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

danluu.com

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

#211

Post by devindotcom »

pocksuppet wrote: post #75
devindotcom wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>one's chosen enemies must be simultaneously terrifyingly powerful and incompetent dunces I've got some bad news for you.

At first I thought you were referring to Umberto Eco's laws of fascism: "Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as at the same time too strong and too weak." but it's subtly different, because incompetence is not weakness.

heh, no. Eco is referring to how the white house casts groups like academics, immigrants, socialists, and trans people.

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

#212

Post by devindotcom »

Calazon wrote: post #204
pocksuppet wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At first I thought you were referring to Umberto Eco's laws of fascism: "Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as at the same time too strong and too weak." but it's subtly different, because incompetence is not weakness.

I read it as suggesting that AI models are simultaneously terrifyingly powerful and incompetent dunces.

no, it's the current administration, among others like musk.

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

#213

Post by tptacek »

maxglute wrote: post #200
ant_li0n wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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.

Yes? What happened to FAANG in last 3 years, they cut a fuck load of jobs, the raised rent/prices, then inflation, then experience surge in new category AI. 1 + 2, i.e. squeezing rock has limits. 3 is fundamentally not sustainable, i.e. AI revenue gap order of magnitude relative to spend. This like debt crisis, there's lot of levers to burn to maximize extraction and make ledger look good short term, but is fundament…

Luu is pretty specific about the predictions Zitron is making, has taken the time to pull them out and date them, and they're both risible and not rescuable with vibes.

His point isn't that Google or Meta are doing well or have bright futures. Luu is generally critical of tech giant engineering and product culture. He's critical of Google in particular in this very article.

But the point of the article is that it's not enough to have directionally satisfying vibes. If you made concrete forward-looking predictions and they're catastrophically wrong, that matters. If you make backwards-looking predictions that were literally wrong the moment you published them, that matters even more.

"Did you read the article" is a frowned-upon response on HN. The better way to write that kind of response, per the guidelines, is "the article mentions that". So: the article mentions that.

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

#214

Post by simonw »

bogzz wrote: post #208
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…

[flagged]

Right, you're very much his target audience.

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

#215

Post by matherial »

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…

> I don't think Zitron is wrong, exactly. He's just early.

By that metric, so was Nostradamus. The apocalypse is coming for sure, we're just quibbling about the timeline.

Realistically, timing is everything. You don't need to get it precisely right, but you also don't get a pass if you, for example, keep predicting an imminent recession through a decade of unprecedented growth.

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

#216

Post by jsrozner »

Though the bubble has not popped, I don't see the following discussed in the post: Zitron would probably point out (as have others) that many of the hyperscalers are booking valuation increases in Anthropic, OpenAI as "Other Income", which is substantially increasing their reported revenue and earnings. It's roughly:

- Hyperscalers like Goog, Meta, Msft invest cash in Anthropic, OpenAI, in exchange for equity

- The ongoing investment actually boosts the valuations in the Anthr/OpenAI (new raises are done at higher valuations), so the valuation of the Hyperscaler's existing investments in Anthr/OpenAI increases, which gets recorded as Other Income in quarterly earnings

- Much of that invested cash will itself come back (circularly) to the hyperscalers as revenue since Anthropic and OpenAI spend a lot of money via datacenters etc.

On Other Income phenomenon, see for example, https://www.ft.com/content/be97df0a-76b1-4cb0-9ba4-d1117d8d1...

Also, there's apparently lots of off-balance sheet debt. For example https://www.ft.com/content/a0a07cce-6d19-4b1e-a73b-9855a06ba...

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

#217

Post by simianwords »

nateglims wrote: post #145
simianwords wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's what I find invalid about environment angle. I fundamentally don't think it is wrong to increase emissions as long as you consider the tradeoffs and externalities. Every single action you do in life has externalities - if you start opposing all of them then what really is your point? You just hate people doing stuff. If you think emissions are so harmful, try putting a number to it. I implore you to do the exe…

You are making claims for why you think the emissions are worth it but I don't see how this makes concerns about emissions invalid. Even water usage, while blown out of proportion, can be a rational concern if you have a fossil fuel power station. You can just flip this around and ask why is slowing down AI to control emissions harmful? What numbers that don't make tail risk claims are you providing for this?

wait, please stick to the argument. Why is increasing emissions bad while considering tradeoffs?

>You can just flip this around and ask why is slowing down AI to control emissions harmful? What numbers that don't make tail risk claims are you providing for this?

Slowing down reduces the value it provides to humans, that's clear to me and you I hope.

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

#218

Post by pcstl »

pocksuppet wrote: post #75
devindotcom wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>one's chosen enemies must be simultaneously terrifyingly powerful and incompetent dunces I've got some bad news for you.

At first I thought you were referring to Umberto Eco's laws of fascism: "Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as at the same time too strong and too weak." but it's subtly different, because incompetence is not weakness.

It is weakness in the long-term.

It's pretty clear in how people talk about billionaires: They must somehow conclude that the people most successful within a system that rewards certain things are not competent because the things the system rewards are not what they think the system should reward (it is fine to believe the system rewards the wrong things, but people walk straight into denying that those people have skill even within the system, or they claim that skill within the bounds of the system does not reflect any "real" skill - totally ignoring that elites tend to stay elites even through, say, Communist uprisings).

Hence how someone can say that Musk is "dumb" with a straight face.

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

#219

Post by pcstl »

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.

>It's rare that people make the news and build a following by saying a very balanced, down to earth opinions

Humans are built for fighting and killing the rival tribe, not for pondering whether the other tribe might actually be correct. We are exceptional for even being able to overcome ourselves enough that the outcome of "fighting and killing" can be minimized in the large.

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

#220

Post by tim333 »

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…

As someone with a bit of understanding of accounts and finance I don't think Ed's analysis is very good. He's not someone who would pass a finance exam.
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