In comments echoing those made by US Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan in 1996, warning of "irrational exuberance" in the market well ahead of the dotcom crash, Mr Pichai said the industry can "overshoot" in investment cycles like this.
"We can look back at the internet right now. There was clearly a lot of excess investment, but none of us would question whether the internet was profound," he said.
In the middle part of the interview he muses about the huge energy costs of AI, only to conclude that new energy sources are going to be necessary to avoid constraining the economy. The environmental cost seems already to have been written off as a concern there. No doubt that will be taken care of automagically by the power of The Singularity.
As for the jobs thing:
AI will also affect work as we know it, Mr Pichai said, calling it "the most profound technology" humankind had worked on.
"We will have to work through societal disruptions," he said, adding that it would also "create new opportunities".
"It will evolve and transition certain jobs, and people will need to adapt," he said. Those who do adapt to AI "will do better".
So if it works it's going to suck up tons of energy and put people out of jobs, and the irrationality surrounding its growing pains will crash economies and ruin small investors and a lot of the less secure AI firms.
And once the survivors finally get AI off the ground we can look forward to them enshitifying it as thoroughly as they have the internet, which was probably at its best in the brief moment just before every idiot with an MBA and an in with a venture capitalist kicked off the boom with a fuzzy business plan and a dream of early retirement.
I've been reading about this for a little while. I already moved a good chunk of my retirement holdings from stock funds to bond and money-market funds. I was already up well enough and am getting closer to retirement, so it wasn't too radical a step.
Even without the bubble speculation, the indices were staring to make my spidey senses tingle. The AI-bubble stuff I've been reading just pushed me out of complacency.
Brighter minds than mine will surely chime in to explain why this is not a matter of concern.
I think what you mean is, more credulous minds than yours.
At current valuations AI would have to bring in $400 per year per US resident for the AI companies to produce a decent return on investment. Which isn't happening in the foreseeable future.
"Bubble" is exactly what we're looking at. The question is when, not whether, it will pop. And how big an impact that will have on the economy overall. Personally, I'm going nowhere near stock in any company which is big into AI. But then, I've been avoiding bitcoins like the plague, too.
Carole Cadwalladr has been on this for a while, and posted about Thiel and Nvidia yesterday. Many of her informant techbros are seriously sounding the alarm about the imminent pop....
Also treating this as an open thread: this is an piece from today's NYT, about the Tucker Carlson - Nick Fuentes interview and more importantly the Heritage Foundation's reaction, and on to Vance's response to so much of what has been happening around the tolerance of Nazi/fascist opinion among the right:
The Larry Summers thing is interesting. First, he can go piss up a rope for all I care (or, as my mother used to say, "sh*t in his hat"). I have no interest in defending him. That said, in his communications with Epstein after Epstein's conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, he told Epstein he didn't want to be within a million miles of Donald Trump.
Because Summers worked for two Democratic presidents, was president of Harvard, and was a fellow at the Center for American Progress, he's easily associated with Democrats and "The Left." That likely will make him a target for Trump, the GOP, and MAGA.
The wrinkle is that he preferred associating with a known pedophile than with Donald Trump. That's not exactly flattering.
Maybe she could be put on the next case:
According to the administration the rise in beef prices is due to illegal immigrants smuggling herds of sicks cows into the US. Somone has to go to the bottom of that (all the BS should make enough of a stink to make it easy).
I understand that this is the first time the assigned DOJ attorney has ever done a prosecution.
Well, as I understand it, the reason she got assigned is that DOJ professionals looked at the case and concluded that there was nothing to it. So they declined to prosecute. The Attorney General had to find someone inexperienced enough (or foolish enough) to try to take the case forward.
This from the magistrate judge’s findings in the Comey case. If it weren’t a Trump-directed prosecution, my gob would be comprehensively smacked.
I understand that this is the first time the assigned DOJ attorney has ever done a prosecution. Her previous experience appears to have been as a real estate lawyer who did work for Trump previously. What would be more surprising would be if she was wonderfully competent and didn't make any procedural errors.
Treating this as an open thread, because there always is one:
"the Court is finding that the government’s actions in this case – whether purposeful, reckless, or negligent – raise genuine issues of misconduct, are inextricably linked to the government’s grand jury presentation, and deserve to be fully explored by the defense."
This from the magistrate judge's findings in the Comey case. If it weren't a Trump-directed prosecution, my gob would be comprehensively smacked.
Whether or when that is Bondi's response depends on whether the Senate gets around to a vote on the resolution. Not to mention if they make some kind of amendment which then requires it go back to the House for concurrence. Lots of ways to slow walk the whole thing.
