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Ed Zitron loses his mind annotating an AI doomer macro memo

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Re: Ed Zitron loses his mind annotating an AI doomer macro memo

#11
Ed Zitron, from what little I have heard of him, seems incredibly irrational. I don't think I've ever seen anybody stick their head deeper in the sand more than I've seen him do.

It's one thing to dislike or even detest something, but to constantly claim it is worthless and without use when people are already benefitting from it everyday is nothing short of delusion.

Re: Ed Zitron loses his mind annotating an AI doomer macro memo

#12

Where does the title come from? What is this document? What is the context?

Good questions. Here is the author's BlueSky post about it:

https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3mfkc63h6222l

> "Here is an annotated version of the Citrini Memo with my own intro. It is analyslop - scare-fiction written to ingratiate AI boosters and analysts/traders with tales of ultra-automation and socialist data center policies. Shameful that the markets reacted at all."

Re: Ed Zitron loses his mind annotating an AI doomer macro memo

#15
> "What if our AI bullishness continues to be right...and what if that’s actually bearish" - what if pee pee was poo poo

Despite the vulgarity, it is exceptionally illuminating to how much some of these slop pieces are just a mere pretension of rhetoric. I see this pretty consistently with a lot of the material I come across on the job that's gone through the LLM meat-grinder.

Also, the comment made me giggle like a little kid.

Re: Ed Zitron loses his mind annotating an AI doomer macro memo

#16
post #7

Offtopic - The success of coding agents must be Ed Zitron's nightmare. He has been a perpetual bear

Which success? I still see those things churning out laughably wrong code at every turn.

It's not a point and click code machine, but it's laughably wrong to say they just churn out laughably wrong code.

Re: Ed Zitron loses his mind annotating an AI doomer macro memo

#17

Offtopic - The success of coding agents must be Ed Zitron's nightmare. He has been a perpetual bear

I don't think so.

His argument is not "this tech doesn't work", but rather "these businesses aren't economically viable"

And that the smoke and mirrors accounting and perpetual thirst for more billions indicates just how unviable it is

Whilst he does dunk on LLM capabilities, the framing is the business angle - can Anysphere etc. actually form a moat and make a profit?

Re: Ed Zitron loses his mind annotating an AI doomer macro memo

#18
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which success? I still see those things churning out laughably wrong code at every turn.

I guess everyone stopped using Claude Code already then, if it doesn't work.

It doesn't work precisely because people are using claude.

If it worked, there'd be no people using it.

Re: Ed Zitron loses his mind annotating an AI doomer macro memo

#19

Offtopic - The success of coding agents must be Ed Zitron's nightmare. He has been a perpetual bear

I don't think so. His argument is not "this tech doesn't work", but rather "these businesses aren't economically viable" And that the smoke and mirrors accounting and perpetual thirst for more billions indicates just how unviable it is Whilst he does dunk on LLM capabilities, the framing is the business angle - can Anysphere etc. actually form a moat and make a profit?

>His argument has never been "this tech doesn't work", but rather "these businesses aren't economically viable"

Why? because of cost?

Re: Ed Zitron loses his mind annotating an AI doomer macro memo

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. His argument is not "this tech doesn't work", but rather "these businesses aren't economically viable" And that the smoke and mirrors accounting and perpetual thirst for more billions indicates just how unviable it is Whilst he does dunk on LLM capabilities, the framing is the business angle - can Anysphere etc. actually form a moat and make a profit?

>His argument has never been "this tech doesn't work", but rather "these businesses aren't economically viable" Why? because of cost?

Cost, debt, difficulty forming a moat, gap between what the product promises and what it can do, and the difficulty actually raising capital required.

His style is acerbic and (imo) excessive sometimes. But he's also one of a minority of journos actually looking at the numbers and adding them up. Which seems to be a rarity

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