MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA—In an exclusive interview delivered with all the calm detachment of a man explaining that gravity might stop working, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai warned Monday that if the AI bubble bursts, “every company will be affected, including Google.”
Economists, investors, and several dozen crypto influencers immediately fainted.
Pichai, whose company’s value has doubled to $3.5 trillion because everyone agreed to pretend AI is just the internet but louder, acknowledged that the current boom may contain “some irrationality.” He noted this while sitting in a $12 billion facility built solely to train a model that still occasionally insists that Abraham Lincoln invented bubble tea.
“There are cycles,” Pichai explained, describing the AI market as a typical investment arc where enthusiasm spikes, money flies everywhere, companies overshoot, and eventually someone realizes a trillion dollars was spent teaching a computer to draw cats with human teeth.
Meanwhile, analysts have expressed concern about a “complicated web” of $1.4 trillion worth of OpenAI-related deals, saying it’s unclear why investors are committing GDP-level money to a company whose yearly revenue is roughly equal to the average wedding budget.
“It’s normal,” Pichai insisted. “The internet had a bubble too. Look how great that turned out: we now have misinformation, phishing, NFTs, and 400 streaming services. Tremendous progress.”
When pressed about whether Google could actually weather an AI crash, Pichai cited the company’s “full-stack advantage,” meaning it controls everything from the chips to the models to the YouTube videos those models were trained on—even the ones that start with “What’s up, guys?” and end with “Don’t forget to smash that like button.”
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Pichai also addressed AI’s rising energy appetite, which last year alone consumed 1.5% of global electricity, a figure expected to rise dramatically as models continue training themselves on increasingly powerful computers and every teenager on Earth prompts them to create “Drake singing the McDonald’s menu.”
He reassured the public that Google remains committed to net zero by 2030, though he admitted progress is “slipping a little” due to the fact that training Gemini Ultra-Plus-Max requires electrical output comparable to the sun.
“We just need… more energy,” Pichai said. “A lot more energy. Like, ‘new category of physics’ amounts.”
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On the subject of employment, Pichai described AI as “the most profound technology humankind has ever worked on,” adding that it will cause “societal disruptions” and “transition certain jobs”—which is CEO-speak for several industries will explode but we’ll release a helpful blog post about it.
He clarified:
“All professions will still exist—teachers, doctors, engineers. They just might be… different. And by different, I mean replaced by a glowing interface that sounds suspiciously like Scarlett Johansson.”
He ended with advice for workers worldwide:
“Those who adapt and use these tools will do better.”
Observers noted the resemblance to historic motivational slogans like “Learn to code,” “Embrace automation,” and “Please stop panicking while we scale our robot division.”
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Pichai confirmed Google’s plan to invest £5 billion in the UK, calling it “a commitment” to Britain’s tech ambitions and “a strategic decision” based entirely on the country’s ability to provide tea during extremely tense infrastructure meetings.
He even teased training Google’s models in the UK, a move that instantly shot Britain from #27 to #3 on a list compiled by British cabinet ministers.
As the interview wrapped, Pichai stressed that while the AI bubble may or may not burst, society should remain calm.
Experts noted this was the same tone Alan Greenspan used during the 1996 warning about “irrational exuberance,” which famously preceded several years of everyone absolutely losing their minds.
At press time, markets had rallied anyway after a rumor spread that Gemini was about to release a beta feature allowing users to generate realistic images of dogs wearing tiny business suits.