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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'

#481

Post by amelius »

sampullman wrote: post #446
Frieren wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nobody can really know what things will look like in 10 years, 100% true. Do not invest trillions on such an uncertainty in the long term is always a bad investment. > but if you have the capital to deploy and any conviction at all that this might be a sea-change moment, it seems foolish to not pursue it. Gamblers argument: "But what if this is the winning ticket?"

Then aren't most forms of investment based on a "gambler's argument"? A risky investment is obviously akin to gambling, but to get things built and make a profit you have no other choice.

> Then aren't most forms of investment based on a "gambler's argument"?

Are you now equating an investor with some guy in a casino? Sorry, but that seems like a stretch.

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

#482

Post by fragmede »

zerosizedweasle wrote: post #476

I don't think people in tech and AI have any idea, just how viciously politics is going to turn on them in 2026 going forward. AI is going to be politically orphaned.

I mean, I want to walk away from it all and go live in the woods too, but AI creates newspaper articles and videos, so I'm not sure how it's going to become an orphan except to become boring and commonplace eg the Xerox copy machine became a boring ole business. One that's gotten fucked by private equity and greed and capitalism. Hey you want it tomorrow on special paper that we already have? That'll be a handling fee of $29.99 plus $3.99 per page to load that paper and hit print tomorrow. Extra special rush fee if it's in the morning if I'm already at work fee of $59.99.

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

#483

Post by 4ggr0 »

kamaal wrote: post #470
watwut wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that it is men who complain constantly about wanting to marry and have kids while women are much more content being single and have friends. You dont have to pay alimony of the wife worked thw whole time. That complain is funny in the comtext of men demanding to return back to time where alimony arrangement was necessary protection. Even in marriage, it is more of women who initiate divorce are report higher h…

Its in the nature of men to work and provide. That's how men seek fulfilment in life. But if you dial up the pain in the process men will bail. This shouldn't be surprising. Perhaps the most primal biological set up of all, the very basis of evolution is response to stimulus.

> Its in the nature of men to work and provide. That's how men seek fulfilment in life.

i'm sorry, what? it's ingrained in men to be worker-drones and every man sees this as his fulfillment?

yikes. as the kids say, 'touch grass'. translated for older people, "maybe expand your world-view and don't extrapolate your idea of a man to all of men."

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

#484

Post by boxedemp »

checker659 wrote: post #400
aurareturn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So tell us the economics of it? The vast majority of AI doomers in the mass media have never used tools like v0 or Cursor. How would they know that AI is overvalued?

Are the companies making a profit on every prompt I give it (factoring in the cost of upgrading GPUs every year or two)?

They've got us addicted. They're going to squeeze us eventually. I know my company don't stop using agent driven development. It's increased our velocity too much.

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

#485

Post by frm88 »

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…

The price you noted will not buy you a decent flat in the vicinity of Stuttgart with good train connections. At least not for a family. The prices are around € 4.4K/m2. And that's the median. For newer buildings it's up to € 5.5K.

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

#486

Post by zerosizedweasle »

fragmede wrote: post #482
zerosizedweasle wrote: post #476

I don't think people in tech and AI have any idea, just how viciously politics is going to turn on them in 2026 going forward. AI is going to be politically orphaned.

I mean, I want to walk away from it all and go live in the woods too, but AI creates newspaper articles and videos, so I'm not sure how it's going to become an orphan except to become boring and commonplace eg the Xerox copy machine became a boring ole business. One that's gotten fucked by private equity and greed and capitalism. Hey you want it tomorrow on special paper that we already have? That'll be a handling fe…

Don't have to take my word for it. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/audio/2025-11-19/odd-lots-the... This is going to a backlash like no other. Better prepare.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-19/how-the-p...

A tsunami of rage.

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

#487

Post by saxenaabhi »

jcgrillo wrote: post #454
kergonath wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Clearly lots of people derive enormous value from AI. I don’t really see this. Lots of people like freebies, but the value aspect is less clear. AFAIK, none of these chatbots are profitable. You would not see nearly as many users if they had to actually pay for the thing.

In the article Pichai is quoted saying: > "It doesn't matter whether you want to be a teacher [or] a doctor. All those professions will be around, but the people who will do well in each of those professions are people who learn how to use these tools." Bullshit. Citation very much needed. It's a shame--a shameful stain on the profession--that journalists don't respond critically to such absurd nonsense and ask the o…

There are hundreds of thousands of developers here including me who would vouch that AI does make them vastly more productive.

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

#488

Post by b112 »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #443
Ancapistani wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? Sure! Google began investing heavily in AI (LLMs, actually) to catch up to the other frontier labs, which had already produced a product that was going to eviscerate Google Search (and therefore, Google ad r…

Yeah, like imagine if the LLM's don't advance that much, the agentic stuff doesn't really take off etc. Even in this conservative case, ChatGPT could seriously erode Google Search revenues. That alone would be a massive disruption and Google wants to ensure they end up as the Google in that scenario and not the Lycos, AltaVista, AskJeeves etc. etc.

But what Google is doing, is like what Firefox did when Chrome came out. Panicking.

Panicking, and therefore making horrible design and product choices.

Google has made their main search engine output utter and complete junk. It's just terrible. If they didn't have 'web' search, I'd never be able to use it.

In almost every search for the last month, normal search results in horrible matches. Switch to web? Bam! First result.

Not web? The same perfect result might be 3 or 4 pages deep. If that.

(I am comparing web results in both cases, and ignoring the also broken 80% of the pages of AI junk.)

In an attempt to compete, they're literally driving people to use ChatGPT for search in droves.

They could compete, and do so without this panicky disaster of a response.

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

#489

Post by aurareturn »

PessimalDecimal wrote: post #411
aurareturn wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to OpenAI, yes. They're "very profitable" on inference. It is the training and capex (driven by competition) that is driving loss.

https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai_docs/ offers a different point of view on OAI's profitability on inference.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45050415

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

#490

Post by Iulioh »

jcgrillo wrote: post #465
oblio wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users still googled before. Now they just move to chatbots. Regular people don't really notice the search degradation as much and enshittification helps Google, as revenues kept going up. Chatbots are an existential threat since they will add ads and that's where Google's ad revenue dies.

Did any users actually move to chatbots? By which I don't mean the 0.001% of tech nerds who buy chatgpt subscriptions, but in aggregate did a meaningful number of google searchers defect to chatgpt or other llm services? I really doubt that. Data would be interesting but there's a credibility problem...

As someone who deeply dislikes using chatbots for information there is a lot of stuff that is easily and reliably anwsered by GPT

You must know the limitations of the medium but searching for how much and at what temperature should i bake my broccoli is so fucking annoying to search on google

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