But yeah, once the whole thing is done, Bondi can claim "ongoing investigations." Put one extremely junior and ultra-MAGATrumpist staffer to work reading thru the whole file. Could easily be "on-going" for years.
I see this morning that Trump is now encouraging the House to vote to release the Epstein files. I've gotten really paranoid over the last 10 months, so I simply assume that's posturing, and Pam Bondi has already told him that her response will be, "There's an ongoing investigation and the DOJ never releases evidence in an ongoing investigation, not even to Congress."
I posted this on People and Politics, which might now be a kind of defunct thread. But since lj has luckily now posted a thread specifically about the Epstein email releases, I am copying it here. Now that lj has helpfully given us the link, there may be other worthwhile finds.
I guess this is the closest thing we have to an open thread at the moment? I find it hard to know for sure. Anyway, I just wanted to say that on the Epstein emails release, I think the most interesting thing so far is the correspondence between Bannon and Epstein. It’s an astonishing illustration of moral bankruptcy on Bannon’s part, and to the extent that he is such an integral part of MAGA world I do think it really keeps the heat on.
The Axios piece is a bit strange, it suggests that Klein was a driver in having the Democrats not vote for the budget, but fails to mention that it looks like he was left high and dry when the 8 senators did the deal.
Klein is certainly stretching for the middle of the road credibility, he had on Ben Shapiro immediately after the Charlie Kirk assassination, which is a bit like interviewing a stagehand who built the sets about how a play went down.
He also had Amit Segal on about the I/P conflict and prefaced the interview with basically a trigger warning about the views, saying that Segal is 'far to the right' of Klein.
You could ask me what do I expect Klein to do, well, that's his choice, but if it were me, I wouldn't want to cosplay Gen Z David Broder.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Pop!”
From the BBC: Google boss says trillion-dollar AI investment boom has 'elements of irrationality'
In the middle part of the interview he muses about the huge energy costs of AI, only to conclude that new energy sources are going to be necessary to avoid constraining the economy. The environmental cost seems already to have been written off as a concern there. No doubt that will be taken care of automagically by the power of The Singularity.
As for the jobs thing:
So if it works it's going to suck up tons of energy and put people out of jobs, and the irrationality surrounding its growing pains will crash economies and ruin small investors and a lot of the less secure AI firms.
And once the survivors finally get AI off the ground we can look forward to them enshitifying it as thoroughly as they have the internet, which was probably at its best in the brief moment just before every idiot with an MBA and an in with a venture capitalist kicked off the boom with a fuzzy business plan and a dream of early retirement.
Lovely.
On “Your quest begins now!”
How enlightening, Charles. Sheesh...
On “Pop!”
I've been reading about this for a little while. I already moved a good chunk of my retirement holdings from stock funds to bond and money-market funds. I was already up well enough and am getting closer to retirement, so it wasn't too radical a step.
Even without the bubble speculation, the indices were staring to make my spidey senses tingle. The AI-bubble stuff I've been reading just pushed me out of complacency.
On “Your quest begins now!”
The wrinkle is that he preferred associating with a known pedophile than with Donald Trump. That’s not exactly flattering.
To be perdatic, Epstein wasn't a pedophile. His thing was underage teenage females, not preteen females.
On “Pop!”
Brighter minds than mine will surely chime in to explain why this is not a matter of concern.
I think what you mean is, more credulous minds than yours.
At current valuations AI would have to bring in $400 per year per US resident for the AI companies to produce a decent return on investment. Which isn't happening in the foreseeable future.
"Bubble" is exactly what we're looking at. The question is when, not whether, it will pop. And how big an impact that will have on the economy overall. Personally, I'm going nowhere near stock in any company which is big into AI. But then, I've been avoiding bitcoins like the plague, too.
"
Carole Cadwalladr has been on this for a while, and posted about Thiel and Nvidia yesterday. Many of her informant techbros are seriously sounding the alarm about the imminent pop....
On “Your quest begins now!”
Also treating this as an open thread: this is an piece from today's NYT, about the Tucker Carlson - Nick Fuentes interview and more importantly the Heritage Foundation's reaction, and on to Vance's response to so much of what has been happening around the tolerance of Nazi/fascist opinion among the right:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/18/opinion/tucker-carlson-trump-groypers-fuentes.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2E8.dcFB.iS10t8lip43s&smid=url-share
On “Stewart Lee”
i dig it.
he's very clever.
On “Your quest begins now!”
The Larry Summers thing is interesting. First, he can go piss up a rope for all I care (or, as my mother used to say, "sh*t in his hat"). I have no interest in defending him. That said, in his communications with Epstein after Epstein's conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, he told Epstein he didn't want to be within a million miles of Donald Trump.
