it or no…

Either that or the AI robots kill us all. Could go either way.

My guess is that whatever actually happens it will be very different than what the average person has imagined could happen (including me).

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#248

Post by mr_toad »

goalieca wrote: post #207
throwawayffffas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the impression you get if you focus on Microsoft as a OS vendor. It's not that anymore, that's why their OS sucks for many years now. Their main business is b2b, cloud services, and azure. I think they are pretty safe from OpenAI. Plus they have invested big in OpenAI as well.

M365 is arguably far worse than office97. Drive/sharepoint is confusing and team is especially broken. Azure is a product all right, but there’s nothing particularly better there than anywhere else.

SharePoint has been a dog’s breakfast since forever.

Re: Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'

#250

Post by nostrademons »

OptionOfT wrote: post #114

Interestingly I think if the AI succeed at the level that a lot of these CEOs hope we're not much better off either. And the sentiment that goes around is more: reduce the amount of people needed to do the same amount of work: https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/09/mckinsey_ai_monetizat... > McKinsey says, while quoting an HR executive at a Fortune 100 company griping: "All of these copilots are supposed to make work…

"All of these copilots are supposed to make work more efficient with fewer people, but my business leaders are also saying they can't reduce head count yet."

Duh, if they reduce headcount then they will have fewer people in their department, which will negatively affect their chances for promotion and desirability of their resume. That's why they actually offshore the jobs to India and Southeast Asia; it lets them have 3x+ the headcount for the same budget.

If you want to have them actually reduce headcount, make org size the denominator in their performance reviews, so a director with 150 people needs to be 15x more productive than a manager with 10, who needs to be 10x more productive than the engineer IC. I guarantee that you will see companies collapse from ~150,000 employees to ~150, and profit/employee numbers in the millions (and very likely, 90% unemployment and social revolution). This is an incentive issue, not a productivity issue. Most employees and their employers are woefully unproductive because of Parkinson's Law.

You'll never see a manager or even a managing-CEO propose this, though, because it'll destroy their own marketability in the management job market. Only an owner-CEO would do it - which some have, eg. Valve, Nintendo, Renaissance Technologies. But by definition, these are minority employers that are hard to get into, because their business model is to employ only a few hundred people and pay them each millions of dollars.

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