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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?

#331

Post by 27183 »

ant_li0n wrote: post #210
maxglute wrote: post #200

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…

> The assertions he makes are not minutiae, he basically continuously says that all the big SW firms are walking corpses. He's not having a rational conversation about the long term prospects for companies who invest in AI.

...huh? How is it "not rational"? He's saying that, based on the financial information available, it appears AI doesn't actually make very much money given the capital investments. To the point that there may never be AI ROI.

I'm not sure how much this or that "prediction" matters. His arguments would be just as strong without them, perhaps stronger because they wouldn't give folks like Luu something to snipe at.At this juncture, the analysis seems sound. AI costs an absolute fortune and appears to make very little money, comparatively.

Is that irrational? IDGI. One needs look no further than Oracle to see a company in dire financial straits.

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

#332

Post by only-one1701 »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #330
greekrich92 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humility? I don't think they know what the word means let alone possess the capacity to demonstrate it.

Altman has admitted that some things are taking longer than he expected, and has walked one or two things back (usually to keep people from throwing bombs at his house, but still...) Zitron continues to boast of a predictive record entirely unblemished by accuracy.

The until Anthropic et al IPO to the tune of trillions Ed is more right than he is wrong.

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

#333

Post by api »

Zitron reminds me of a lot of people who got oversized reputations after the 2008 financial crash. They predicted it, or could spin past statements as predicting it, and rode off that.

But from that point on they basically assumed this role of what financial punditry call perma-bears, people who constantly predict financial doom. It gets clicks and sells subscriptions, which is probably why they do it. But from that point on their predictions weren't very good. If you constantly predict doom then every now and then you'll look like you were a genius, but it's just survivorship bias. People discount all the other times you were wrong.

I don't know a whole lot about Zitron himself. Didn't he get big calling BS on cryptocurrency stuff that actually was BS?

The problem is that AI isn't cryptocurrency. This is very real.

I do suspect there's some bubbly stuff around it. I think data center construction looks very bubbly, especially the totally ludicrous amount of permitted planned data center construction. I bet no more than 20% of that ever comes online. I'm sure there's some AI companies that won't make it, and a bunch that are overvalued. But AI as a whole is real, not just hot air.

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

#334

Post by achompas »

One thing I’m observing in these comments is a willingness of folks to project their own predictions onto Ed’s statements when validating their plausibility. Eg. “I think he’s wrong about the timing but I do expect AI companies to go to zero.”

You can do that, but then you’re no longer discussing his predictions. You’re discussing your predictions, and your own positioning.

Those differ from Dan’s essay, which engages with the literal text of Ed’s numerous predictions during 2024 and 2025 which are demonstrably invalidated by their measurable outcomes.

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

#336

Post by 1970-01-01 »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #327
1970-01-01 wrote: post #300

I was skeptical of LLMs making it to where we have them today, but the test results are evident, empirical, and hold up to hard scrutiny. I remain quite skeptical of a singularity event, GAI, and anything beyond what we've seen LLMs output today. It will get faster, cheaper, but not much smarter without another breakthrough. They will not be able to save the planet from their own pollution and overconsumption.

> but the test results are evident, empirical, and hold up to hard scrutiny Sorry which test results? The gamed benchmarks?

https://x.com/victormustar/status/2094901703468306626

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

#337

Post by tptacek »

solid_fuel wrote: post #280

I would be interested in seeing a similar list of predictions from Altman, Amodei, etc with annotations about how many have come true. Ed Zitron is a blow hard and frequently overstates things to the point where it is hard to take seriously, but so are the AI industry leaders. I have heard multiple breathless press releases warning that the end of white collar work is "just 6 months away" and that people not using th…

Dan Luu's piece talks about this! He gives the example of Ray Kurzweil, who is similarly catastrophically wrong about everything, just in the opposite direction as Zitron. Luu's point isn't that anti-AI analysis is bad; it's that Zitron is bad. Zitron is bad in this analysis no matter what Altman says. It could be the case that Altman is also bad.

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

#338

Post by lotsofpulp »

torginus wrote: post #259
maxglute wrote: post #200

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…

Hasn't AI been horrible for FAANG fundamentally? - They've all been compelled to build the same horribly expensive AI infra, to serve similar models that have no ability to lock-in customers - Google Search has to compete with LLMs - Meta hasn't demonstrated a credible argument on how they're planning to use AI. AI 'friends' would kill their business model. Their saving grace ironically is that people absolutely hate…

>Hasn't AI been horrible for FAANG fundamentally?

No. Net income is up quite a bit and profit margins maintained at Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Amazon. Meta net income is flat, but they are maintaining profit margins.

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

#339

Post by simonw »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #329
minimaxir wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

but the article cherry picks. the article ignores Zitron’s economic arguments about data center costs vs. future profite.

Are any of those predictions that have been proved right yet?

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

#340

Post by minimaxir »

torginus wrote: post #259
maxglute wrote: post #200

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…

Hasn't AI been horrible for FAANG fundamentally? - They've all been compelled to build the same horribly expensive AI infra, to serve similar models that have no ability to lock-in customers - Google Search has to compete with LLMs - Meta hasn't demonstrated a credible argument on how they're planning to use AI. AI 'friends' would kill their business model. Their saving grace ironically is that people absolutely hate…

> They've all been compelled to build the same horribly expensive AI infra, to serve similar models that have no ability to lock-in customers

Emphasis added, since having a horribly expensive AI infra allows offering enterprise contracts, which is a form of lock-in and has been pretty lucrative for GCP/Azure/AWS.

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