How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been? • Hacker News Board

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

#491

Post by woodruffw » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:16 AM UTC

getnormality wrote: post #450

tptacek wrote: post #337

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.

Altman and Zitron are like pro wrestlers. Their speech acts aren't for truth, they're for some spectacular effect on your feelings and your imagination that keeps you coming back for more. I encourage anyone interested in this to read On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt, the best popular philosophy work in a long time.

Without reference to either person, I think this is essentially a misunderstanding of Frankfurt’s analysis: On Bullshit is about expressing sentiments without caring about their truth value, i.e. the concept of a “bull session.”

Both Altman and Zitron are the opposite of Frankfurt’s bullshitter, because they both appear to evince genuine care for the truth value of their position.

(Frankfurt is very subtle about this, in that he distinguishes the kind of performative lying you’re suggesting as distinct in moral and rhetorical content from bullshitting. The liar wants you to believe a specific thing; the bullshitter wants to regale you.)

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

#492

Post by pcstl » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:16 AM UTC

mapontosevenths wrote: post #433

pcstl wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

I'm not saying any of the people in charge are good people at all. I'm just saying that they are skilled at achieving their own goals, regardless of the morality or lack thereof of those goals.

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

#493

Post by rtpg » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:16 AM UTC

achompas wrote: post #334

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 engage…

Here's two possible set of predictions:

- a list of predictions that are entirely wrong, from A-to-Z, and are not even resembling what ends up happening

- a list of predictions that are wrong, but where the underlying points are in fact interesting and have some predictive value, and it's just the "last step" that is wrong

For example, one person might say "oh it's raining in Dallas therefore I should buy some TI stock". And we'll say for sake of argument that they say that even though it's nice and sunny in Dallas at the moment.

Another person says "Oh its raining a lot in Idaho and that is going to increase potato yields and therefore I will buy McDonalds stocks cuz fries will be cheaper". In this hypothetical it turns out McDonalds buys all their potatoes from ... Kansas or something instead (and it's a specific kind of potato in a completely separate market)... but Idaho potato yields _did in fact go up_.

An even more straightforward point: the iphone 3GS comes out in 2010, people are very hyped, someone looks at how RIM _still_ hasn't gotten its shit together and declares "RIM isn't going to to be able to stay profitable 18 months from now, they're gonna have their lunch eaten".

Turns out that RIM still made a healthy profit in 2010. and 2011. And 2012. 2013 was their first loss in a while... and then it wasn't until 2014 that they really got kicked in the face.

The prediction was early, overestimated how long of a tail RIM would experience, but how wrong was it? Was the prediction of some utility?

I'm saying this... it would be helpful if _some_ more AI companies flamed out. In some sense he does himself no favors by focusing on the corps with the biggest war chest instead of the various AI companies that spend a bunch to go nowhere fast and then have just disappeared.

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

#494

Post by rtpg » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:20 AM UTC

inferniac wrote: post #137

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…

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…

> OpenAI’s frontier-model API price fell from $30/$60 per million input/output tokens for GPT-4 to $4/$20 for GPT-5.6 Sol, alongside major capability gains.

on this specific point: tokens aren't fungible between models right? Like the argument Zitron makes is that improvements in output are due to, glibly, using more tokens to get there. We see people turn on new models and instantly use up all their tokens.

Like the actual measure is more something like "for this specific task, did it cost less now to do it than it did 3 years ago with these AI pipelines" right? The token pricing isn't actually relevant in that discussion.

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

#495

Post by Veedrac » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:21 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #425

dinfinity wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He gives the example of Ray Kurzweil, who is similarly catastrophically wrong about everything Is he, though? It seems to me that a lot of his predictions were surprisingly close to the mark, especially given how long ago they were made.

Luu's piece linked his analysis! Kurzweil scores 7% accuracy. If you scroll to the appendix he grades individual predictions. https://danluu.com/futurist-predictions/

If you grade what was linked by whether it is "approximately achievable today", and not some less interesting metric like being predicted for the correct year or if it was outcompeted by some other thing, he's closer to 70-90% depending on how close you're willing to grade.

