Google’s London-based artificial intelligence laboratory has used up a further £1.6 billion in capital, underlining the cost of conducting advanced research.
Deepmind made losses of £477 million last year and its Dublin-based parent waived a £1.1 billion loan to the company.
Because of course private, profit seeking companies just never will invest for the long term, do real research. Therefore we should all pay more tax so government can do it.
Perhaps Google is just as vulnerable to Pile O’ Money shenanigans as government is.
You don’t need billions of pounds. You need good ideas. Paying people billions won’t transform them into people who have good ideas.
The Times journalists need a course in accounting. If a parent company writes off a loan to a subsidiary, that is a loss in the parent, a gain in the sub and a nothing on consolidation. They actually have just the 477m loss, but the fact they have written off a 1.1 billion loan implies they expect to lose a lot more.
Some research is expensive, not just “good ideas” Gamecock.
Setting up systems to see if they work in the real world. These days they test nuclear weapons virtually, and it still costs big time — big computers, lots of programmers etc.
Paying more than your competitors, so you get the best staff is also required in Google’s environment.
“Setting up systems to see if they work in the real world.”
First, you need ideas.
Second, and sometimes more difficult, is finding people who can construct a proper test.
Thirdly, modern day computer idiots practice brute force programming. What they lack in inspiration for setting up proper tests, they try to power their way through it with supercomputers.
HadCRUT requesting bigger computers is a sign they don’t know what they are doing.