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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'

#611

Post by b112 »

andrepd wrote: post #501
b112 wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Do a search. After, you can select image, shop, other things or web search.

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

#612

Post by diggyhole »

jennyholzer wrote: post #545
jacquesm wrote: post #532

No shit. But it works, if you're stupid. If you're not then you will end up frustrated because it will be as if you have an over-eager trainee that is only slightly less dumb than a box of rocks when it comes to actual thinking but that has near perfect recall about a massive amount of information. A sort of idiot-savant. I gave it a try for a practical problem to see how long it would take to converge on a solution.…

[flagged]

There are billions of us. ;-)

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

#613

Post by techblueberry »

balder1991 wrote: post #387
techblueberry wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to grok this idea of - when does a bubble pop. Like in theory if everyone knows it's a bubble, that should cause it to pop, because people should be making their way to the exists, playing music chairs to get their money out early. But as I try to sort of narrative the ideas behind bubbles and bursts, one thing I realize, is that I think in order for a bubble to burst, people essentially have to want…

You’re over complicating something that is very simple. The stock market reflects people’s sentiments: greed, excitement, FOMO, despair… A bubble doesn’t need a grand catalyst to collapse. It only needs prices to slip below the level where investors collectively decide the downside risk outweighs the upside hope. Once that threshold is crossed, selling accelerates, confidence unravels, and the fall feeds on itself.

You think trying to directly grok the emergent behaviors of a complex system is simpler than a few stories?

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

#614

Post by lelanthran »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #607
lelanthran wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it will pop but not in the way everyone thinks it will pop. Everyone thinks it will pop the way the dotcom bubble popped > There's plenty that's not going to go away / anywhere, but I'm sure lots of startups will fail and close their doors. Just like the dotcom bubble pop - IOW, just like the way everyone thinks it will pop.

I guess I was too young during that bubble to really have it as a point of reference, is there a solid write up of it somewhere?

I dunno; never looked. I worked through that, and when it popped I was, literally overnight, out of a job.

Company owner (startup) met us at the door to the office, said sorry but investors pulled out (or something), gave us all a cheque for the current month salary, and we walked off.

Luckily I got hired at a non-dotcom (not web-based) business after about a month.

In spite of maybe 90% of the dot-coms folding, some still stayed around (Amazon, Google, etc).

When the bubble pops, some hang on.

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

#615

Post by jcgrillo »

an0malous wrote: post #511
captainkrtek wrote: post #419

It feels as if every CEO used ChatGPT once and said “wow this is incredible, pivot hard to make our product use AI”, and that’s about all the thought has matured to.

Maybe even moreso VCs who advised their startups to become AI native products even if customers weren’t asking for or using those features.

The problem is entitled, lazy, sociopathic bastards who think everyone else is an idiot who should be killed and replaced with a robot. They're seeing a thing which confirms these biases, and reacting predictably. Unfortunately people like this are found in higher concentrations the further up the class hierarchy you go.

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

#616

Post by mjcl »

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…

Fun fact: For now, adding a boolean search term like -blahblahblah will skip the AI result and just show web results.

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

#617

Post by DeathArrow »

burnte wrote: post #54
ghostpepper wrote: post #51

Does anyone really think it’s “if” and not “when” ?

Agreed, it's when. They're hoping to stave it off or maybe stretch out the pop into a correction by all hedging together with all these incestuous deals, but you can't hold back the tide. They debuted this tech way too early, promised way too much, and now the market is wary about buying AI products until more noise settles out of the system.

>promised way too much

Oh, you think we won't see AGI in 2026?

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

#618

Post by lagosfractal42 »

DenisM wrote: post #280
tharne wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem becomes that eventually all these people who are laid off are not going to find new roles. > Who is going to be buying the products and services if no-one has money to throw around? I've wondered about this myself. People keep talking about the trades as a good path in the post-AI world, but I just don't see it. If huge swaths of office workers are suddenly and permanently unemployed, who's going to be…

I heard Spain has 20% unemployment among the young and the violence problem did not happen. Didn’t check it though.

Instead of checking and sharing it with us you've decided to pass on the burden of proof to us?

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

#619

Post by frm88 »

NeutralCrane wrote: post #579
frm88 wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That doesn’t say anything about pushing people away from using products with AI though. People are enormously negative about the effects of social media, and yet social media use is incredibly pervasive and sticky.

I thought that the loss of trust would be self-explanatory in that regard? You don't buy stuff you don't trust, yes?

Anyways: https://futurism.com/the-byte/study-consumers-turned-off-pro...

Researchers have found that including the words “artificial intelligence” in product marketing is a major turn-off for consumers, suggesting a growing backlash and disillusionment with the tech — and that startups trying to cram “AI” into their product are actually making a grave error.

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

#620

Post by lotsoweiners »

formerly_proven wrote: post #522
ThunderSizzle wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dive…

> 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…

> If you increase interest, prices will (eventually, slowly, since this is a seller-dominated market) fall to match.

That may “fix” home prices but not the important thing to most, monthly payments.

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