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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?

#131

Post by rowanG077 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #113
rowanG077 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cribb…

I certainly believe there are some Musk and Altman glazers on this site. There are also certainly Ed Zitron glazers.

The point is not a few users you can point out, it wouldn't prove anything. The point is that you claimed that Musk and Altman are "Pathological liars like Musk and Altman are glossed over". I would say that requires at least sentiment analysis that an extremely high percentage(90+%) of hackernews users match that description. And that is simply not what I observe when I use this site. My feeling is that sentiment for Musk and Altman are neutral at best.

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

#133

Post by xbmcuser »

I think lot of people including Ed are mixing 2 things the AI tech itself and the economic viability with the inflated values of companies building it currently. Me personally I am optimistic about the tech itself but don't see the current AI companies valuations being realistic or even the economic systems they are building around AI/LLM. As it will all be comoditised down to cost of compute + cost of electricity in the end.

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

#134

Post by dgellow »

tootie wrote: post #102
watwut wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He LITERALLY said it is not like Enron. And repeated it.

I haven't read every word but I don't recall him saying AI is bad or useless ever either. His refrain is that they cannot keep up with their endless spending on training and they're not reaching new markets. I look at the rapid rise and decline of OpenClaw and get the impression AI has not really found any foothold among average people.

> I don't recall him saying AI is bad or useless ever either.

He does say that pretty often in interviews. That doesn’t change his thesis but that‘s one reasonable reason people dismiss him, he has often said that AI is useless when considering the externalities. And he will sometimes take a shortcut and just say „it’s useless, doesn’t do anything well“, which is of course way too simplified.

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

#135

Post by qw2817 »

Examining Dan Luu's predictions would be harder since he doesn't even date his articles.

Was this hit piece prompted by Zitron being mentioned in the tech scene lately?

https://lwn.net/Articles/1091245/

I don't know. If you post walls of text and ramble on like Luu, perhaps you are sitting in a glass house?

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

#136

Post by blargey »

sfblah wrote: post #99

I don't think Zitron is wrong, exactly. He's just early. There are a lot of analysts who have faced the same criticism over the past 10-15 years. IMO the issue is that they fail to understand the staggering size and scope of the government fiscal + monetary interventions across those years. Essentially, the government has jammed all the risk into the future to repeatedly rescue near-term results. I think something si…

You can make that claim for the general case that genAI capabilities will plateau or fishy financing in the sector will cause trouble at some point, but not for the specific talking heads that haven't constrained themselves to that sort of "broad future trajectory" prediction.

FTA:

> Note that I didn't attempt to catalogue statements that are nonsensical or were simply factually incorrect statements at the time, such as his December 2024 claim that “Generative AI's products have effectively been trapped in amber for over a year.” January 2026 claim that "[models are] basically the same as they were a year ago. They have the same efficacy". Zitron has not only made forward-looking statements that AI capabilities will not improve, he's also consistently made backwards-looking statements that capabilities have not improved which, while obviously false at the time, seem to play well to his base (along with his other false statements). If you connect all his statements together, it's implied that AI had the same capabilities in January 2026 as they did in December 2023 (and if you connect later statements, it's actually implied that capabilities in August 2026 are the same as in December 2023, though to be fair to Zitron he frequently contradicts himself and has also admitted to limited improvement at times).

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

#137

Post by dcre »

iNerdier wrote: post #108
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…

Didn’t the FT both vet his numbers and also publish on the same leak?

Yes, and his post about the exact same data was noticeably more confusing and less illuminating than theirs because he was primarily concerned to point to whatever the biggest number was and go "Ooh, big number!"

https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/

https://www.ft.com/content/e15b0d7e-ff6b-4f16-ba7a-4068feddb... (https://archive.ph/pAIEa)

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

#138

Post by inferniac »

sfblah wrote: post #99

I don't think Zitron is wrong, exactly. He's just early. There are a lot of analysts who have faced the same criticism over the past 10-15 years. IMO the issue is that they fail to understand the staggering size and scope of the government fiscal + monetary interventions across those years. Essentially, the government has jammed all the risk into the future to repeatedly rescue near-term results. I think something si…

No, hes been extremely wrong multiple times, he should not be treated seriously

Its silly to say hes just early, when his predictions give specific timelines that don't work at all

- "so egregious that I am surprised it's not some kind of financial crime to say it out loud" — on OpenAI forecasting $11.6B for 2025 (https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/) actual: $13.07B. source is his own scoop (https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/)

- "artificial intelligence has three quarters to prove itself before the apocalypse comes" — Mar 2024

- "If OpenAI doesn’t either reduce their $8.5bn operating costs to $1bn or less and raise at least $5bn in the next year, they will die." — Jul 2024 2025 costs: $34B

- Generative AI “isn’t getting much more efficient” (Jul 2024 ). OpenAI’s frontier-model API price fell from $30/$60 per million input/output tokens for GPT-4 to $4/$20 for GPT-5.6 Sol, alongside major capability gains.

- “I would be shocked if [Musk’s] wealth doesn’t return to something more like he had in 2019 or 2020” (Dec 2022 ). Musk is now worth approximately $873 billion , several times his wealth when Zitron wrote this.

sauce https://x.com/pitdesi/status/2093783287097602052

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

#139

Post by dcre »

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?

No, you can't. The numbers are genuinely confusing, and Zitron actively works to make them more confusing rather than explaining what they mean because he needs them to sound as bad as possible. He also buries the numbers in thousands of words of prose!

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

#140

Post by d34db33ts »

dcre wrote: post #129
sfblah wrote: post #99

I don't think Zitron is wrong, exactly. He's just early. There are a lot of analysts who have faced the same criticism over the past 10-15 years. IMO the issue is that they fail to understand the staggering size and scope of the government fiscal + monetary interventions across those years. Essentially, the government has jammed all the risk into the future to repeatedly rescue near-term results. I think something si…

Macrofinance expert Nathan Tankus has an excellent post on why the financing situation around the AI boom is just not big enough to mess up the financial system. https://www.crisesnotes.com/sigh-no-ed-zitron-ai-bond-issuan...

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