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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?

#81

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

If anyone who predicts the future was reliably right, they could easily shut the hell up and become a billionaire on stock picks. But they don't do that, because nobody can predict the future. You can say what may happen, but not for certain, and definitely not exactly when. All predictions without insider knowledge are idle musings.

Also consider that the economy isn't rational. Our economy should have tanked several times by now. AI should have fallen apart by now. Meta, Google, Microsoft should have declined. Instead it's record profits. So don't try to make predictions by being rational.

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

#82

Post by simonw »

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?

I'm not financially literate enough to trust my own analysis of the numbers. Ideally I'd like commentary from someone like Bloomberg's Matt Levine, a genuine expert in financial matters who is also extremely good at explaining them in terms non-finance-professionals like me can understand.

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

#83

Post by dgellow »

jrflo wrote: post #59
dgellow wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I was thinking of this article where he compares OpenAI to enron: https://www.wheresyoured.at/what-happens-if-openai-dies/

Do you mean this section?

> If you are going to look at this and say “actually it didn’t” because of its Enrontastic accounting treatment, I also need to warn you — that identical guy in the bathroom is actually a thing called a “mirror,” a reflective surface that is showing you a reflection of you, not another person who is dressed like you and copies everything you do. I can’t imagine how scared you’ve been, and hope this has helped.

That’s his weird writing style, so I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think he literally means that OpenAI is committing Enron style fraud. More of a stylistic way to say it’s a mess

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

#84

Post by WarmWash »

Zitron is just a rage farmer that tells angry people what they want hear while selling them subscriptions.

Maybe he is well meaning, but it's pretty common these types are just milking an audience that they dialed in on with zero regard for integrity or honesty.

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

#85

Post by KaiserPro »

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…

Audience capture is a terrible thing.

I'm not sure I have the force of will to not succumb to it. I think the only way to avoid it is to be so sure of the thing you are doing that the audience reaction is not the key metric by which you measure your success.

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

#86

Post by anonymous_user9 »

Fair enough on Zitron being wrong, but I think the opening argument about Meta, Google, and Microsoft misunderstands his point.

Zitron is saying that the hyperscalers had no genuine growth opportunities, so they're using the AI bubble to achieve growth. The fact that they've continued to grow for a few years doesn't contradict his point, and Meta's steadily decreasing profit margin certainly doesn't look healthy.

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

#87

Post by hypfer »

th0raway wrote: post #65

Being thorough and accurate might make you a lot of money in the stock market, but it's not a good way to get any media presence, because that demands being in front of people quite often, and basically nobody can be insightful and well researched in all topics of the day. Once you become a pundit, whether on politics or tech, and rely on eyeballs to feed you, you are going to be throwing stinkers. And at that point,…

> We have people telling us the next recession being imminent all the time.

Yeah uhm so I'm not sure if you've like seen the world recently, but uh.

Yea

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

#88

Post by toomuchtodo »

rowanG077 wrote: post #52
toomuchtodo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are we living in the same universe? Musk and Altman are glossed over and not criticized?

HN has a fairly complex user footprint, it's not everyone of course and I do not mean to paint too broadly, but there is a strong contingent of those pro in a cluster.

https://hackernewstrends.com/?q=Musk&q=Altman&from=151234560...

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

#89

Post by catlover76 »

cyanydeez wrote: post #36
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…

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

#90

Post by kypro »

I think it would be naive to believe Zitron is unaware of what he's doing.

He's created a huge following (and is presumably making a lot of money) from pushing a hardcore AI-skeptic narrative, and I can't blame him for seeing that opportunity and running with it. We're ultimately all responsible for recognising these people and weighting their advise as necessary.

Additionally, from a public reputational perspective making bad predictions simply doesn't matter. In finance we're all aware of perma-bears who will predict the sky is about to fall, and when it doesn't just argue that the disaster is still coming, but is taking longer than expected, or that some unforeseeable thing happened which has compounded the risk but has for now kicked the can down the road.

So ultimately, it will be very hard to say Zitron is wrong unless he starts time-boxing his predictions, which I don't believe Zitron has done for obvious reasons.

That said I don't listen to him much at all. I've tried to listen to him a few times, but it's become evident very quickly that he doesn't understand the technical details enough to be making the predictions he's making and seems way too emotionally invested in the arguments he's pushing without good reason. I have strong personal filters for low-quality sources like Zitron – if someone raises enough flags I avoid them like the plague.

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