Google To Spend $75 Billion on AI Push

Google parent Alphabet plans to spend $75 billion on capital expenditures in 2025, up from $52.5 billion last year, as it races to compete with Microsoft and Meta in AI infrastructure. CNBC: On its earnings call, Alphabet said it expects $16 billion to $18 billion of those expenses to come in the first quarter. Overall, the expenditures will go toward "technical infrastructure, primarily for servers, followed by data centers and networking," finance chief Anat Ashkenazi said.

[...] Alphabet and its megacap tech rivals are rushing to build out their data centers with next-generation AI infrastructure, packed with Nvidia's graphics processing units, or GPUs. Last month, Meta said it plans to invest $60 billion to $65 billion this year as part of its AI push. Microsoft has committed to $80 billion in AI-related capital expenditures in its current fiscal year.

Hopefully they will...

[MpVpRb]

...put it into useful projects like Deep Mind and Alpha Fold.
We don't need consumer facing AI that does what people can already do.
We don't need AI that makes music, we have musicians.
We don't need AI that can plan a vacation, people already know how to do that.
Same with almost all of the proposed use cases aimed at the general public.
We need AI that's focused on solving previously intractable problems in science, engineering, medicine, economics, etc.
We need AI that allows us to do things that were impossible, not duplicate what's already possible

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[GoTeam]

We need AI that allows us to do things that were impossible, not duplicate what's already possible

Exactly! I need an AI that can predict the outcome of sporting events with enough accuracy to make me rich!

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[Fly Swatter]

Bad news, the sports betting places are already doing that to figure out how to make you place bad bets.

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[BishopBerkeley]

Sad part is that AI that smart is also smart enough to drive a hard bargain and to take a huge cut of your winnings. Or maybe even take the winnings outright.

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[GoTeam]

Sad part is that AI that smart is also smart enough to drive a hard bargain and to take a huge cut of your winnings. Or maybe even take the winnings outright.

The bastards are always one step ahead. I guess I should go back to studying Superman III for a better scheme...

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[BishopBerkeley]

They are very goal oriented. Set their goals to increase "engagement" and destroy the social structure like FB did. Set their goals on profits, and, man, they just might destroy humanity to own everything.

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[backslashdot]

Umm, why not work on the economic system that requires manual labor and free up people for other things? If you could have a computer do my job while I get a portion of it's economic output (salary) .. then I could pursue other things like being there for family, vacations, learning history and other BS subjects, broaden my STEM knowledge, etc. In other words, tax the economic output and provide every citizen with some income. Many oil rich countries do that. Heck Alaska does that (ok, the check was like a

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[backslashdot]

Note: Can anyone is Alaska confirm the amount they get paid? Is it per family, or per individual?

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[BeepBoopBeep]

Alaska: If they are native, it follows the negotiations their tribe worked out with the US governement in return for taking their land. Some northern parts of Alaska get $250k for family of 4. Sounds like alot, but its not, Alaska is an island, its expensive to ship things there. Its a shit hole in Alaska. Most natives that get paid dont bother to work. The natives in southern states also have similar negotations, they get ALOT of free money, college, house, etc. Most dont bother to work for obvious r

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[redmid17]

Alaska is an island in the literal sense or figurative sense?

Because neither are true but the general concept of things being harder to ship to alaska and therefore more expensive is absolutely true

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[CallMeTim]

I'm guessing you've never been to Alaska. The payment being referred to is 1-2k per individual (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Permanent_Fund). There are benefits for natives in addition to that, but considering your racist exaggerations, I'm sure you have no idea what you're talking about.

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[BeepBoopBeep]

ummm, I know a native american, one almost became my uncle ... do you? it has nothing to do with Alaska, its US wide.

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[CallMeTim]

1-2k per individual: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

Hey if I own the AI

[rsilvergun]

Why should you get a cut of it? It's my stuff so it's my money. I worked hard for it right? What right do you have to it? It's like they say the problem with socialism is sooner or later you run out of other people's money.

All of that is complete bullshit but it's hard to answer it. It's a string of thought terminating cliches. With a mix of DARVO. You can explain why it's wrong but like Ronald Reagan said if you're explaining you're losing.

Here in America 7 million people tried to vote last year an

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[nightflameauto]

Umm, why not work on the economic system that requires manual labor and free up people for other things? If you could have a computer do my job while I get a portion of it's economic output (salary) .. then I could pursue other things like being there for family, vacations, learning history and other BS subjects, broaden my STEM knowledge, etc. In other words, tax the economic output and provide every citizen with some income. Many oil rich countries do that. Heck Alaska does that (ok, the check was like a measly $3000 back in 2022, but still .. it had the right idea).

