Google boss says AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality' • Hacker News Board

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

#711

Post by Ancapistani » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 10:42 PM UTC

big-and-small wrote: post #698

jcgrillo wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder is Google's AI investment a rational reaction to real competition or something else? My strong suspicion is that it's in fact delusional beliefs held by their management--something to do with "AGI"--that drives this activity, perhaps combined with the effects of information monoculture/social isolation/groupthink. It seems the simpler explanation that a very small group of people are behaving insanely than a…

I'm honestly clueless about reasoning behind bigtech investment into AI. For me it's all just look like another seasonal fad like we had many of during last two decades. Everyone invests into AI because of FOMO. I know the tech itself is real and people do use it. And it will certainly change the world. Yet I doubt even fraction of money burnt on it will ever be recuperated because race to the bottom. But yeah - I'm…

> I'm just random tech guy who has not built a big successful company and honestly have very little clue how to make money this way.

Hey, me too :)

I’ve been at this for a couple of decades, though, and from what I’ve seen the key to building a “successful” company is to ride the wave of popular interest to get funding, build an effective team, and then (and only then) try to find a way to make it profitable enough to exit.

I do think “AI” (really, LLMs, and GPTs in particular) are going to have a transformative impact on a scale and at a rate we’ve never seen before - I just have zero confidence that I can accurately predict what it’s going to look like when the dust settles.

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

#712

Post by Ancapistani » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 10:47 PM UTC

big-and-small wrote: post #468

jcgrillo wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Yes. People do use them and they trust them, unfortunately. Tech nerds know what ChatGPT is, they know llm limits somewhat and they know it's hallucinating. Normal people do not - for them is a magical all knowing oracle.

> People do use them and they trust them, unfortunately.

Yep, and it’s hard to communicate that to them. It’s hard to accurately describe even to someone familiar with the context.

I don’t think “trust” is the right word. Sitting here on 19 Nov 2025, I do in fact trust LLMs to reason. I don’t trust LLMs to be truthful.

If I ask for a fact, I always consider what I’d lose if that fact were wrong.

If I ask for reasoning, I provide the facts that I believe are required to make the decision. I then double-check that reasoning by inverting the prompt and comparing the output in the other direction. For more critical decisions, I make sure I use different models, from different providers, with completely separate context. If I’ve done all that, I think I can honestly say that I trust it.

These days, I would describe it as “I don’t trust AI to distinguish truth”

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

#713

Post by autoexec » Wed, Nov 19, 2025, 10:50 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #656

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…

> More supply isn't helping much either, that's because "more supply" hasn't been anywhere close to enough supply, judging by historical housing needs by population age demographics. More supply is absolutely the key thing missing, but it needs to be a lot more supply. https://www.axios.com/2023/12/16/housing-market-why-homes-ex...

There are millions of vacant homes in the US. There's even a fun little infographic that breaks it down by state https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/vacant-hous...

Not all of those empty houses will be places people want to live in, but I'd bet a fair amount of them are perfectly fine places people would love to call home if they could only afford them.

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

#714

Post by engeljohnb » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 1:17 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #703

engeljohnb wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

You've forgotten electricity, depreciation and the need for the house to be wired up to support all the gear. The figures you're quoting are just the price for a one-off purchase, not the total cost of ownership. > 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? > $180,000 I'm not fami…

This is all real numbers from ny recent job search. It was in a rural area in Indiana, a reportedly low COL state. So anything close to a city would've been way more expensive.

> You've forgotten electricity, depreciation and the need for the house to be wired up to support all the gear. The figures you're quoting are just the price for a one-off purchase, not the total cost of ownership.

Cost of total rewire was quoted $30,000. We didn't end up buying that house, but 30k is honestly a drop in the bucket when you're talking about numbers as huge as 180k. So no, the inclusion of electrical wiring is not some big expense that's making housing unaffordable. And houses had electricity in the mid-to-late 20th century... You know, back when it was reasonable to expect to be able to buy a house on one income without even a college degree.

Our electricity bill is usually ~$200/month. This is not what eats most of our paycheck. Our mortgage is far and away our biggest expense.

If houses still costed 20k (a price that many older folks have told me they bought a house for), even with a full rewire bringing it up to $50k, some kid working at Walmart could own a house. Now both renting and buying are prohibitively expensive, and it has nothing to do with modern amenities.

