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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?

#431

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…

My bet is that Amodei's claims about the dangers of AI are the most likely to come true – I'm predicticing amodei/anthropic will become the evil it was against.

Those claims are warnings if you're working class, and marketing if you're corporate.

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

#432
I've come to see Ed Zitron's dramatic predictions as reminiscent of a trend I noticed on YouTube a while back;

Whenever you'd look up anything pertaining to China's future, you'd inevitably find your screen plastered wall to wall with thumbnails of a photoshopped Xi Jinping, tears streaming down his face, next to large impact font text reading "CHINA WILL COLLAPSE IN X DAYS", with X varying from 1 to 30. Much like Ed Zitron's predictions, these events obviously never occur.

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

#433
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…

> you realize industry + ecosystem (politics/reporting) is tulip mania

It could be "tulip mania" or it could be "the internet".

Luu analyzed the numbers instead of just reacting to hype.

Specifically:

>> Oct 2024: OpenAI's forecast of $3.7B revenue in 2024 and $11.6B in 2025 and $100B in 2029 are absurd, "a statement so egregious that I am surprised it's not some kind of financial crime to say it out loud"

> Wrong (2025 goal exceeded, 2029 TBD but not an egregious financial crime level of implausible)

>> February 2025: Anthropic making $34.5B in revenue 2027 is "is laughable on many levels, chief of which is that OpenAI, which made around twice as much revenue as Anthropic did in 2024, barely made a billion dollars from API calls in the same year."

> Wrong (whether or not they make that in 2027, their 2026 ARR greatly exceeding that makes the 2027 estimate non-laughable)

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

#434
post #219

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…

> the system rewards are not what they think the system should reward

It's the grown-up version of nerdy kids hating "the jocks" in high school. We're all just a bunch of dumb kids. Maybe obsolete children, but still children when it counts.

That said, Elon Musk celebrated cutting funding that fed starving children and supported cancer research by waving around a chainsaw on stage. The richest man on earth did this because he wanted lower taxes... for himself.

When Anubis weighs his soul against the feather it's likely to completely destroy the scale.

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

#435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people (myself included) would love for it to be fraud. Because even if it's not fraud what is being done between NVidia, OAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Meta, Musk and Google is funny accounting at the very least. It's hard to take any part of what's going on seriously in the US at this point and I feel like the bigger downside to all of this is that if/when they get away with this, and there are no repu…

Yes, you can include me too. I’m aware enough of the details to know we don’t have any proof of anything fraudulent, but that whole situation is just so disgusting

Doesn't this ultimately boil down to: other people are spending their money on things I don't want them to? Which I mean, yeah I feel like this about tons of things all the time. I'm human too. But I know this is a petty part of me not a thoughtful part.

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

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think Zitron is wrong, exactly. He's just early. By that metric, so was Nostradamus. The apocalypse is coming for sure, we're just quibbling about the timeline. Realistically, timing is everything. You don't need to get it precisely right, but you also don't get a pass if you, for example, keep predicting an imminent recession through a decade of unprecedented growth.

"Being right at the wrong time is indistinguishable from being wrong” - Howard Marks.

Worse, actually, because the knowledge that you're right will keep you from changing course.

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

#437
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 gener…

> These companies subsidizing green energy expansion, because it's now the cheapest power to expand. Unless you consider natural gass green energy, it's quite the opposite for the moment. This is because the AI build-out is about speed, not cost-effectiveness. That is why xai's Colossus I & II were illegally running gas turbines, and Google recanted its pledge for data center renewables targets.

> it's quite the opposite for the moment

This point is about power generation companies accommodating the new power demand. It's true that the power companies are keeping coal and gas peaker plants running, that they planned to retire. But, actual additions are all green [1].

And, step functions are inefficient, always, so "for the moment" isn't so unreasonable. Dataceners are something like 100 million tonnes of CO2 per year, where cars are 1,800! So, this isn't some world ending emissions, within this moment. Everything is trending green. Why? Because it's cheaper (thank you China).

Xai using gas turbines is closer to my second point of side-stepping monopolies (improperly in that case), but is also just one example. See previous link for very long term, and all the datacenters using green energy, mid term.

Everyone will do what's cheapest. Luckily, China has made that solar power. We just need to get the monopolies off their asses, and put some of their record profits into actual power expansion. Lucky for them, everyone blames the data centers for all of this. Where I am, the single power company has already raised rates so much, in preparation for electric, that it's more expensive to fast charge an electric car at noon than to buy gas, with a planned 10% increase over the next few years. So, they're dodging criticism too!

[1] https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67205

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

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(edited to remove snark) Your comment seems to miss the point that the article does not (necessarily) have a problem with Zitron being insufferable/annoying/smug. It's that his predictions are verifiably wrong. It's one thing to be annoying and right. Zitron is annoying, but not right.

To be fair to Ed, I’d describe his usual argument (at least currently) as saying that Meta, MS, google are “mature” companies trying to be maintain the high valuations and growth of a young company, which they no longer are. If you take this to be his argument, then dan’s numbers are more consistent ed’s claim.

more consistent with? more consistent than?

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

#439
post #420

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…

> multiple breathless press releases warning that the end of white collar work is "just 6 months away" I'd like to see an example of this. I think Altman and Amodei have been quite sober with their actual predictions. They've said things like "models can now do white collar work" but haven't yet said it is the end of white collar work. The closest actual quote to this was in In March 2025, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei…

You could try checking the news.

> In a remarkable interview with Y Combinator in November 2024, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, shared a vision that could redefine the technological landscape as we know it. Altman confidently revealed that OpenAI has a clear roadmap for achieving AGI by 2025.

https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/chatgpt/sam-altman-claims-agi-i...

Now Altman is claiming it'll be this year for sure: https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/other/sam-altman-makes-bold-a...

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

#440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm going to need some evidence that Kurzweil was wrong. AFAICT he was right in 80%+ of his predictions with several more on track.

What? no human in history has gotten anything 80% right. You're doing exactly what this piece complains about.
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