大型科技公司在人工智能領域的開支(再次)加速（2/2）

Recently the New York Times reported the following:

(Source: The NYT)

Big Tech’s A.I. Spending Is Accelerating (Again) (2/2)

Despite the risk of a bubble, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon plan to spend billions more on artificial intelligence than they already do.

The NYT - By Karen Weise

Oct. 31, 2025

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Mr. Powell did not comment on concerns that, unlike the biggest tech companies, smaller companies — often the customers and partners of those cloud computing giants — were also spending fast on A.I. projects without the safety net of enormously lucrative online advertising or software businesses.

But for the moneyed foursome that announced earnings this week, spending hundreds of billions of dollars on new data centers is not a worry — not when they churned out a combined $109 billion in operating profit, which excludes taxes and investments, in just the last quarter.

Ms. Hood said Microsoft had $400 billion in future sales under contract. “That’s for booked business,” she said. “Today.” The number did not include the $250 billion in computing power that OpenAI, the creator of the ChatGPT chatbot, committed to buy from Microsoft in an announcement this week.

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, raised estimates for how much it planned to spend this year to at least $91 billion from $85 billion. The company is processing at least 20 times as much data through its various A.I. products as it did a year ago, the chief executive, Sundar Pichai, said.

Amazon has doubled its cloud infrastructure capacity since 2022 and expects to double it again by 2027 to meet demand, its chief executive, Andy Jassy, told investors on Thursday. “As fast as we’re adding capacity right now,” he said, “we’re monetizing it.”

Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, also raised its spending estimate for the year, from at least $66 billion to at least $70 billion. But it made a different case for the expenditures.

Unlike the large cloud providers, which have other customers that can use their data centers, Meta makes money from A.I. only when it uses the systems itself — in its core products to make digital ads more effective or its social networking products more engaging. It is also investing heavily to develop what it calls “superintelligence,” a theoretical technology where A.I. systems become smarter than humans.

Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, said he would rather build more and not less to be ready should superintelligence arrive quickly. “That way, if superintelligence arrives sooner, we will be ideally positioned for a generational paradigm shift in many large opportunities,” he said.

If it takes longer, Mr. Zuckerberg said, Meta could use the infrastructure for its core business. “In the worst case,” he added, “we will just slow building new infrastructure for some period while we grow into what we build.”

Investors were less sure. Meta’s stock fell 11 percent on Thursday.

Translation

大型科技公司在人工智能領域的開支(再次)加速（2/2）

儘管存在泡沫風險，Google、Meta、微軟和亞馬遜仍計劃在人工智能領域投入比過往更多的數十億美元。

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鮑威爾先生沒有就以下擔憂發表評論：與大型科技公司不同，規模較小的公司 - 通常是這些雲端運算巨頭的客戶和合作夥伴 - 也在人工智能專案上快速投入，卻沒有利潤豐厚的線上廣告或軟件業務作為保障。

但對於本週公佈收益的富有四人組來說，斥資數千億美元建設新數據中心並不造成一個擔憂 - 畢竟，它們在上個季度就創造了總計1090億美元的營業利潤, 不包括稅收和投資。

Hood女士表示，微軟已簽訂了價值4000億美元的未來銷售合約。 她說:「這是先前預定的業務」;「就在今天」。該數字不包括OpenAI（ChatGPT聊天機器人的開發人員）本周宣佈將從微軟購買的價值2500億美元的計算能力。

Google母公司Alphabet將今年的支出預期從850億美元上調至至少910億美元。執行長Sundar Pichai表示，該公司透過其各種人工智能產品處理的數據量至少是去年同期的20倍。

亞馬遜執行長Andy Jassy週四告訴投資者，自2022年以來，亞馬遜的雲端基礎設施容量已翻了一番，並預計到2027年將再次翻番以滿足需求。 他說:「我們目前增加容量的速度與實現盈利的速度一樣快」。

擁有Instagram、Facebook和WhatsApp的Meta也將其今年的支出預期從至少660億美元上調至至少700億美元。但該公司對這些支出給了不同的解釋。

與那些擁有可供其他客戶使用其數據中心的大型雲端服務供應商不同，Meta 只有在自身使用人工智能系統時才能獲利 - 例如，在其核心產品中應用人工智能技術，以提高電子廣告效果或增強社交網路產品的互動性。該公司還在大力投資開發其所謂的“超級智能”，這是一種理論上的技術，在這種技術下，人工智能系統將比人類更聰明。

Meta 執行長Mark Zuckerberg表示，他寧願建造更多而不是更少的基礎設施，以便在超級智能快速到來時做好準備。 他說:「這樣，如果超級智能提前到來，我們將佔據有利位置，在世代性範式轉變中, 去抓住許多重大機遇」。

Zuckerberg先生表示，如果超級智能需要更長時間才出現，Meta 可以將基礎設施用於其核心業務。他補充道: “在最壞的情況下, 我們在一段時間會放慢建設新基礎設施的速度，同時發展壯大我們的業務構建。”

投資者對此則不太肯定。 Meta 的股價在周四下跌了 11%。

So, four of the tech industry’s biggest companies have made it clear this week that their spending on artificial intelligence would not slow down. But the spending made by Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon are increasingly causing concerns that the tech industry is heading toward a bubble. Artificial intelligence remains an unproven and expensive technology that could take years to fully develop. Apparently, to further invest in the AI could face more and more risk.