I think six to twelve months ago I cursed someone out on this forum for asking if investing in Google et. al. was a good idea, for the same reason you liquidated your position.
Nowadays my feelings are a little more mixed. I think if there are exist any “ethically safe” AI investments to be had, they’d plausibly be in the
very largest technology companies that are not really constrained by cash. It’s not clear to me mechanically how buying or holding Google’s stock leads to faster AI research; Google is probably already spending as much as it can effectively spend, and is bottlenecked more on being able to e.g. identify talent and pick good research directions.
Which is not to say that it wouldn’t be bad. But certainly it would be much worse to invest in private AI companies directly.
I think six to twelve months ago I cursed someone out on this forum for asking if investing in Google et. al. was a good idea, for the same reason you liquidated your position.
Nowadays my feelings are a little more mixed. I think if there are exist any “ethically safe” AI investments to be had, they’d plausibly be in the very largest technology companies that are not really constrained by cash. It’s not clear to me mechanically how buying or holding Google’s stock leads to faster AI research; Google is probably already spending as much as it can effectively spend, and is bottlenecked more on being able to e.g. identify talent and pick good research directions.
Which is not to say that it wouldn’t be bad. But certainly it would be much worse to invest in private AI companies directly.