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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'

#591

Post by lazide »

IX-103 wrote: post #540
formerly_proven wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's do-able, but the housing crisis needs to be resolved. Why? Almost everywhere a majority of people (and certainly the majority of voters) are already invested in housing and do not want their investment to loose value. > 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. People are more willing…

It doesn't help that new builds seem to focus on the high end for housing (because that is where the profit is). If we keep building more expensive housing it shouldn't be surprising that the average cost of housing increases.

People buying their first house almost never got new housing - ever. They’d buy a starter home, which was older, needed some work, etc.

A big issue here is expectations - people are complaining because they can’t buy their own standalone house in a good neighborhood right next to work - while work is in a high demand, high pay area.

Also, well paid work is centralizing, so so the gradient is getting steeper (or was, pre-remote work).

Guess what, that was never the norm!

But a lot of people did buy in what were at the time low demand, high supply, areas that later became high demand areas! Like early Los Angeles.

Also, everything is getting more expensive relative to ‘hour worked’ because of centralization of capital, and more work force participation.

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

#592

Post by 4ggr0 »

Jensson wrote: post #566
4ggr0 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Men are workers What are women, then? Baby-machines, cooks and cleaners, which I guess you don't see as work? I mean it's not the first time I encounter a dude with the same opinion as you have, but every time I'm surprised by the casual reductionism of our societies. Men make work, Women make baby. Men hard, Women soft. Men strong and powerful. Women weak and emotional.

> Men make work, Women make baby. Men hard, Women soft. Men strong and powerful. Women weak and emotional. On average those are true though, men work more, women take more care of children, men are harder than women, men are stronger than women, and women are more emotional than men. On average. It is fine for women to be manly and men to be feminine, but that doesn't negate the fact that most women are feminine and…

Agree to Disagree, I've spent enough time of my life to discuss this exact topic. Men® are Men® and Women™ are Women™, so be it. On average everyone is exactly the same, as long as you look at the same gender. Wait, what's gend...forget it.

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

#593

Post by kakacik »

engeljohnb wrote: post #560
roenxi wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're happy to do it to 1970s standards, probably most of them. The standard of what an ordinary life looks like has gone up a lot. Plus when only the man worked looking after a home was a full time job - much less in the way of microwaves and washing machines and whatnot. It is worth remembering that in the early 1900s there were a lot of houses that didn't even have electricity. The trends [0] are clear. As so…

This ridiculous lie needs to end. I can get a microwave for ~$60. I can get a decent used cell phone for ~$100. Appliances are a little more expensive, but I can get a washing machine for ~$300, less if I go to facebook marketplace. But in my area, a victorian house that's litterally crumbling with no central cooling and not up-to-code wiring where you can't run a hair dryer and coffee machine at the same time? $180,…

Modern mindsets are. 100 years ago you passed as a good parent if your kids weren't all mental asylum cases due to how their home and role models looked like, you didn't beat them regularly to pulp to vent off frustrations, didn't run away, weren't raging alcoholic and just let them grow up on their own, with some input from mother. Some survived, some didn't.

Try to do it now - what about pregnancy leave? Post-birth leave even in situation with no health complications for mother and child? Creche? Pre-school? Post-school activities? Frequent visits to doctors. And so on and on. When are we supposed to do so with our active even if just normal careers? These are massive costs even in Europe, must be absolutely crushing in US.

People come home at the evening, drained from work. Who can efficiently handle well more than 2 small kids on top of all that and other duties that life daily puts on each of us?

There are studies showing that happiness of parents peaks with 2 kids, and 3rd is already a dive into less happiness for most and it doesn't stop there. So massive financial, time and energy costs to reach even replacement rate are not worth it.

We have 2 kids and somehow managing without nanny or parents nearby. 2 families of peers who have 3 kids are almost impossible to get together with - they are barely managing somehow, most of the time, always late by an hour or two to any meeting. Its really a massive jump in complexity. For more, you properly need a nanny or close family helping out massively, it just doesn't work with 2 people working without hitting burnout or two.

But then its delegated parenting - why even bother with more kids if you don't raise your own kids, donate sperm or an egg if you just need to tackle a checkbox in life. Parenting needs are more than fulfilled with 2 kids. If state needs more it needs to create something better than 2-3 decades of nightmare to raise them for regular folks. State help even in Europe (or lack of it) is not something motivating to have more kids.

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

#594

Post by wongarsu »

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…

In the magical fairy land of Economics 101 a lower headcount reduces costs, and because both their and their competitors' costs are reduced market forces drive the price of their products down by an equivalent amount. That leaves people with more spending power. Which leads to either more consumption of existing products and services, or creation of new types of products or services. Either way making those will employ additional people

Of course in reality this does not work like that for large parts of the economy. But even if it was true companies woulnd't gain anything from AI beyond the ability to be briefly more competitive by being ahead of the curve in AI adoption

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

#596

Post by ceroxylon »

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 top 10% is already propping up half of consumer spending[0]. People will have money to throw around, but the amount of people doing so is shrinking until we figure out a way to balance the income disparity and reverse that trend.

[0]https://www.morningbrew.com/stories/wealthy-americans-accoun...

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

#597

Post by tdeck »

philipallstar wrote: post #495
tdeck wrote: post #394

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? Hey now, Google Plus was more than a decade ago. I didn't like it either, but maybe it's time to move on? I think they learned their lesson.

Stadia was pretty recent, though.

Did Stadia do anything that adversely affected already successful products? I thought it had limited collateral damage.

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

#598

Post by kiba »

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…

The benefits of economic growth flows largely to people who owns land and non-reproducible privilege.

This the real reason why billionaire exists, not because they have a lot of money, though that help, but because they were able to build modern monopolies. The solution is to tax, dismantle, or regulate them, and that includes land.

Georgism and LVT proposals are starting to see a slow resurgence in the political landscape.

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

#599

Post by guerrilla »

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…

> America has low birthrates. Scandinavia (usually considered to have generous welfare states) has low birthrates.

While that's true, things are much worse here than they were in several different dimensions.

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

#600

Post by 1970-01-01 »

donperignon wrote: post #466

Google cannot ignore LLMs, I don’t remember last time I used Google to search instead of using ChatGPT.maybe a combination of factors, one being Google destroying their own search engine in order to milk advertisers money, the other the LLMs being so good at synthesizing information. Anyways either they improve or surf the AI wave, otherwise they are doomed

Why? Google has killed so many, many other working and successful ideas. Why are LLMs to be considered safe from the graveyard? I bet they can ignore them just as soon as they become yesterday's technology.
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