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" and wasn't clear how Google could get that value out in a reasonable timeframe." Tell us, how the valuation can be justified in terms of dollars. Which 'AI'

" and wasn't clear how Google could get that value out in a reasonable timeframe." Tell us, how the valuation can be justified in terms of dollars. Which 'AI' products are useful in the portfolio today, that makes products useful to you and I, that are derived from DeepMind? The fact is - 'AI' is really short-hand for Multi-layer Neural nets - and they are applying those things in some very specific areas such as voice recognition and image recognition. I think there will be many more places where we can do this - but I think it's going to be a very long time before we get to 'true AI'.

AJ007 10y ago
https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-data-centre-cooling-bill-40/ https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-data-ce...
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  Admittedly, that's pretty 'cool' (pun intended) but not $400M kill. I think we still have a long way to go to see AI reap direct rewards for consumers. Payoffs have been minimal/incremental for now.
  - jsmthrowaway 10y ago
    Do you have any idea how much it costs to cool a datacenter?
    - jomamaxx 10y ago
      Not $400 Million dollars.
danblick 10y ago
I'm not sure if that is the right metric for research groups. If someone said "the startup has a promising cure for cancer in trials" would you ask if it had produced revenue yet?
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "the startup has a promising cure for cancer in trials" A) First, I would ask what they likelihood they have in making through trials, what is the real 'cure rate', what is the operational cost of the therapy, what kind of cancer it cures (obscure?). B) They are not curing cancer. They have some intangible AI technology that doesn't necessarily or may not ever do anything. As far as 'cutting the cooling bills on infrastructure' - there's no reason to think that that was an issue they were looking at solving, and used the tech as an 'example case' - but that some other, normal technology couldn't have solved th e problem just as well. B) To confirm the ridiculous hype around this etheric technology, somebody, here on HN is equating this 'black box' to 'curing cancer'. Please.
vessenes 10y ago
Just the PR value from Alphago is probably worth more than $400mm. Traditionally google has significantly delayed announcements of very interesting tech for years; essentially waiting until they had replaced an entire technology before announcing the old one. It seems kind of unlikely that Google is doing that in this case, (if so, the rev rate on new AI tech is insane, and, well, I'm waiting for our AI overlords politely), but I would be very surprised if they were pushing out news about their most bleeding-edge tech.
- jomamaxx 10y ago
  "Just the PR value from Alphago is probably worth more than $400mm. " No - it's definitely not. Go and walk down the street in any part of the world and ask how many people know about this acquisition? Nobody will. Even the vast majority of technical people will have never heard of this acquisition. There is no 'PR' at all, really, from this acquisition. I don't think any acquisition in history was worth it's 'PR' value. Unless there is mass market news on it, in which households are getting to know about it, then possibly, but even then, I can't think of a single acquisition that was worth it. Zuckerberg bought some tech that enables you to wear 'masks' on your face while on video - when he made the announcement, it was fun (he was wearing and Iron Man mask) - and it got picked up globally. If they paid less than $2M for that company, maybe it was worth it for the 'PR value'. But even then it's shaky.

AJ007 10y ago

https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-data-centre-cooling-bill-40/ https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-data-ce...

jomamaxx 10y ago
Admittedly, that's pretty 'cool' (pun intended) but not $400M kill. I think we still have a long way to go to see AI reap direct rewards for consumers. Payoffs have been minimal/incremental for now.
- jsmthrowaway 10y ago
  Do you have any idea how much it costs to cool a datacenter?
  - jomamaxx 10y ago
    Not $400 Million dollars.

danblick 10y ago

I'm not sure if that is the right metric for research groups. If someone said "the startup has a promising cure for cancer in trials" would you ask if it had produced revenue yet?

jomamaxx 10y ago
"the startup has a promising cure for cancer in trials" A) First, I would ask what they likelihood they have in making through trials, what is the real 'cure rate', what is the operational cost of the therapy, what kind of cancer it cures (obscure?). B) They are not curing cancer. They have some intangible AI technology that doesn't necessarily or may not ever do anything. As far as 'cutting the cooling bills on infrastructure' - there's no reason to think that that was an issue they were looking at solving, and used the tech as an 'example case' - but that some other, normal technology couldn't have solved th e problem just as well. B) To confirm the ridiculous hype around this etheric technology, somebody, here on HN is equating this 'black box' to 'curing cancer'. Please.

vessenes 10y ago

Just the PR value from Alphago is probably worth more than $400mm. Traditionally google has significantly delayed announcements of very interesting tech for years; essentially waiting until they had replaced an entire technology before announcing the old one. It seems kind of unlikely that Google is doing that in this case, (if so, the rev rate on new AI tech is insane, and, well, I'm waiting for our AI overlords politely), but I would be very surprised if they were pushing out news about their most bleeding-edge tech.

jomamaxx 10y ago
"Just the PR value from Alphago is probably worth more than $400mm. " No - it's definitely not. Go and walk down the street in any part of the world and ask how many people know about this acquisition? Nobody will. Even the vast majority of technical people will have never heard of this acquisition. There is no 'PR' at all, really, from this acquisition. I don't think any acquisition in history was worth it's 'PR' value. Unless there is mass market news on it, in which households are getting to know about it, then possibly, but even then, I can't think of a single acquisition that was worth it. Zuckerberg bought some tech that enables you to wear 'masks' on your face while on video - when he made the announcement, it was fun (he was wearing and Iron Man mask) - and it got picked up globally. If they paid less than $2M for that company, maybe it was worth it for the 'PR value'. But even then it's shaky.