In a refreshingly honest moment rarely seen outside confession booths and late-night group chats, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has informed the world that if the artificial intelligence bubble bursts, absolutely nobody gets a golden parachute. Not even the company that literally prints money through targeted ads for toenail fungus cream.
Speaking to the BBC from the safety of Google’s California campus – a location presumably chosen for its proximity to emergency exits – Pichai described the current AI frenzy as an “extraordinary moment” before immediately undercutting himself with the phrase “elements of irrationality.”
Financial historians nodded solemnly, recognizing the exact same sentence Alan Greenspan used right before pets.com became a cautionary tale.
When pressed on whether Google could simply sidestep any oncoming disaster with its trademark fleet of self-driving money printers, Pichai offered the corporate equivalent of a nervous laugh. “I think no company is going to be immune, including us,” he said, somehow managing to sound both calm and like a man calculating how many hoodies equal one month of canned beans.
Alphabet shares have rocketed 46 percent this year as investors apparently decided betting against ChatGPT is like betting against a robot that does your homework and judges your life choices. The surge has left analysts debating whether current valuations are sustainable or merely performance art.
Meanwhile in Britain, policymakers have spent months begging tech giants to notice them. Google obliged in September with a £5 billion pledge that felt suspiciously like tossing a participation ribbon to a country desperate to be the world’s third AI superpower.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer celebrated by announcing British models would soon be trained locally, presumably on a diet of tea, sarcasm, and passive-aggressive queueing algorithms.
Pichai also delivered the least surprising climate update of 2025: Google’s net-zero targets are being gently nudged into the future because training AI models apparently requires enough electricity to power several small nations or one Las Vegas weekend. The company’s data centers now consume more power than some countries that actually appear on maps.
DeepMind, Google’s London-based AI laboratory that sounds like a Bond villain’s side project, will expand operations in the UK. British officials immediately began measuring the lab for a cape.
Investors appeared unfazed by the bubble chatter, continuing to pour money into anything that autocorrects to “blockchain” or ends with “.ai.” When reached for comment, one hedge-fund manager was last seen trying to tokenize his emotional support hamster.
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