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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?

#221

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.

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

#222

Post by minimaxir »

VCFundedGenYer wrote: post #195
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…

No? He's been pretty spot on.

This very submission is about cases where Ed has not been pretty spot on.

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

#223

Post by pcstl »

sapphicsnail wrote: post #161
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 think the worst thing that happened to him was AI skepticism becoming a political position. It is a political issue in the sense that the discussion around AI can't avoid material and cultural issues. Ed Zitron definitely has an ax to grind and I'm personally turned off by his hyperbole, but I don't think something being a political issue means it's not worth discussing. I've also noticed the pro-AI crowd pivot t…

I never said it's not worth discussing, I'm just saying that it becoming a charged issue was bad for Zitron specifically because his style of content fell in demand with the most irrational parts of the crowd.

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

#224

Post by maxglute »

ant_li0n wrote: post #211
maxglute wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ah I understand what you're saying. Yes I agree that if you pull back to, "We're in a bubble," then you can say that Zitron is correct, at least fundamentally, despite being wildly inaccurate in almost every other prediction he makes. But Zitron isn't just blogging about how we're in a bubble. The assertions he makes are not minutiae, he basically continuously says that all the big SW firms are walking corpses. He's…

I edited while you were responding with second para. I think his analysis that existing investors are walking corpses (or economically exhausted/weakened) is substantial. You have new companies going into extreme debt and established companies burning war chests may actually is important, and also valid economic argument ESPECIALLY if you think think AI will be economically transformative. Like current players basically spent $1000 on a screw driver to do $10 of work. Some of them went $1000 into debt, some of them drained $1000, which is much of their savings/warchest. The incumbant players rationalize future has $100 or $1000, or of work, but these companies are going to be vs player buying $1 screw drivers, i.e. the compute deprecation curve makes spending $1000 on screwdrivers in the first place very detrimental/terminal vs future competition. Zitrons argument is broadly there even if there is $1000000 work in the future, companies that spend $1000 on screw drivers balance sheet is working on timescale where there is $100 of work, i.e. the economics is not in favor of incumbents. The economics might still be very favorite for future AI... but not for first round of players who has to recover from grossly overpaying.

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

#225

Post by pcstl »

devindotcom wrote: post #31
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…

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

I really don't find it coherent to call someone who you keep consistently losing to stupid.

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

#227

Post by jimmoores »

He's dead wrong about the usefulness of the technology, but he's dead right about the uncontrolled corrupt circular financing that is driving this crazy over-expansion and market distortion. He fulfils a very useful function as a counterweight to the big tech horse-shit hosepipe that sprays us every day.

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

#228

Post by joshcsimmons »

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…

"Early" works for an open-ended bubble thesis. It does not rescue dated claims that already failed.

Google's 500 million Gemini-user goal had an end-of-2025 deadline. Zitron called it so unrealistic that Sundar Pichai should be fired. Google reported more than 650 million monthly users by October.

"AI had already peaked" is also a claim about the state of the technology at that time. Agent and coding benchmarks moved sharply after it. The fact that every technology eventually peaks does not make a past claim that it already peaked correct.

The bubble may still burst. That would validate the bubble thesis. It would not retroactively fix the prediction record.

btw Zitron has the only fan base that has come after me with doxxing and death threats so far. Truly misery loves company!

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

#229

Post by astrange »

NateEag wrote: post #178
astrange wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - AI centralizes power in the hands of capital, rendering those who can afford compute hardware vastly more capable than those who cannot and thus increasing social stratification Looks to me like I can run Claude Code without being able to afford my own datacenter. > - AI produces large amounts of mid-tier content, making it harder to discover exceptional human-created creative content produced after AI started to…

> Looks to me like I can run Claude Code without being able to afford my own datacenter. Until Anthropic bans you from using their data centers, at which point you cannot run Claude Code at all. Welcome to being a have-not (at least in a world where only genAI-assisted coding is acceptable). He who controls the GPUs controls the world.

Unlike GPT (I think?), Claude is served by all of AWS/GCP/Azure and you can go buy it from any of them.

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

#230

Post by tim333 »

gregdoesit wrote: post #2

I used to pay attention to Ed Zitron, exactly because he seemed to be someone who did the research, and looked at numbers. Until one day, I realized that seems to only look at numbers as long as it serves his agenda. When it doesn't, he looks away or makes the case for why the numbers are wrong, and shields himself from these "incorrect" numbers - or people who would point to anything suggesting that AI is not a tota…

I think he deliberately looks at doomer facts. I'm not sure it's cynical so much as a genuine belief that it's all nonsense. But IMO the belief is based on a lack of understanding of AI.
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