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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'

#351

Post by Dylan16807 »

ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #295
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…

> " 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. " In the 1930s, it wasn't possible so what's your point? (History time: What happened on October 24, 1929?) Choosing the 1960s as a baseline is artificially cherry-picking an era of economic growth (at the expense of the rest of post-WW2 Europe and Asia who were rebuilding) instead…

> cherry-picking an era of economic growth

But we already did the growth. We didn't shrink back. So we should still be able to get those results.

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

#352

Post by Ferret7446 »

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…

The same could be said for the nuclear arms race. The problem is that you can't afford to let a competitor/foreign country own this technology. You must invest. The problems have to be figured out later.

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

#353

Post by cman1444 »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #144
nicce wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More like that when it happens, how big the pop is.

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.

I'm not. A few podcasts I've listened to recently (mostly Odd Lots) explored how a pop is often preferable to a protracted downturn because it weeds out the losers quickly and allows the economy to begin the recovery aspect sooner. A protracted downturn risks poorly managed assets limping along for years instead of having capital reallocated to better investments.

Better to rip the bandaid off and begin anew.

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

#354

Post by eCa »

rockemsockem wrote: post #338
willis936 wrote: post #326

Forget the talk about bubbles and corrections. Can someone explain to me the rationale of investing in a product, marketing it, seeing that it drives consumers away from your product and erodes trust, and then you continue to invest at an accelerating rate? Good business would have driven us very far away from this point years ago. This is very deep in the "because we can" territory. It's not FOMO.

If you're talking about all of AI with your statement I think you may need to reconcile that opinion with the fact that chat GPT alone has almost 1 billion daily users. Clearly lots of people derive enormous value from AI. If there's something more specific and different you were referring to I'd love to hear what it is.

I’m probably an outlier: I use chatgpt/gemini for specific purposes, but ai summaries on eg google search or youtube gives me negative value (I never read them and they take up space).

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

#355

Post by Dylan16807 »

janalsncm wrote: post #348
JoshTriplett wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of them, which ones, to who, at what price, who is forced to provide them, how much do they get, what about other needs... Or we could just give people money and let them do as they wish with it, and trade off between their needs and wants as they see fit (including the decision of whether they want to work to obtain more of their wants).

How much money should everyone get?

If the plan was to give people the full set of housing/clothing/food then use the poverty line calculation for amount of money. Or the social security calculation.

We can iterate on the exact amount. There are difficulties with UBI but figuring out the amount is a pretty minor one.

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

#356

Post by rr808 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #331
rr808 wrote: post #328

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. That's completely out of the realm of reality for many young people now and the plummeting birth rates show it. Most of the people I see working in tech can easily afford this. Maybe not private schools or McMansions but the basics are pretty easy. Sure if you're a humanities major w…

This is far from true. Aside from Valley pay, which also has Valley housing costs, a "tech job" will barely pay for healthcare and housing for one, much less healthcare and housing for four.

Median dev salary in USA is $133k, most likely with healthcare already. You can easily afford a mortgage on a median home which is about $24k/yr.

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...

https://www.zillow.com/home-values/102001/united-states/

https://www.calculator.net/mortgage-calculator.html?chousepr...

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

#357

Post by Ferret7446 »

nradov wrote: post #311
jrjeksjd8d wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But we have. The underclass today has much better lives in many aspects than the highest class from many decades ago. The absolute level of wealth has increased, it's simply that the delta between the high and the low is widening.

Would you rather live equally in poverty or live comfortably with others who are way more wealthy than you? Surprisingly people do seem to prefer the former, though I'd prefer the latter

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

#358

Post by phantasmish »

crossbody wrote: post #339
p1necone wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The average home in 1960 was like 1600 sq ft, now its like 2800 sq ft. Statements like this are not particularly meaningful unless there is actually a supply of 1600 sqft houses that are proportionally cheaper, otherwise you're just implying a causal relationship with no evidence.

Supply is driven by demand unless there is a monopoly in house building (there isn't). If this wasn't the case, one could quickly become a billionaire by starting first company that build small houses that are supposedly in demand but not provided by the market

This is developers maximizing profit per lot.

All this means is there are enough buyers who can afford 2,800 sqft houses to keep builders from wasting a lot on a 1,600 sqft house. There could be a lot more people who want a cheaper 1,600 sqft house (including some of the 2,800 sqft house buyers!) than who want 2,800 sqft houses, but the market will keep delivering the latter as long as the return is better (for the return to improve for 1,600 sqft houses, see about convincing towns and cities to allow smaller lots, smaller setbacks, et c).

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

#359

Post by rockemsockem »

stingraycharles wrote: post #349
rockemsockem wrote: post #345

There's a weird gleefulness about AI being a bubble that'll pop any day now both in this thread and in the world at large. It's kinda weird and I find most of the predictions about the result of such a bubble popping to sound highly exaggerated.

I think it’s because a lot of people feel like AI is being pushed from the top a lot with all kinds of spectacular claims / expectations, while it’s actually still difficult to apply to a lot of problems. The AI bubble bursting would be somewhat of an “I told you so!” moment for a lot of people. And there’s also a large group that’s genuinely afraid to lose their job because of it, so for that group it’s very much un…

I do agree that there seems to be a bubble, imo it's largely in the application space with the likes of cursor being valued at $23B+, but I don't see GPU purchases going down anytime soon and I don't even see usage going down. If these overhyped apps fail then it seems like something else will take their place. The power that LLMs provide is just too promising. It seems like those predicting things like a global economic crisis or the new big model-providers like OpenAI going to 0 just think that AI is like NFTs with no real intrinsic value.

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

#360

Post by rockemsockem »

eCa wrote: post #354
rockemsockem wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about all of AI with your statement I think you may need to reconcile that opinion with the fact that chat GPT alone has almost 1 billion daily users. Clearly lots of people derive enormous value from AI. If there's something more specific and different you were referring to I'd love to hear what it is.

I’m probably an outlier: I use chatgpt/gemini for specific purposes, but ai summaries on eg google search or youtube gives me negative value (I never read them and they take up space).

I agree about the summaries! I think AI is applied in a lot of bad ways ATM although TBH I've heard some people like the summaries
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