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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'

#471

Post by f1shy »

zwnow wrote: post #432
f1shy wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen it all across the EU. Is pretty doable (granted, you have a University title). But you can absolutely buy a home and have a couple of children which will have absolute all they need.

Yea because the average Joe totally has a university title. However in Germany a lot of poor people have many children while a lot of academics have less [0]. It's "doable" also doesn't mean its pleasant. I have checked the rural housing market recently and for a somewhat acceptable house you will have to pay easily ~3k per month given you have a somewhat big start capital. Not sustainable if one person loses their j…

A decent Flat in Germany, for example near Stuttgart, with good connections with train is about 300k. There are credit lines for 25 years with relative low interest rates. For that you are way lower than 3k per month (assuming 0 downpayment). With 2 people working in a household, you can afford that. Granted, you will not be the "typical" german doing 3 times a year nice vacations. But doing a "real" 1 or 2 week vacation once every 2 years is pretty much standard outside Germany, I think.

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

#472

Post by DeathArrow »

brainwad wrote: post #430
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.

Eastman Kodak tried your implied proposed strategy, of ignoring technological developments that undermine their core product. It didn't go so well. Naturally technology companies have learned from this and other past mistakes.

Kodak developed a prototype digital camera in 1975. In 1990 they started selling digital cameras. They manufactured their own sensors.

How did they ignore technological advancements?

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

#473

Post by zwnow »

f1shy wrote: post #471
zwnow wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea because the average Joe totally has a university title. However in Germany a lot of poor people have many children while a lot of academics have less [0]. It's "doable" also doesn't mean its pleasant. I have checked the rural housing market recently and for a somewhat acceptable house you will have to pay easily ~3k per month given you have a somewhat big start capital. Not sustainable if one person loses their j…

A decent Flat in Germany, for example near Stuttgart, with good connections with train is about 300k. There are credit lines for 25 years with relative low interest rates. For that you are way lower than 3k per month (assuming 0 downpayment). With 2 people working in a household, you can afford that. Granted, you will not be the "typical" german doing 3 times a year nice vacations. But doing a "real" 1 or 2 week vaca…

I live in the middle of nowhere in Northern Germany. A house where you wont have to tear down the whole place starts at 400k. And that's a basic small sub 100m^2 house with no garden.

Sorry but I wont get myself into 40 year debt for a bungalow.

After my father's death we sold our old family home for ~70k€ 15 years ago. It would have been in the 300-400k range nowadays. My salary certainly did not double - triple in that time frame.

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

#474

Post by Blamklmo »

cedws wrote: post #137
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…

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…

[dead]

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

#475

Post by DeathArrow »

hgomersall wrote: post #424
devsda wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can also interpret the growth as a failure from product p.o.v though it drives views. With AI summaries being hit or miss, we may say users now need to do 20% more searches to find what they are looking for. Numbers aren't always a good proxy for customer satisfaction.

This was literally their policy. Make the searches worse so people search more. https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/

That's pure genius.

Make cars break faster so you can sell more cars.

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

#477

Post by frm88 »

shalmanese wrote: post #374
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.

What evidence do you have that it's driving consumers away from the product? The people who bother to say anything on the internet are the extreme dedicated minority and are often not representative of a silent majority. Unless you have access to analytics, you can't make this inference.

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/how-americans...

That's only one article and with only a small focus: Americans only.

U.S. adults are generally pessimistic about AI’s effect on people’s ability to think creatively and form meaningful relationships: 53% say AI will worsen people’s ability to think creatively, compared with 16% who say it will improve this....

Regarding your skepticism about the loss of trust: https://publicpolicy.cornell.edu/masters-blog/what-americans...

One of the most consistent themes in the research is fear of misinformation. In an era where AI-generated content can be nearly indistinguishable from authentic material, the potential for deception is enormous, and people know it. A full 76% of Americans say they are concerned about AI tools producing false or misleading information.

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

#478

Post by krige »

boxerab wrote: post #377
macNchz wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are at least a few stories from the 90s where companies that readily could have invested in “getting online” instead decided that it would only harm their existing business. The hype at the time was extraordinary to be sure, but after the dust settled the internet did change the shape of the world. Nobody can really know what things will look like in 10 years, but if you have the capital to deploy and any convi…

Pascal's Wager for tech.

More like it's edgy cousin, the basilisk.

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

#479

Post by zdragnar »

uniq7 wrote: post #314
jaredklewis wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Two of my friends with relatively ordinary jobs have stay at home spouses. The cost of daycare is so high that it would basically eat up one of their salaries, and this way they get to actually spend time with their children, which they find to be more filling than a BS career.

It is definitely doable in the US, and I would imagine most Western countries as well. My knowledge outside of them isn't current enough to speak for the rest.

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

#480

Post by Pingk »

cm2187 wrote: post #469
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 economy has never worked like that. When you increase productivity, you create wealth and you enable other industries to appear. We have gone through numbers of those cycles. The industrialisation of agriculture, then machines in manufacturing, then introduction of computers (think of all the secretarial jobs, computers - as in engineers making calculations, accountants that have disappeared), then outsourcing of…

Western employment has survived because automating and outsourcing labour has pushed people to take up knowledge/services work.

If AI is somewhat successful at automating knowledge work, what feasible job could exist that doesn't require your mind or body?

Services like healthcare and plumbing aren't going away of course, but there's not enough demand to support an economy on those jobs.

In my opinion the whole economy needs a rethink regarding what our actual goals are as a society, and maybe AI will force that conversation to happen, but I'm sceptical if it'll be a well-considered consensus.

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