It's very easy to say 'person X made a highly specific testable prediction, while respectable people said nothing like it would ever happen, and it only 90% happened, so person X was a fool unlike all the respectable people', but it's a trap. In reality Kurzweil was directionally correct about most things, overspecified the details, and had optimistic timelines in the way that everyone has optimistic timelines about everything.

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

#496

Post by maxglute » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:22 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #349

maxglute wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

When you predict a company is going to fail and instead it sets revenue records you're not "dramatic and exacerbated". You're refuted. Luu's post includes a (long!) list of specific predictions that aren't "exacerbated"; they're simply wrong. Luu's point isn't that AI is going to succeed or that the "AI bubble" will never pop. It's that these predictions are all wrong. If you agree "directionally" with Zitron, all th…

>You're refuted.

No, the whole thesis is XYZ likely fail because REVENUE RECORDS is not enough to dig out of hole relative to MAGNITUDE MORE SPEND. Saying Zitron wrong because XYZ made $2 for every $10 it spends revenue needed to justify spending. Fixtaing on the $1-$2 is misdirection/innumeracy, the thesis is in reaching the $10 relative to time, i.e. that $2 has to be $10 in X time, but the current velocity suggest it will not be.

I agree with Zitron directionally on accounting, I in fact disagree with him on AI... I am extremely AI pilled, i.e. I think there is a future where AI is worth trillions and will capture large swatch of economy. The transformation will be extreme, unlike any past revolutions... but the accounting suggest that future isn't coming in time to rescue current AI incumbents from finance blackhole, which some may survive, i.e. bail outs, nationalization... but the $$$ suggest however we get there, there will likely be massive $$$ corrections involved irrespective of adoption.

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

#497

Post by colordrops » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:22 AM UTC

pcstl wrote: post #488

colordrops wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's not a single data point, intelligence is a wide surface area where you can be smart in some areas and stupid in others. Furthermore whether you are being intelligent is relative to ideals and goals, and not everyone has the same ones.

"Capability to achieve goals" seems to be fairly independent of goals.

"Capability to achieve goals" is not synonymous with intelligence.

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

#498

Post by rapind » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:25 AM UTC

sroerick wrote: post #341

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…

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.

Everyone who started using claude clode when it came out in early 2025, knew it was coming (not quite yet). That felt more like reporting than prophesying.

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

#499

Post by tptacek » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:25 AM UTC

maxglute wrote: post #496

tptacek wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you predict a company is going to fail and instead it sets revenue records you're not "dramatic and exacerbated". You're refuted. Luu's post includes a (long!) list of specific predictions that aren't "exacerbated"; they're simply wrong. Luu's point isn't that AI is going to succeed or that the "AI bubble" will never pop. It's that these predictions are all wrong. If you agree "directionally" with Zitron, all th…

>You're refuted. No, the whole thesis is XYZ likely fail because REVENUE RECORDS is not enough to dig out of hole relative to MAGNITUDE MORE SPEND. Saying Zitron wrong because XYZ made $2 for every $10 it spends revenue needed to justify spending. Fixtaing on the $1-$2 is misdirection/innumeracy, the thesis is in reaching the $10 relative to time, i.e. that $2 has to be $10 in X time, but the current velocity suggest…

You keep saying this. It doesn't mean anything to "directionally agree with Zitron" in the context of this Dan Luu piece. All you're saying is "you're skeptical of AI and the AI business model". Bully for you! Lots of people are. Nobody is dunking on you for having that skepticism. They're dunking on Ed Zitron for making a long series of patently risible specific predictions.

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

#500

Post by drdeca » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 1:26 AM UTC

Jtarii wrote: post #399

sfblah wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Would you say the 2012 apocalypse doomsayers were correct but just "early"? After all the sun exploding in a billion years will ultimately prove them correct.

What? No, they were correct; the world ended in 2012.