alt Hacker News> If you or your retirement is a shareholder in one of these companies, you'd rather they return $100 billion to you with boring buybacks or dividends than put it in an exciting AI investment that returns $1-$10 billion. Even though it didn't end up completely worthless, it's still a bad investment.
As a shareholder I'd rather them take the $100bn and invest it in growing the business further and generating $200bn. That's the more likely outcome anyway.
I think it's important to remember that we are biased in ways that aren't obvious to us, but will be obvious in retrospect.
Most shareholders in Time Warner, for example, regretted giving 50%+ of the company to AOL shareholders, even if everyone was correct that 'winning the Internet' was the key to growing the business.