Google’s Sundar Pichai warns of “irrationality” in trillion-dollar AI investment boom (arstechnica.com)

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told the BBC that AI investment is in an “extraordinary” but potentially “irrational” phase, warning the sector could “overshoot” much like the late-1990s Internet boom. His comments come as Alphabet’s market value has roughly doubled in seven months to about $3.5 trillion, and amid scrutiny of massive AI commitments — most notably OpenAI’s reported $1.4 trillion infrastructure spending plan over eight years versus an expected ~$13 billion in revenue this year. Pichai framed AI as profoundly transformative but cautioned that excess capital can produce bubbles, bankruptcies and job losses even when the underlying technology endures. For the AI/ML community, the message matters: hyper‑scale spending on compute, data centers and model training can accelerate progress but also create distorted incentives, unsustainable valuations, and tougher scrutiny from investors and regulators. Practically, an “overshoot” could mean consolidation of compute/resources among the largest players, slowed funding for smaller labs and startups, sharper ROI pressure on productization of models, and greater focus on cost‑efficient architectures and inference optimization. The debate is heightened by industry voices — including OpenAI’s Sam Altman acknowledging investor overexcitement and critics like Ed Zitron calling out excessive investment — signaling a potential market correction that could reshape priorities in research, deployment and infrastructure.