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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?

#151

Post by reticulates »

simonw wrote: post #91
swiftcoder wrote: post #74

> Given how fast these companies are growing (in terms of revenue and profit), it doesn't seem that AI is, as Zitron implied, some kind of desperation move they're reaching for because "they don't know how to grow" and are all out of ideas Growth isn't a valid rebuttal, unless we can also sus out how much of that growth is tied up in circular financing of AI projects. We have a pretty good idea how much of Nvidia's v…

As public companies, the megascalers publish pretty detailed financial reports.

Can you provide any examples of any of the megascalers publishing any detailed financials that touch on their AI spend or revenue or profit? The only one I’m aware of that comes close is Microsoft and they have still buried it in barely related line items which still leave us making assumptions.

There’s speculation on both sides and certainly Zitron is on the extreme end of the anti-AI side with the most cynical speculation but it is indisputable that none of the megascalers are open about their AI financials. Hence, we are all speculating endlessly. If only there were published financials then the speculation could end!

The obfuscation of financials doesn’t necessarily mean something bad is happening, it could be a competitive advantage for Google to be secretive about how cost effective their TPUs are or for Microsoft to hide how much revenue uplift they’ve experienced by adding AI to 365.

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

#152

Post by bunderbunder »

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.

I almost wonder if it's even possible now that so many of us get our information through algorithmic feeds.

I listened to one Zitron interview on YouTube and my home page was immediately crammed full of similarly foamy-mouthed AI critics. (As well as plenty more Zitron.) And it's suggested some people with un-nuanced pro-AI takes, too. But what the algorithm has never, not even once, given me is a sober voice that calls attention to the nuances.

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

#153

Post by sfblah »

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...

I agree that the specific amounts invested in AI aren't enough to cause a calamity directly.

The problem is you have the vise of a stock-market decline on one side (something basically everyone thinks is impossible), and AI-induced unemployment on the other side (something a lot of commentators, including Zitron sometimes, seem to think won't happen). Those two things in tandem would be worse than 2009 by a multiple. I doubt the US government will be able to bail it out.

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

#154

Post by irishcoffee »

simianwords wrote: post #22
irishcoffee wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at it from an objective/historical perspective, when he first got on his high horse agents weren’t a thing, MCP was in its infancy at best, and half the code generated didn’t compile from frontier models. From there everything split into two factions, which I’ll dub as believers and non-believers. From there, it has entirely been a cult following despite the evidence showing that models and agents have legs f…

what's it with people who think a bubble is literally destined to happen because of some religious belief that history repeats itself? I find it fascinating to understand the theory of mind of such people. So much confidence.

Just speaking from a gambling/odds perspective: the odds that a bubble never pops again in the history of mankind is a 1 out of 100, where the odds of a bubble popping again are 99/100. Your religious finger-pointing cracks me up.

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

#155

Post by jdgoesmarching »

simonw wrote: post #82
dgellow wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn’t even see the OP comment as a criticism of his analyses, just that he likes to do this rhetorical trick of dropping in numbers that are, at best, tangential to his point to prop up the argument’s credibility. Sometimes he does this in the middle of a real financial analysis which is even more maddening and confusing.

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

#157

Post by sfblah »

blargey wrote: post #136
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…

Yes. I was specifically referring to Zitron's circular-financing complaints. I can't defend his separate claims that AI just isn't that useful. If he were involved in the tech industry, he'd know how preposterous those claims are.

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

#158

Post by devindotcom »

ai_critic wrote: post #142
dgellow wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s level 0 analysis, you’re supposed to go to the next steps and not stop here…

Sometimes it really is sufficient to say "This person is a grifter and from that all else follows".

and sometimes it isn't.

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

#159

Post by sfblah »

arctic-true wrote: post #126
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,…

This is exactly right. Now, that does mean something about Zitron: he’s a pundit, not an expert or a forecasting genius. You could point to any number of analogous booster types. Twitter/X somehow loves pushing these people onto my recommended feed. I remember reading breathless threads about how o3 was going to single-handedly end white collar work. There are just more of that sort of person, so none of them in part…

In my experience, people who make fun of AI's ability to eliminate white-collar work are exactly the same people who are white-knuckling it, hoping they can make another $300k next year to buy that Rivian.

People who don't need a salary look at the situation more objectively and, in general, can see that a lot of white-collar work is in peril.

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

#160

Post by atleastoptimal »

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…

What predictions would you say he is not wrong, but just early about?

If his issue is that he is accurate on something shady going on with the finances of AI companies but the effects are mitigated due to government intervention, he should say.

Your explanation gives him more credit than I think he deserves. He has been unambiguously incorrect many times over the past years in the time scales over which he makes predictions.

In general, claiming that a prediction is just early in an unfalsifiable claim. It allows no admission of being incorrect whether you are correct or incorrect in a given moment. If you are right, then good, you've made a correct claim. If you're wrong, just claim there are clandestine corrective forces keeping the disaster you are predicting at bay. Either way you make it out clean and still have some sense of legitimacy.

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