AI’s finally expensive enough to make Wall Street nervous

Working hard, or bear-ly working? | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images It's earnings season, and investors got an unpleasant surprise from Google: an increase on its spending estimate, to as much as $205 billion - from the last quarter's projection of up to $190 billion.

Even the lower end of Google's new projected range - $195 billion - is much more than the company had previously forecast as its top end spending. Now, look, I recognize that there's an impulse to say things like "What's $15 billion between friends?