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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?

#261

Post by nomel »

Retr0id wrote: post #25
simianwords wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valid criticisms of AI - safety critics who think AI can take over the world like Yud (I find this the least credible but still valid) - Bernie type of critics who think AI can cause widespread job losses - Ruxandra Teslo who thinks AI can remove meaning which I feel is the most serious one [1] What are not valid - environmental like emissions and water usage - AI is useless and it will take the economy with it becau…

What is invalid about the environmental angle? (aside from the dubious water claims)

I personally see it as:

These companies subsidizing green energy expansion, because it's now the cheapest power to expand.

These companies are going to help "correct" the widespread problem with utility monopolies, in the US. Datacenters are deploying their own power generation, partly because power cost no longer aligns with power generation costs. This mismatch is motivating research into local nuclear power generation [1] (which is almost certainly an effort to force the monopolies, rather than actually deploy).

[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/big-tech-puts-finan...

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

#262

Post by flockonus »

Planktonne wrote: post #260

I do think you have to consider predictions in the context of the world around them; he's been incorrect, sure, but has he been more incorrect than the predictions of those opposing him? Being less wrong than others is the same as being more right.

No idea what you're trying to say... he's been directionally wrong for years as the article illustrates clearly.

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

#263

Post by hajile »

gryfft wrote: post #104
hypfer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have people telling us the next recession being imminent all the time. Yeah uhm so I'm not sure if you've like seen the world recently, but uh. Yea

I believe the saying goes: Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

The markets may not be claiming a recession, but the real world certainly is.

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

#264

Post by BeetleB »

sfblah wrote: post #124
thegrim33 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

S&P 500 - All time high DJIA - All time high Unemployment rate - Near all time low (for last 20 years) Number of US small businesses - All time high US GDP - All time high [Sources] https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une... https://www.sellerscommerce.com/blog/small-business-statisti... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP

How well I remember people pointing to the scoreboard in early 2008...

How well I remember someone predicting 7 of the last 2 recessions...

Yes, one day, we'll have a recession. It doesn't mean the doom prophets were correct.

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

#265

Post by Zigurd »

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…

After looking at Nvidia's orderbook, it's a reasonable conclusion that nothing bad will happen for at least another year. In which case Ed Zitron is off by at least a year.

But there are enough signs of trouble that could happen soon: Oracle debt is junk. OpenAI might not be on a viable trajectory to IPO. One or both of those could collapse the lower quality data center companies. Zitron is probably overconfident about a crash in the short term. Probably.

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

#266

Post by amoorthy »

Side-bar: I once hired Ed for PR for my startup. He was very difficult to work with, not even willing to share how he pitched our startup to publications because he considered the pitch his IP. So it was hard to know what was resonating or not.

I share this less to take a shot at Ed but more so that you all know to ask this if you ever hire a PR person.

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

#267

Post by adventured »

sfblah wrote: post #146
inferniac wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ( h…

I think it's fair to call his specific predictions "early." I'm saying his timelines are too short. Like almost all bearish market commentators, he doesn't understand the scope of the government stimulus. This is a systemic problem in market commentary. But, don't kid yourself. If the US stops massive deficit spending, a lot of what Zitron's saying moves forward on the timeline.

The US can safely reduce its deficit spending by $1 trillion and absolutely nothing big will happen.

The US typically adds that much annual GDP every 16-24 months at this point. The notion that somehow the gigantic ~$31 trillion economy will fall apart if the outsized deficits don't continue, is very absurd.

The exact same things were said of the Bush deficits. The US economy was supposedly dead in 2009-2010. Here in 2026 the economy is 50% larger inflation adjusted and it has left most of Europe in the dust. The housing bubble contagion was much worse than anything we're sitting on now with AI spend.

Why do I say $1 trillion instead of $2 trillion? There are plausible scenarios where increased taxes bring down the deficits (the Dems will take the House + Senate + Presidency, we'll see how much taxes go up), there's no plausible scenario where the deficits go away completely.

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

#268

Post by zmmmmm »

Obviously Ed is a special case, but let's be honest, pretty much anybody telling you they can predict the future is selling you BS. And that includes all the people confidently predicting he was wrong. The actual situation is, there are genuine unknowns driving things with significant influence, and nobody actually knows what is going to happen. At best, people can talk about risks and likelihoods of outcomes.

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

#269

Post by minimaxir »

hypfer wrote: post #163
minimaxir wrote: post #117

Over the past few years, I had helped Ed with some difficult nuances around the obscure technical aspects of serving LLMs (e.g. benchmarks and model caching); he has also shouted myself and Simon Willison out positively multiple times. I stopped assisting him because he repeatedly misused said advice to the most cynical interpretation ("how can this be interpreted to make AI boosters sound crazy?) and often made it m…

This reads slightly weird and more like a pledge of alignment than a statement from the heart. But apart from that, I guess that's always the learning? Journalists (or people labeling themselves as such) often have their own story they want to tell, and usually do so by building it out of little blocks of reality stacked together to form the desired picture. I would predict a similarly frustrating experience being eq…

That's an unfair characterization of tech journalists in general. When BuzzFeed News was around, I worked closely with them on technical aspects and projects to ensure that everything was correct and accurate, and there were very receptive to it; it was not a "directionally correct" thing, the journalists wanted to avoid any unintentional. That was also one of the reasons I was open-minded to helping Ed even though we ideologically disagree: the truth is what's important.

BuzzFeed News incidentally was how I first came across Ed on Twitter from his tech PR work about 9 years ago, back when he was writing guest editorials on Gizmodo about Person of Interest (which is very very funny in hindsight). It's from the heart that I'm a bit bummed out that things turned out this way.

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

#270

Post by BeetleB »

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]

One of the best heuristics I've seen on whether there will be a fruitful outcome in taking someone seriously is how often they invoke labels (name calling, etc).

Hasn't failed - both in real life and online.

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