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

>I think separating AI as a tool and it's capabilities and AI as product that needs to make a profit is helpful, however most people are really hedging in one camp or the other in their takes.

There are a myriad of people out there who have brought up genuine issues that AI presents, or preexisting issues that AI is exacerbating.

This series of articles is perhaps the best long form critique of AI as both a technology and an industry I've encountered [1].

[1] https://aphyr.com/posts/420-the-future-of-everything-is-lies...

Have you considered that they do trust their code review processes, and that they don't trust the generated code because it doesn't pass their process?

"I believe we're reaching the upper limits about what generative AI can do and how accurate its outputs can be."

This was said in February 2024. This is months before GPT-4o released. GPT 4.5 was released a year later.

I don't know anyone holding on to models of GPT 4.5 caliber, yet know 4o. ChatGPT 4o and 4.5 score 8 and 14 points on Artificial Analysis benchmarks. [1]

For perspective, Qwen 3.6 27B, which can be ran on single GPU setups, scores 3-5x that on modern benchmarks.

I don't know why anyone would even make a claim like that in the first place. It's like saying "Computers are never going to get faster". I feel like we could run out of sand and still have faster machines over time. Just a silly thing to say.

[1] https://artificialanalysis.ai/?models=muse-spark-1-2%2Cgemin...

Why is Zitron’s repute evaluated entirely on the basis of failed predictions? Predictions are incredibly hard. AI enthusiasts and thought leaders have made so many demonstrably incorrect predictions it’s hard to keep track. Based on this metric, Altman and Amodei should never be taken seriously again.

Right, but you know the thing. The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Predicting the medium future is hardest.

Markets don't just pre-plan their behaviour three years earlier and act it out lock-step. Other circumstances can change. By now, the world's financial press has covered some of the scariest aspects of this, and the situation has evolved.

There are other moves (the OpenAI/Blackrock AI debt securitization idea for one) that could delay it even further.

Zitron, I get the impression, has moved on to talking about the horsemen of the bubble apocalypse — talking about banner events that would need to happen for his predictions to be true. This is safer ground for a forecaster, because every forecast affects the future.

His shorter term predictions have not all failed by any means: he described Oracle's woes before the ratings agency downgraded them specifically because of OpenAI.

But most of his predictions will be irrelevant if the insane securitization plan happens. Because it will stop being about an AI bubble then; the worst risk will be the collapse of the entire US economy. It will need a different kind of analyst.

Me, I don't really care either way. I'm not on the cloud AI hype train, I don't work for a YC company, I'm not an American taxpayer so I will not be directly on the hook, and as Americans like to point out, the UK economy is behind on the whole AI thing so (unlike Ireland, which the USA will 100% leave to fail) we are ironically insulated. Maybe a couple of small British investment banks will fail and a pension fund or two will default.

For the most part we'll just watch the flames.

I do enjoy watching a Brit — albeit an ex-pat — upset a bunch of po-faced AI evangelists. It’s like “Itanic” all over again.

I think he is directionally correct. My own impression is that the bubble will burst at the worst time, and so my assessment is that, given the way this is entangled with the functioning of the USA as an economic power and with the future of the US political hard right, it will therefore darkly but poetically burst sometime around Labor Day 2028, which is the worst possible time.