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How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?

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Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?

#41

Post by toomuchtodo »

simonw wrote: post #3

> For any of his posts that I read, while there are numbers thrown around, the numbers don't actually connect to a coherent argument. In many cases, as we saw above, the numbers don't even really support his argument (such as an MAU decline in Facebook causing Meta financial problems which would then cause Meta to spuriously insert AI in places it doesn't belong). I suspect he's relying on people's eyes glazing over…

As someone else mentioned, ignore Ed’s personality and look solely at the balance sheets and capital analysis. Regardless of delivery, the math doesn’t math.

It's wild to me how much Ed is criticized while pathological liars like Musk and Altman are glossed over.

(Disclosure: I pay for Zitron's publication for the capital figures and exclusives he gets his hands on, I do not pay attention to his interviews, we are fact finding, if he wants to perform, I am not bothered, I've seen the performers on the other side, just keep the facts coming for ground truth)

Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?

#42

Post by jrflo »

onemoresoop wrote: post #28
jrflo wrote: post #17

Thanks for putting this together, his writing really aggravates me and it was nice to see all of his predictions put together in one spot. It's interesting how he has pivoted from denying that LLMs are useful to accusing frontier labs of Enron-scale fraud. I suppose it's the natural pivot you have to make when your whole business is an anti-AI newsletter that costs $7 per month.

The fraud is there. Whether it surpasses Enron or not will be revealed in the future.

There is no evidence of fraud that I have seen beyond complete speculation from the likes of Zitron. He basically just says "Look how big the numbers are! It's so big it must be fraud!"

Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?

#43

Post by rustystump »

Only recently came across this guy and if u ignore the standard social media hyper hype hype he has, I dont think he is wrong even his 2024 predictions.

US has 1.5x the money supply since Covid. This means everything has to go up 1.5x to reach the same parity from before. eg inflation. All corporate earnings are going to inflate as 1b yesterday is 1.5b today.

There is no whete for these mega corps to go. They dont know how to grow. meta becoming well meta with the vr crap is case and point. meta blowing billions on a few hyped AI people is the nail.

Other than cloud, microsft/google aimt doing anything. xbox? nope, hardware? nah. It is all attention economy or selling the pick axes for it.

the only mega corp that still seems to be moving the needle is apple which i think speaks volumes.

Eds point is that AI tam or expectations are insane full stop and he admits coding has a use just not as big of a tam. Gen ai in art, music, etc did not take off at all esp compared to code. this makes sense, no one pays an artist 500k/year. their time is worth little compared to coding.

Where he is wrong tho is that this is not new. there is always a hype cycle of nonsense that screws the little people. what is new is the level of polarization. it feels like ai psychosis right now in ways that remind me of crypto but worse because ai is actually useful so people are even more insufferable.

Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?

#45

Post by baggachipz »

reducesuffering wrote: post #29
baggachipz wrote: post #20

Hate on him all you want (he's gotten very repetitive for the sake of subscribers and reads), but the basic premise that the modern AI industry is a circular-dealing, point-of-diminishing-returns grift still holds. The bubble is here and the longer it inflates, the worse the pop will be. Sure the goalposts have moved, but the basic numbers don't math.

> The bubble is here Zitron implied 2 years ago that OpenAI would collapse by now. How's that bubble popping going? All NVDA+memory co+frontier lab numbers are accelerating

By all means, keep betting on this being a wild success and we'll see who's right in a little while. If you don't think this is a bubble then you're in for a ride.

Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?

#46

Post by dgellow »

onemoresoop wrote: post #28
jrflo wrote: post #17

Thanks for putting this together, his writing really aggravates me and it was nice to see all of his predictions put together in one spot. It's interesting how he has pivoted from denying that LLMs are useful to accusing frontier labs of Enron-scale fraud. I suppose it's the natural pivot you have to make when your whole business is an anti-AI newsletter that costs $7 per month.

The fraud is there. Whether it surpasses Enron or not will be revealed in the future.

So far NVIDIA has been very careful, it’s not actual fraud, at least based on public information. It’s a very unstable and extremely risky bet, that is very likely to blow in the face face of AI companies, but it’s not fraud

Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?

#47

Post by simonuv »

dgellow wrote: post #27
simonw wrote: post #3

> For any of his posts that I read, while there are numbers thrown around, the numbers don't actually connect to a coherent argument. In many cases, as we saw above, the numbers don't even really support his argument (such as an MAU decline in Facebook causing Meta financial problems which would then cause Meta to spuriously insert AI in places it doesn't belong). I suspect he's relying on people's eyes glazing over…

I don’t understand the issue, cannot you ignore his commentary and just look at the numbers?

[flagged]

Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?

#48

Post by cyanydeez »

fallingbananna wrote: post #26
pcstl wrote: post #5

Zitron has become the distorted reflection of the very AI boosters he criticizes and mocks. I think the worst thing that happened to him was AI skepticism becoming a political position . This gave him a captive audience - as long as he says what they want to hear , which means that he can never ever concede that he might have been wrong or that AI might actually be progressing or having successes. This is not conduci…

I have the exact same feeling about him. He has built a following of people that want to hear his extra skeptical views. And even if he changed his mind about some things, he cannot admit it, as that is not what his followers want to hear from him. It's rare that people make the news and build a following by saying a very balanced, down to earth opinions... unfortunately.

right, and look at current American politics. One side tried to tailor normal, routine and rational POVs.

The other...

EDIT: I do find it amusing when I write these types of comment, then suddenly realize the irrational man childs of the far right nationalist republic ethnostatists think they're the rational ones.

Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?

#49

Post by aleph_minus_one »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #41
simonw wrote: post #3

> For any of his posts that I read, while there are numbers thrown around, the numbers don't actually connect to a coherent argument. In many cases, as we saw above, the numbers don't even really support his argument (such as an MAU decline in Facebook causing Meta financial problems which would then cause Meta to spuriously insert AI in places it doesn't belong). I suspect he's relying on people's eyes glazing over…

As someone else mentioned, ignore Ed’s personality and look solely at the balance sheets and capital analysis. Regardless of delivery, the math doesn’t math. It's wild to me how much Ed is criticized while pathological liars like Musk and Altman are glossed over. (Disclosure: I pay for Zitron's publication for the capital figures and exclusives he gets his hands on, I do not pay attention to his interviews, we are fa…

> while pathological liars like Musk and Altman are glossed over.

You seem to live in a bubble where these people are worshipped ... :-(

Re: How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?

#50

Post by dgellow »

jrflo wrote: post #42
onemoresoop wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fraud is there. Whether it surpasses Enron or not will be revealed in the future.

There is no evidence of fraud that I have seen beyond complete speculation from the likes of Zitron. He basically just says "Look how big the numbers are! It's so big it must be fraud!"

Zitron himself doesn’t call it fraud and doesn’t compare it to Enron (he said no, with his reasoning when asked in interviews, multiple times)
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