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

bbc.com

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

#501

Post by andrepd »

b112 wrote: post #488
schnitzelstoat wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What do you mean "normal" and "web"?

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

#502

Post by skydhash »

saxenaabhi wrote: post #487
jcgrillo wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Productive how? If you’re not measuring the thing, how can you tell that the thing improved?

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

#503

Post by Blamklmo »

willis936 wrote: post #498
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #336

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? I'll take a stab at this. It's not 100% clear to me which product you're referring to, so I'll try to answer as if the product is something that already has customers, and the maker of the product is shoving…

This is what I feel is the case. That is putting a lot of customers on the table. Valve / GabeN get it. In 2025 they make a marketing point about how their hardware runs arch and you can put whatever software you want on it. Valve is positioned to eat Microsoft's and Google's lunch if they're not careful. While chasing the fear of losing customers they are actively losing customers.

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

#504

Post by Blamklmo »

moi2388 wrote: post #413
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 I think: - get customers used to using AI by “gently” cough nudging them towards this in all products. - get experience and data for your LLMs and AI dev teams regarding what works and what doesn’t - Bet on AI becoming good enough that people will use this as their entry to the Web, Media and software - become the largest player of these AI apps, so that you can inject ads again

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

#505

Post by Blamklmo »

conartist6 wrote: post #27
tow21 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon might get through easily as companies . I don't think all G/M/M/A staff will get through easily.

Microsoft is in a pickle. They put AI lipstick on top of decades of unfixed tech debt and their relationship with their userbase isn't great. Their engineering culture is clearly not healthy. For their size and financial resources, their position in the market right now is very delicate.

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

#506

Post by Blamklmo »

eitally wrote: post #292
conartist6 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is in a pickle. They put AI lipstick on top of decades of unfixed tech debt and their relationship with their userbase isn't great. Their engineering culture is clearly not healthy. For their size and financial resources, their position in the market right now is very delicate.

I disagree. They're the one place that can get away without investing in frontier model research and still win in the enterprise. Google is only place that serves the enterprise (Workspace for productivity, Cloud for IT, Devices for end users) AND conducts meaningful AI research. AWS doesn't (they can sell cloud effectively, but don't have any meaningful in-house AI R&D), Meta doesn't (they don't cover enterprise and…

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

#507

Post by oersted »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #351
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #295

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. " 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.

I will not attempt to make a judgement as to the effects of this, but just so you get an idea of the enormity of the change:

World population:

1960: ~3B

2025: ~8.3B

It was a VERY different world. That growth might not have gone anywhere but it’s not a very significant amount of wealth in today’s terms.

People are very worried about birth rates because for a while it will mean that there will be too few people of working age, which will be a disaster. But big picture, perhaps a correction is overdue, we cannot make people’s lives better if we keep adding people faster than we are growing the world economy.

You always need to put history in the context that the world was pretty empty. Less value was created but there was less competition for resources and it was easier for certain groups to stand out or dominate.

1900: ~1.6B

1750: ~750M

1500: ~450M

1000: ~350M

1: ~250M

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

#509

Post by ThunderSizzle »

zdragnar wrote: post #479
uniq7 wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

It's do-able, but the housing crisis needs to be resolved. People will never own a house if they didn't have skin in the game by 2021. Salaries are not rising to match housing price inflation.

Specifically, both house prices and interest need to go down heavily. Sadly, they used higher interest to try to lower prices, and that didn't really bring prices down.

More supply isn't helping much either, as there is no diversity of supply, and builds aren't undercutting the market yet.

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

#510

Post by johnisgood »

cluckindan wrote: post #420
nairboon wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A generous welfare state (like the Nordics or Switzerland) does not necessarily mean that the middle class is well off with lots of resources for kids. Usually it's the middle class (+upper class) that pays for the generous welfare state, but gets almost none of the benefits. You don't get/need the welfare, if you earn enough to be considered middle class.

If by ”Nordics” you mean the rich oil kingdom of Norway, sure. Everyone else has been cutting back on welfare for the last 20 years.

My former friend in Finland finished med school, "for free", while living in a really nice apartment "for free", receiving ADHD medications "for free", and then went to a business school "for free". He has not worked a single day in his life and he is in his very late 20s.
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