Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 752 posts

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

#311

Post by nradov »

jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #307
nradov wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is part of it. But a lot of the social capital which makes societies prosperous is separate from what we usually consider to be education. On an individual behavior level that includes things like knowing how to show up for work on time, sober, and properly dressed, and follow management instructions without arguing or taking things personally. These are skills that people in the middle and upper classes ta…

The existence of an upper class necessitates the existence of a lower class. You can't just pull everyone up to be above average.

What's your point? I didn't make any claims about averages. We could do a lot more to improve opportunities and social mobility for people caught in the permanent underclass.

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

#312

Post by zeroonetwothree »

SrslyJosh wrote: post #276
cedws wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know what the selling point of AI is for regular people. 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. That's completely out of the realm of reality for many young people now and the plummeting birth rates show it. The middle class have financially benefited very little from the past 20+ years of productivity gains. S…

> The middle class have financially benefited very little from the past 20+ years of productivity gains. More like the last 50 years. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/08/07/for-most-... "For most U.S. workers, real wages have barely budged in decades" The TL;DR is that in 1964 the average hourly wage was $20.27. As of 2018, average hourly wage was $22.65.

1974 median individual income was $28k 2024 median individual income was $45k

Over 50 years that’s a decent amount of growth. Obviously it could be better but it’s not nothing.

Source: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

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

#313

Post by zeroonetwothree »

Terr_ wrote: post #278
astura wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the census bureau median family income in 1960 was $5,600, which is $58,946.59 in Jan 2024 dollars. It's $83,730 in 2024. For individual males, in 1960 it was $4,100 ($43,157.33 Jan 2024 dollars) and $71,090 in 2024. Sources: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1962/demo/p60-03... https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2025/demo/p60-28... https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl The thing is,…

I feel there is something unsound with that comparison, because you could also apply it to kings of history, simply by listing things that technologically unavailable or unaffordable. Imagine transmigrating King Louis XVI (pre-revolution) into some working class professional with a refrigerator, a car, cable TV, etc. I don't think it's a given that he'd consider the package an upgrade.

“Pre-revolution” is doing a lot of work in that sentence

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

#314

Post by uniq7 »

jaredklewis wrote: post #310
cedws wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know what the selling point of AI is for regular people. 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. That's completely out of the realm of reality for many young people now and the plummeting birth rates show it. The middle class have financially benefited very little from the past 20+ years of productivity gains. S…

> That's completely out of the realm of reality for many young people now and the plummeting birth rates show it. I'm skeptical of this explanation for falling birthrates just because birthrates are falling across the world and there seems to be no correlation between fertility and financial security. America has low birthrates. Scandinavia (usually considered to have generous welfare states) has low birthrates. Hung…

In which of those countries is it possible for a man to work an ordinary job, buy a house, settle down with a wife and support two or three children?

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

#316

Post by burnte »

nickff wrote: post #55
burnte wrote: post #53

And there we have the reason for all of these interdependent deals between all these firms, they're all hedging with each other they can keep this set of plates spinning. They can't, not firever. Bubbles pop.

How is what they’re doing a ‘hedge’? It seems more like alternative financing, or keiretsu.

Keiretsu are ways to hedge against loss, you form interlocking relationships that spread both risk and success around. In this case no one is sending actual money, they're sharing obligations with each other.

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

#317

Post by zeroonetwothree »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #285
rozap wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Realistically I think there are two outcomes: AGI succeeds and there are mass layoffs, money is concentrated further in the hands of those who own compute. OR AI bubble pops and there are mass layoffs, with bailouts going to the largest players to prevent a larger collapse, which drives inflation and further marginalizes asset-less people. I honestly don't see a third option unless there is government intervention, w…

Does the USA even have enough money to rescue the tech giants at this point? We could be talking multiple trillion dollars at worst. And the AI only companies like OpenAI and Anthropic would be the most vulnerable in comparison to say Google or Microsoft, because they have no fallback and no sustainability without investor money. And Nvidia would be left in a weird place where the vast majority of their profits are c…

All these companies don’t have piles of debt. So why would they need a bailout at all?

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

#318

Post by bonsai_spool »

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #274
bonsai_spool wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean an unreasonable amount of it went to administrators. But the goal and the intent was certainly there. This is wrong. The increase in administrator pay began well after the crises cited in OP. You could cite spending on the sciences (and thus Silicon Valley), but the spending by the US did not accrue to administrators; and further, federal money primarily goes to grants and loans, but GP is citing a time over…

For universities, yes. But not for primary education. Administrative bloat is the worst in K-12.

> For universities, yes. But not for primary education. Administrative bloat is the worst in K-12.

First, where is your data?

Second, this discussion is clearly about post-secondary education ("the idea is more money could've been invested into bringing the bottom rungs of American society up and created a more skilled and educated workforce in the process.")

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

#319

Post by amy_petrik »

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…

>Who is going to be buying the products and services if no-one has money to throw around?

Let me answer your question with another question - if the population pyramid is inverted and birth rate is like 1.1 babbies per 2 adults.. then how is any market going to grow? Seems to me all markets with halve. On top of what you pointed out. Or I suppose it's a happy accident if our workforce halves as our work halves - but still the consumer market has halved. It does make me wonder under what reality one would fathom that the stock market would go up long term.

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

#320

Post by ethanwillis »

tharne wrote: post #260
ethanwillis wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now tell us how they calculate those inflation adjusted dollars-- what basket of goods? prices in which markets?

They've cited and linked their sources. What's the issue?

The "issue" is the comparison is much more complex than people may be led to believe. It's not a simple "adjust the dollars to be the same" calculation.

There are a lot of assumptions that go into making that calculation.

If I tell you that the value of a dollar you hold has gone down or up this year versus last year because of the price fluctuation of an item you never have or never will purchase, such as hermit crabs in New Zealand.

Would you believe your dollar is worth more or less? What if the price of a good you do spend your dollars on has an inverse relationship with the price of hermit crabs in New Zealand? Or what if the prices of the items you do buy haven't moved at all?

Post reply on HN