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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?

#111

Post by copemaxxxing »

Off topic:

> For example, with a style that could be described as the opposite of clickbait, Simon Willison has written what I suspect is the most widely read blog among programmers for the past 3-4 years (in the same way that, at various times in the past, Joel Spolsky or Jeff Atwood or Steve Yegge seemed to be the most widely read programmer among programmers). Among programmers and other serious users of AI, I would guess that Willison has a larger audience than Zitron.

I have no idea Simon Willison is the most widely read blog among programmers. I truly have no idea, and I've been programming for just a decade.

A lot of Simon's blogs posted here are when new LLM models are released, on how good are these LLM models create pelican riding a bike using SVGs. Nothing particularly interesting to me.

I truly have no idea why would people be interested in blogs about LLM creating pelican riding a bike svgs every single time a new model is released. Maybe its a proof of AGI/ASI for some?

I guess to me, Simon Willison will always be the "create-a-pelican-riding-a-bike-using-svg-dude".

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

#112

Post by tolugenius »

dgellow wrote: post #67
tolugenius wrote: post #14

I've been doubting him myself (his recent articles just hedge on data centers more than anything else) but then I want to ask, are there any valid critics of AI? Not a "code is bad but it'll get better" but actual criticism in the nature of the financing, politics, etc. I think separating AI as a tool and it's capabilities and AI as product that needs to make a profit is helpful, however most people are really hedgin…

Cal Newport has been interesting on the topic. But it’s also possible to read Zitron and skip his personal opinions and just follow the discussion of financing, that’s what I personally do. I don’t understand why anyone would take the commentary of an internet pundit as a set of predictions to evaluate as gospel

I enjoy Newport myself, he's probably the most level-headed take I've come across. Everyone else has some agenda (or product) they're trying to get at and very much ruins the messaging (ex the agent 'civilization' piece is extremely overblown especially since..that's how multi agent systems coordinate already. Nothing happened that is unprecedented and isn't how the system is designed to work.

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

#113

Post by toomuchtodo »

rowanG077 wrote: post #105
toomuchtodo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I don't see any sentiment in that data.

Would you like a list of pro Musk and Altman users based on their comment and submission history? I'm unsure if that violates the site guidelines, and I prefer not to have my subthreads detached or stern reprimands by mods (it makes me feel bothersome in a host's home).

Profiling Hacker News users based on their comments - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47473086 - March 2026 (86 comments)

(simonw's work I cribbed off of)

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

#114

Post by g-unit33 »

Ed gets hard because of the love the anti-ai people give him and seeing him as the voice of anti-ai... If you listen to his arguments though he lacks knowledge of what these companies even do. He's been on so many shows discussing the negatives but he admitted to not even using the models for anything

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

#115

Post by sfblah »

amazingamazing wrote: post #19

The simplest argument against AI is the fact no public company appears to be making money on it, minus revenue that contributes to AI infrastructure . Would love to see broken down counter example of public company. So far Chegg and Duolingo have been devastated. Surely they could cut costs drastically with AI?

I don't know about Chegg, but the fundamental problem with Duolingo is their product does nothing to teach people a foreign language. The nasty reality of that product is if you go through their entire learning tree in a language, you might be at a CEFR level A1 for that language. And, you spent 10x the time and 10x the money you would have spent via something like Lingoda to get the same outcome.

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

#117

Post by minimaxir »

Over the past few years, I had helped Ed with some difficult nuances around the obscure technical aspects of serving LLMs (e.g. benchmarks and model caching); he has also shouted myself and Simon Willison out positively multiple times. I stopped assisting him because he repeatedly misused said advice to the most cynical interpretation ("how can this be interpreted to make AI boosters sound crazy?) and often made it misleading at best. Nowadays I suspect he views me as one of those crazy AI boosters.

Not challenging him was a mistake in hindsight, and I own it. Going forward I will no longer be helping writers/journalists with a clear anti-AI bias.

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

#118

Post by thegrim33 »

hypfer wrote: post #87
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

S&P 500 - All time high

DJIA - All time high

Unemployment rate - Near all time low (for last 20 years)

Number of US small businesses - All time high

US GDP - All time high

[Sources]

https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une...

https://www.sellerscommerce.com/blog/small-business-statisti...

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP

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

#119

Post by jsLavaGoat »

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…

I posted here a while ago when his bubble prediction lapsed and plenty of his fans were here. Telling me how I was wrong and the Q2 reports weren't complete yet because it was still early July and blah blah

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

#120

Post by dcminter »

copemaxxxing wrote: post #111

Off topic: > For example, with a style that could be described as the opposite of clickbait, Simon Willison has written what I suspect is the most widely read blog among programmers for the past 3-4 years (in the same way that, at various times in the past, Joel Spolsky or Jeff Atwood or Steve Yegge seemed to be the most widely read programmer among programmers). Among programmers and other serious users of AI, I wou…

I used to read his posts about Django years ago (a little strange in itself as I'm not a Python guy) and it took me a while to realise he was the same person!
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