Housing costs are outrageous, far beyond the rate of inflation. That's why many can barely pay their bills. Not because we have electricity and washing machines and and microwaves.

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

#715

Post by JoshTriplett » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 1:34 AM UTC

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #680

marcosdumay wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm all for using a UBI to stabilize inflation (it's way better than giving the money to rich people like we do today), I don't think you got the sizes of things correctly. Any UBI that avoids people getting poor will have to come mainly form taxes, and will mostly not make any bit of inflation.

Why would it come from taxes, rather than simply from being printed? The typical answer is "printing money causes inflation", but in the context of this feedback loop, it only causes exactly as much inflation as is required to cancel out the deflation caused by automation-induced layoffs and productivity increases. That's the magic of feedback. But if it's because the resulting UBI would still be insufficient for wel…

Ideally, the funding for it would on net come from the substantial economic boost created by UBI. More startups, more innovation, more job mobility, higher salaries (because people have more options), more education and training and skilled labor (because people have more ability to not work)...

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

#716

Post by checker659 » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 2:56 AM UTC

aurareturn wrote: post #408

checker659 wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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

But isn't that their "moat"? If the moat is the source of losses, then yes, they're operating at a huge loss.

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

#717

Post by mitthrowaway2 » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 3:09 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #715

mitthrowaway2 wrote: post #680

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it come from taxes, rather than simply from being printed? The typical answer is "printing money causes inflation", but in the context of this feedback loop, it only causes exactly as much inflation as is required to cancel out the deflation caused by automation-induced layoffs and productivity increases. That's the magic of feedback. But if it's because the resulting UBI would still be insufficient for wel…

Ideally, the funding for it would on net come from the substantial economic boost created by UBI. More startups, more innovation, more job mobility, higher salaries (because people have more options), more education and training and skilled labor (because people have more ability to not work)...

Indeed. I think one underappreciated economic boost would just be the greater economies of scale that so many production lines will be able to operate at when everyone can afford to buy their output!

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

#718

Post by tbrownaw » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 3:42 AM UTC

moduspol wrote: post #655

tbrownaw wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to be saying that a large fraction of poor people are poor only because of bad habits, which they have only because nobody taught them any better?

The alternative view would be that differences of culture and values do not materially impact one's chances of becoming financially successful, right?

"The alternative"... no, one of those proposals being false does not require that the other be true.

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

#719

Post by tbrownaw » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 3:48 AM UTC

philipallstar wrote: post #622

varnaud wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The productive decline of the farms is because of the fast-track land reform. Before 2000-2001, there were no effective national programs to prepare the people to run the farms. The opposition party was gaining ground, and so to stay in power, the ruling party rushed the land reform with no preparation. Not sure how this is a relevant example of a culture that don't value punctuality.

Well, for the reason I said. You've reframed it in a way that removes responsibility from everyone involved, but that's just an example of how to reframe things. It's not actually useful.

> You've reframed it in a way that removes responsibility

No, the comment you're replying to pretty clearly put the responsibility on the party that "rushed the land reform with no preparation".

And also accurately noted that a nation seizing capital and redistributing it to people who don't know how to use it is rather different from what had been the thread topic of personal skills / useful habits being purportedly unattainable by the lower classes without explicit instruction.

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

#720

Post by MontyCarloHall » Thu, Nov 20, 2025, 4:05 AM UTC

mNovak wrote: post #382

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The SPXT [0]/XMAG [1] ETFs are exactly what you're looking for. [0] https://www.proshares.com/our-etfs/strategic/spxt (S&P minus tech stocks) [1] https://www.defianceetfs.com/xmag/ (S&P minus "Magnificent 7")

Am I misreading, or does SPXT still hold >20% GOOG, TSLA, META, AMZN? "Information technology" apparently just means Microsoft and Apple.

It's because none of those companies is considered "Information Technology" according to the official GICS criteria [0] used to classify companies in the index. For instance, Meta and Google are in the "Communications Services" sector; Amazon is in "Consumer Discretionary." There are 69 total companies in the S&P 500 in the "Information Technology" GICS sector [1], and all are excluded from SPXT.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Industry_Classification...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_S%26P_500_companies