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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?

#361

Post by minimaltom »

dofm wrote: post #288
Zigurd wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abo…

> 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. Zitron is fairly clear that nothing is going to happen for a year or so — he says himself that he thinks there's another round of funding possible for both OpenAI and Anthropic.

Idk about that. A bunch of his wrong predictions were predicated on things turning sour sooner than a "year or so" than now.

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

#362

Post by luke5441 »

supermdguy wrote: post #305
jsrozner wrote: post #216

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 o…

Wait are the hyperscalers booking unrealized gains as income? Or are they selling their positions?

As far as I understand GAAP reporting standards actually require them to report gains on those positions as "earnings". But they do report non-GAAP earnings sometimes excluding them. E.g. Google earnings per share last quater is $9.11 GAAP vs $2.85 non-GAAP (mainly because of SpaceX shares).

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

#363

Post by HDBaseT »

solid_fuel wrote: post #358
sroerick wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, as a former extreme skeptic, I watched a video from Eric Schmidt in early 2025 where he said that by the end of the year nobody would be coding, and that one was dead frickin on.

You may be living in a bubble. There are tons of developers still coding by hand, and many industries that don't trust machine generated code in general.

It does raise the question, what percentage of programmers are predominantly writing code by hand? Is it higher than 50%?

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

#364

Post by Calazon »

devindotcom wrote: post #212
Calazon wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is also very fair.

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

#365

Post by konmok »

pcstl wrote: post #218
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.

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 s…

I wouldn't really call cruelty or dishonesty a "skill".

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

#366

Post by mattbrewsbytes »

How often are people that are paid by their content attracting eyeballs correct? Isn't this a universal thing that people in these roles are constantly stating all sorts of things that never happen. This happens in sports media, politics, tech reporting, stock market predictions, etc.

Shouldn't society have a clever name for people playing these roles by now? Something catchy, insulting and based on truth might help call this out easier. I would throw influencers in there too, they are writing/video-loggin/podcasting for the same money outcome.

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

#367

Post by tty456 »

solid_fuel wrote: post #358
sroerick wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, as a former extreme skeptic, I watched a video from Eric Schmidt in early 2025 where he said that by the end of the year nobody would be coding, and that one was dead frickin on.

You may be living in a bubble. There are tons of developers still coding by hand, and many industries that don't trust machine generated code in general.

Do they also not trust their code review processes?

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

#368

Post by sweezyjeezy »

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…

Did you read the article? It paints the picture of someone who does not in fact have a good track record on the 'fundamentals', even if his broad thesis of a bubble may prove correct.

e.g. when he suggested Anthropic may be fudging their revenue numbers / projections - which was actually due to him making some careless mistakes in a spreadsheet

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

#369

Post by iknowSFR »

supermdguy wrote: post #305
jsrozner wrote: post #216

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 o…

Wait are the hyperscalers booking unrealized gains as income? Or are they selling their positions?

A recent Zitron claim is that they’re booking unrealized gains tied to these private labs. Google’s net revenues being a recent example.

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

#370

Post by nozzlegear »

I don't know anything about this guy, but based on the discourse every time he comes up, Ed Zitron is a more polarizing figure for HNers than even Trump. Everyone here loves trying to dunk on the guy, yet he's apparently living rent free in everyone's social media feeds.
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