Because Summers worked for two Democratic presidents, was president of Harvard, and was a fellow at the Center for American Progress, he's easily associated with Democrats and "The Left." That likely will make him a target for Trump, the GOP, and MAGA.
The wrinkle is that he preferred associating with a known pedophile than with Donald Trump. That's not exactly flattering.
"
Maybe she could be put on the next case:
According to the administration the rise in beef prices is due to illegal immigrants smuggling herds of sicks cows into the US. Somone has to go to the bottom of that (all the BS should make enough of a stink to make it easy).
On “Weekend Music Thread #06 Kile Smith”
Thank you for sharing your friend. A life well lived--and still being lived.
On “Your quest begins now!”
Her previous experience appears to have been as a real estate lawyer who did work for Trump previously.
Well, sure, but she looked really good doing it. That's the most important thing.
"
I understand that this is the first time the assigned DOJ attorney has ever done a prosecution.
Well, as I understand it, the reason she got assigned is that DOJ professionals looked at the case and concluded that there was nothing to it. So they declined to prosecute. The Attorney General had to find someone inexperienced enough (or foolish enough) to try to take the case forward.
On “Spelunking for fun and profit”
LJ channeling Atrios, interesting!
lol. I am large, I contain multitudes.
On “People and poliltics”
Unintended post.
On “Your quest begins now!”
This from the magistrate judge’s findings in the Comey case. If it weren’t a Trump-directed prosecution, my gob would be comprehensively smacked.
I understand that this is the first time the assigned DOJ attorney has ever done a prosecution. Her previous experience appears to have been as a real estate lawyer who did work for Trump previously. What would be more surprising would be if she was wonderfully competent and didn't make any procedural errors.
"
Treating this as an open thread, because there always is one:
"the Court is finding that the government’s actions in this case – whether purposeful, reckless, or negligent – raise genuine issues of misconduct, are inextricably linked to the government’s grand jury presentation, and deserve to be fully explored by the defense."
This from the magistrate judge's findings in the Comey case. If it weren't a Trump-directed prosecution, my gob would be comprehensively smacked.
"
every PDF i open is some kind of encyclopedic article with short bios of rich and powerful people.
"
Is the client list no longer on Pam Bondi's desk? Or was it never there, which is why she never actually said it was (wink, wink)?
Is it still a Democratic hoax? Or does it incriminate a slew of prominent Democrats and their donors? What if it it's BOTH? That would be wild!
"
Does this mean Marjorie Taylor Greene is no longer a traitor? And is Cambodia no longer at war with Albania?
Any explanation which depends on Trump's having a cunning plan is unlikely to be right, unless he's hired Baldrick as his latest advisor.
"
Whether or when that is Bondi's response depends on whether the Senate gets around to a vote on the resolution. Not to mention if they make some kind of amendment which then requires it go back to the House for concurrence. Lots of ways to slow walk the whole thing.
But yeah, once the whole thing is done, Bondi can claim "ongoing investigations." Put one extremely junior and ultra-
MAGATrumpist staffer to work reading thru the whole file. Could easily be "on-going" for years."
I see this morning that Trump is now encouraging the House to vote to release the Epstein files. I've gotten really paranoid over the last 10 months, so I simply assume that's posturing, and Pam Bondi has already told him that her response will be, "There's an ongoing investigation and the DOJ never releases evidence in an ongoing investigation, not even to Congress."
"
I posted this on People and Politics, which might now be a kind of defunct thread. But since lj has luckily now posted a thread specifically about the Epstein email releases, I am copying it here. Now that lj has helpfully given us the link, there may be other worthwhile finds.
I guess this is the closest thing we have to an open thread at the moment? I find it hard to know for sure.
Anyway, I just wanted to say that on the Epstein emails release, I think the most interesting thing so far is the correspondence between Bannon and Epstein. It’s an astonishing illustration of moral bankruptcy on Bannon’s part, and to the extent that he is such an integral part of MAGA world I do think it really keeps the heat on.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/15/steve-bannon-jeffrey-epstein-text-messages-publicity
On “Spelunking for fun and profit”
LJ channeling Atrios, interesting!
"
The Axios piece is a bit strange, it suggests that Klein was a driver in having the Democrats not vote for the budget, but fails to mention that it looks like he was left high and dry when the 8 senators did the deal.
Klein is certainly stretching for the middle of the road credibility, he had on Ben Shapiro immediately after the Charlie Kirk assassination, which is a bit like interviewing a stagehand who built the sets about how a play went down.
He also had Amit Segal on about the I/P conflict and prefaced the interview with basically a trigger warning about the views, saying that Segal is 'far to the right' of Klein.
You could ask me what do I expect Klein to do, well, that's his choice, but if it were me, I wouldn't want to cosplay Gen Z David Broder.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.