How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been? • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by jonathanpglick » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

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…

Check out the writing of Baldur Bjarnason. There are a lot of blog posts and a book outlining the risks and tradeoffs.

https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2023/ai-position/ https://illusion.baldurbjarnason.com/

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

#182

Post by simonw » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

reticulates wrote: post #150

simonw wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spec…

They don't publish their AI spending, revenue, and profit - but they do tend to break out other non-AI segments of their companies which can demonstrate that at least part of their growth isn't relevant to AI.

Page 24 of Amazon's 2025 report for example https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1018724/000101872426... separates AWS from the rest of the company.

Or Google/Alphabet's 2025 report https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1652044/000165204426... page which breaks out search revenue and YouTube revenue.

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

#183

Post by brikym » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

Zitron sells anti-hype and AI-hate. AI is not good for a lot of people and he's telling them what they want to hear. He's great at talking and making entertaining facial expressions. That's actually a real skill I admire but it has nothing to do with predicting markets correctly. He's in the business of selling entertainment views not predicting markets. He even admits he doesn't short AI.

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

#184

Post by iwontberude » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

jmuguy wrote: post #11

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…

Its pretty clear if you listen to him now he's just (re)playing the hits for his audience. Its like MSNBC/Fox News for people who think they're too smart to fall for that. I used to think he was just early on some of this stuff but the sheer amount of content he produces its clear he's just cashing a check.

[dead]

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

#185

Post by aksj5Hg » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:03 PM UTC

ai_critic wrote: post #148

qw2817 wrote: post #134

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?

Luu kinda has a reputation for knowing his shit, for over a decade now. He's not a checks notes games journalist larping as economist, but he does all right.

He may be a good programmer, but I have never seen any interesting article from him. Also, making predictions is different from being knowledgeable.

It is ironic that Zitron is accused of having a cult following whereas Luu clearly has one, here at least.

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

#186

Post by blitzar » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

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…

Being early is being wrong.

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

#187

Post by ElGamzino » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

emil-lp wrote: post #155

ElGamzino wrote: post #116

[flagged]

Says anonymous internet user with a 10 minutes old account.

I made the account to make the comment because I feel strongly about him being untrustworthy. You can take it at face value or assume I'm lying, that's your call.

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

#188

Post by ant_li0n » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:04 PM UTC

maxglute wrote: post #172

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…

How? AFAIK, his arguments based around the economics remains the same, he just seems increasingly dramatic and exacerbated, which is understandable when you realize industry + ecosystem (politics/reporting) is tulip mania delulu and insists 1+1=100, or 30 trillion, or whatever. His position isn't based on AI progress - it's based on AI economics, at this point he can be an obnoxious rationalist slamming flat earthers…

(edited to remove snark) Your comment seems to miss the point that the article does not (necessarily) have a problem with Zitron being insufferable/annoying/smug. It's that his predictions are verifiably wrong. It's one thing to be annoying and right. Zitron is annoying, but not right.

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

#189

Post by axegon_ » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:07 PM UTC

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'm not a huge fan of his style myself but fundamentally he isn't wrong. The whole "growth" so far has been all show and no go. I see people pouring in millions only to end up bankrupt a few months later. Evangelists portray those instances as rare and simply "skill issues" and "they don't know what they are doing but I am". Anyone that's ever had several servers running at home and seen the electricity bill at the end of the month knows it - I do as well. And we are talking about servers that use power, only a fraction of a server running 4x H100s at 100% 24/7. For those of us that have - we are talking servers that have one or two xeon silvers at best, 15% load on average. And I live in a country where the electricity is veeeeeeeeeeeery affordable. I'm not taking into account training, or investment to get it going, just inference.

20 bucks subscription a month, dario, you ain't fooling anyone with above-room-temperature IQ (Celsius). Even the expensive subscriptions - we know that's not the real price. And the limits, bumping up prices every two weeks and so on, just to keep the lights on while draining investors... Zitron's claims are pretty impossible to deny: the moment those companies go public, the real prices will need to come out of the shadows and end up on your monthly bill.

At the same time I fail to see the real world benefit to this, even in software: it's like comparing Lego (before they began their anti-consumer bs) to cheap Chinese toys. The moment you look at them side-by-side, you know which one is a premium product and which one is a cheap Chinese toy. While I have been a big supporter of open source since I was a child, I was never biblical about using open source - if some proprietary piece of software does a better job than the open source one - fine, take my money. Not anymore. I see the abysmal state of cyber-security as a direct consequence of slop. Slop-written code, slop-reviewed code, tests pass(also slop), ship it. Yeah, I'm not trusting you with my data, the hell with that, I'm self-hosting everything, adios. And I sure as hell don't trust the ai-bros for anything either.

And there's another thing: Microsoft was clear about it: github is constantly down because they can't handle the load. App stores are bumping up developer fees. Anyone can slop together a todo app(which was never hard to begin with). It's still a winner-takes-all economy - no one is going to install a todo app and migrate from Google/Apple just because. So the 1000 todo apps released daily will simply be a hole in the pocked of the people who slopped them together and another reason to be paying 500 bucks for 64 gigs of ram and another 500 bucks for a 2tb nvme. Raspberry pi's started off as educational platforms for 35 bucks and their commitment was to keep them at those prices. That aged well, right? If I decide to upgrade my uconsole, I have to pull out another 350+ bucks for a raspberry pi. All thanks to the sloppification. The bubble can't pop soon enough and frankly I don't care what it takes down with it.

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

#190

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Tue, Sep 01, 2026, 9:08 PM UTC

dcre wrote: post #140

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that some numbers genuinely require a critical eye. If a source tells you that the OpenAI CFO told employees July ARR exceeded the Q2 total, there are a number of serious questions to be raised on how these numbers were calculated and what the point of such a confusing comparison is supposed to be. (I think the answer has to be that ChatGPT wrote the CFO’s script, no human financial expert would think…

You're broadly right but I think you're dead wrong about the CFO statement — I think "July revenue alone exceeded all of Q2" is an extremely normal thing to say when revenue is going up at an insane rate. For example, if it was not true that June revenue exceeded March-May revenue, the point would be to show how their revenue growth has accelerated.

"July revenue alone exceeded all of Q2" would be a very normal thing to say, but you're skipping over some of the words. Unless revenue is sharply dropping, annualized recurring revenue in any month will exceed the revenue incurred in any quarter, because it's an annualized figure.

I think the most likely explanation is that the CFO misspoke and intended to say something more like your quote, or perhaps she spoke correctly and was misquoted. But without audited financial statements, all we have is speculation, and there have definitely been times in the past when executives of major companies made intentionally misleading statements about their revenue. (In fact, this thread began with a question about why you can't just look at the numbers, and here the answer is that nobody has reported the actual revenue numbers this comparison is based on.)