Alphabet: An AI pioneer
Danny Vena (Alphabet): No list of AI innovators would be complete without Alphabet. AI had been around for decades, but back in 2011, Google began its pioneering work in the field of deep learning with the Google Brain. Noted AI researcher and Stanford adjunct professor Andrew Ng collaborated with Google scientists, and the rest -- as they say -- is history.
The first major breakthrough came in 2012 when the self-learning AI system taught itself to recognize cats from 10 million images culled from YouTube videos. That might seem frivolous by today's standards, but it paved the way for significant advances in visual and speech recognition, which are now staple technologies powering smartphones.
Google doubled down on AI with its $400 million acquisition of DeepMind in 2014. The company developed a system that could defeat the world's top players in the ancient Chinese game of Go, which is universally acknowledged as the one of the most sophisticated and difficult games to master.
There are also a growing number of applications in the medical field. Google AI has been able to detect signs of diabetic retinopathy in eye scans with 90% accuracy, and has outperformed radiologists at identifying breast cancer in mammograms.
That's not to mention Waymo, Alphabet's self-driving car segment. The system, which was developed in 2009, is believed to be among the most advanced autonomous vehicle systems in the world. Waymo vehicles have been driving the streets around the suburbs of Phoenix for years, and its vehicles there haven't required drivers since last year. It's also testing its mettle in San Francisco and Mountain View, California. The company is considering expanding its robotaxi service, while also mulling the idea of leasing its system to automakers.
So what does all this mean? Because it's still early days for AI and there are so many potential applications, it's difficult to quantify just how much Google's AI technology could be worth to Alphabet. Waymo's self-driving technology alone could be worth billions of dollars, but estimates vary widely. Back in 2018, Waymo was valued as high as $175 billion, though recent funding rounds have valued the unit at a more modest $30 billion.
Internally, however, Alphabet is getting its money's worth from Google's AI. The technology helps make Google Maps, News, and Assistant smarter, and powers Google Translate to increase the accuracy of its translations. Perhaps most importantly, however, it helps boost the accuracy of Google's flagship search and digital advertising, which ultimately pay the bills.
In the second quarter, Alphabet's revenue of $61.88 billion surged 62% year over year, though part of that was the result of easier comps. This helped push earnings per share to $27.26, climbing 169%.
t would be almost impossible to pin down just what this AI is worth to investors. That said, given its dominance in both search and digital advertising and its early and continuing investment in AI, it's easy to see why Alphabet should be a key AI stock to buy and hold for a decade.
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