perfect for roquefort cheese: the innovator’s dilemma (13. 604)

Thursday, 9 July 2026

the innovator’s dilemma (13. 604)

Despite the early acquisition of DeepMind and a bit contrary to the overall consensus regarding the quality of search that’s a bit poisoned by AI tangents (the AI underpinnings should be disclosed but it has a visibility problem—not in its inscrutability—but it making it seen, many problem don’t benefit from shoehorning it into everything and putting it on display in a why that overshadows its potential use as a sounding board or a brainstorming interlocutor), Google has consistently fallen in second place in the field of artificial intelligence. A Planet Money interview with an author profiling the founder and current chief executive officer of the company’s AI research laboratory, now called Google Brain, Demis Hassbis, aside from covering the computer scientist’s lofty and noble ambitions and striving for fundamental understanding, the author also puts forward an intriguing set of reasons that might account for the tech giant’s self-sabotage. As with the case-studies of industry leaders developing potential disruptive innovations—Kodak inventing the first digital cameras, Blockbuster’s early partnership with Netflix, Xerox’ pioneering of the personal computer—likewise for Google, whose business model is based on reliable search results and serving advertising, it may have perceived a threat to its reputation should those answers be seen as something below what we’ve become accustomed to and reluctance to deviate from a proven formula. More from the NPR podcast at the link above.