We don't need oil for that, for a minimum basic income .. we can tax or own dividend stake in factory economic output. If you want more than basic income (I reckon most people would) then sell your own products, start your own factory, or invest in a company that is making good stuff.

With robots the cost of everything will reduce. Like you'd be able to buy a house for cheap. It may be situated out in the boonies, but then cars will be electric and solar .. which will also be cheap. It'll be like owning a business or owning a slave except there's no moral quandary and you aren't hurting anyone.

If you say work is necessary for humans then I'd rather sit in a gym and watch Netflix. You can't convince me that human beings wasting their lives sorting packages in a warehouse is good for their soul.

That's rather utopian of you. Perhaps you belong in another timeline. In this one, automation of any kind is used to funnel more profit to the owners, and everyone put out of work should die, or at the very least, become homeless somewhere out of sight of the owners. This is why no one is celebrating the coming Ai/ Automation takeover. Because no one with the power to do so wants to feed the success down to the little guys, the people just living their lives. They want to reap the reward at the top, and eve

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[Growlley]

We don't need buggy whip makers we already have ... oh wait.

It's going to replace white collar workers

[rsilvergun]

The reason you're seeing literally trillions of dollars put to AI is because it has the possibility to replace trillions of dollars of payroll. AKA your salary and mine.

So no you're not going to get AI focused on solving the problems in your life. Because our entire system is built not to solve the problems in your life but to enrich a tiny minority that we all worship like the divine kings of old. A return to feudalism. What the cool kids call techno feudalism.

We can change that but it will require drastic changes to how our civilization is organized and there's a thing called 4 to 14.

4 to 14 is the idea that anything you are taught during the ages of 4 to 14 gets embedded into your brain without the ability to question it. Basically between those ages you have the ability to learn but you don't have the ability to critically evaluate the information you're learning. It's something religious organizations and cults noticed so if you Google the phrase that's mostly what you'll find.

But there's a lot more than cults using the concept. And we all have bad ideas that we were taught before we were able to understand that they were bad and now we can't let them go.

This is what creates conservatives. Not the right wing but actual conservatives. There is a difference.

It doesn't help that we refuse to set any boundaries on how far people can fall in society. So any major changes have the risk of leaving some people behind. Drastically. But again that's because of 4 to 14 thinking.

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[ChatHuant]

We need AI that allows us to do things that were impossible, not duplicate what's already possible

No, I don't think that's correct. We need AI that allows us to do easily and cheaply things that were difficult and expensive and only accessible to specialists or to the rich people who could afford to pay the specialists.

To take your example:

We don't need AI that makes music, we have musicians.

Someone like me, who has the musical talent of an old boot, still needs a piece of music from time to time - for example, to accompany my vacation photos slide show, or as background music for a presentation at my hobby group. Those are simple, personal projects, and

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[Gilmoure]

Maybe it's just a massive wealth transfer from the global stock markets to some island bunker?

What a waste

[RitchCraft]

What a waste of money, resources, and talent. AI is the new BS.

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[bill_mcgonigle]

It does help people who are not proficient with search engines. At what cost is the question.

They can buy so many Deep Seek licenses with $75B though.

Well it will have at least one good use

[Growlley]

They can always play doom on it,

Is it just me?

[Gilmoure]

or is this like the Underpants Gnomes and we're about to get to:

Step 2. ???

What is the Business Model??

[AndrewZX]

$75 BILLION dollars. What is the business model? How the F does Google expect to make money on AI that is crap? Where do they spell out the products they will sell? Now may be a good time to dump Google stock and think about shorting it.

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[ebunga]

There is no business plan. They've never had a business plan. Their initial success was being slightly better than the competition just when everyone was settling on the winners and losers of the dotcom era. A short while later they managed to make online ads suck slightly less for a little while before that went the full route of enshittification. Outside of YouTube somehow still existing through inertia, Google hasn't had a success of any sort in at least five years. They are a failed company.

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[Local ID10T]

Part of the capacity will be used internally, most will be sold to others who want to do AI work in Google's cloud.

Most of Alphabet's profit comes from advertising sales (88 B profit in Q3 2024), but the cloud services are growing (4 B profit in Q3 2024). Everything else they do is a cost.

They are investing in a part of their business that is growing (cloud services). It may take a long time to earn back the 75B as the cloud services are only profiting 4B a quarter... but if there is demand for AI cloud c

Getting it wrong is baked in

[timeOday]

I've become increasingly aware and annoyed lately of how self-serving google has become. The ENTIRE first page of search results is ads. Google.com/shopping hardly even uses your search terms to decide what ads to show.

The problem isn't the technology. The problem is google doesn't have much competition so they have resorted to not caring what customers want. Tech won't solve that.