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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?

#501

Post by drdeca »

Jtarii wrote: post #400
sfblah wrote: post #147

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.

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

#502

Post by comfysocks »

ngcazz wrote: post #438
comfysocks wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, “consistent with”. Thanks.

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

#503

Post by getnormality »

woodruffw wrote: post #492
getnormality wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Bullshitting is where you don't care about whether what you say is true. Your goal is to influence a certain way of thinking or feeling, and you just say stuff that you think will cause that in other people. Appearing to care about truth is not opposed to that, it's part of it.

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

#504

Post by goatlover »

sroerick wrote: post #342
solid_fuel wrote: post #281

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.

On a second reading I'm going to take this as sarcasm.

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

#505

Post by reticulates »

u1hcw9nx wrote: post #324
swiftcoder wrote: post #74

> Given how fast these companies are growing (in terms of revenue and profit), it doesn't seem that AI is, as Zitron implied, some kind of desperation move they're reaching for because "they don't know how to grow" and are all out of ideas Growth isn't a valid rebuttal, unless we can also sus out how much of that growth is tied up in circular financing of AI projects. We have a pretty good idea how much of Nvidia's v…

You are confusing Capex and revenue. The predictions were predictions of revenue. Circular financing of AI projects does not create revenue for OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, or Google. Only Nvidia benefits from it. Predicting revenue growth will stall and it does not was wrong.

Circular financing absolutely creates revenue.

A startup raises $50 million from OpenAI and Anthropic to finance API calls to OpenAI and Anthropic that they are using at a loss who in turn spend that money on compute with Microsoft and Google who in turn invest in Anthropic and OpenAI who then invest the startup using the startup’s revenue to value it… the cycle repeats.

There are multi-billion dollar valued startups invested in by OpenAI and Anthropic with hundreds of millions in ARR that are spending 90% of their revenue with Anthropic and OpenAI.

Situational Awareness, the fund that recently imploded, invested tens of billions into AI companies using their holdings in Anthropic to help finance the investments…

This could all work out fine in the long term, we’re all just speculating at this point, but the circular financing is absolutely making it to revenue because capital invested into startups is used to fund growth which is achieved by subsidizing costs incurred with OpenAI and Anthropic.

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

#506

Post by nl »

maxglute wrote: post #483
nl wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (2…

On a spectrum between tulip wilting and fiber build out, we know deprecation cycle of DC hardware leans towards tulips i.e. The numbers being cited is ~100B is well within accounting/ledger maxxxing tricks relative to current pool of investment. Luu is not analyzing number's he's just listing and believing numbers, and analytically entirely avoids the core Zitron thesis... once you tap out of easy investor $$$, FAANG…

> we know deprecation cycle of DC hardware leans towards tulips i.e. [1] is a reasonable discussion of DC cost models, which calculates depreciation as part of the annual cost.

> here is the rest of the order magnitude more $$$ that justifies existing spent relative to time frame coming from?

That money comes from long term debt (ie bonds by public companies[3]) and new investment into neo-cloud companies (ie, IPOs like 4).

The justification comes revenue. Eg, the NScale IPO above[4] has $51B in long term contracted revenue with an annual run rate of $500M.

[1] https://epoch.ai/data-insights/ai-datacenter-cost-breakdown

[2] https://www.cushmanwakefield.com/en/united-states/insights/d...

[3] eg https://www.yondrgroup.com/newsroom/press-release/yondr-secu... (but you'll find lots of similar bonds issued)

[4] https://dealroom.co/news/143730-nscale-eyes-september-us-ipo...

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

#507

Post by taberiand »

cduzz wrote: post #402
achompas wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think you’ve got it backwards I think one of Zitron’s problems is that his moral righteousness has blinded him to how embarrassingly incorrect he is about the AI space. It’s similarly hubristic with the benefit of shielding from his adversarial framing.

I have watched many of his screeds; I think he undercuts his thesis with excess bile. His core observation is that the unit economics of openAI and anthropic don't actually yield enough profit to pay off the huge debts that these two companies have incurred, and that as a result all the debt they've taken on will have to be written off which will trigger "the hyperscalers" to themselves suffer huge losses (likely wou…

Seems to me it's a reasonable position that runs face first into the irrational market.

Like they're digging a gigantic hole and Ed's up the top saying if you keep digging the hole will collapse (+ a whole lot of unnecessary swearing), and then a bunch of people jump into the hole to brace it and say "nuh uh, see we can keep digging" but really it's just postponing the inevitable and increasing the number of people who will be destroyed when it all crashes down

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

#508

Post by Terr_ »

Ygg2 wrote: post #475
Terr_ wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm convinced all of Kurzweil's predictions through the years can be simplified as (and originate from) "whatever least-implausible dream scenario allows a man of Ray Kurzweil's exact age and health to barely avoid the hitherto-universal icy grip of mortality."

This SMBC comic https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20100813.gif

Tangentially related in terms of "old stuff from other things I read", this 2006 critique [0] by Derek Lowe:

> Later in Kurzweil's article, he says:

> > "So what does the future hold? By 2019, we will largely overcome the major diseases that kill 95 percent of us in the developed world, and we will be dramatically slowing and reversing the dozen or so processes that underlie aging."

> [...] I really do expect to put cancer, heart disease, the major infections, and the degenerative disorders in their place. But do I expect to do it by 20-flipping-19?

It's hard to be optimistic when it's been those 13 years plus another 7 and somehow measles is back again, although I admit that's one isn't a pure technology-problem.

[0] https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/ray-kurzweil-s-fut...

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

#509

Post by serioussecurity »

pragh@ (Prabhakar) (yes his ldap is an anagram of graph) absolutely gutted the fire wall between search and ads.

To pick a specific piece of public information to support my claim: the previous SVP of ads quit immediately before the coup to start a subscription based search engine.

One nonpublic piece of information: basically every member of search leadership was pushed out within two years of his ascension.

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

#510

Post by maxglute »

tptacek wrote: post #500
maxglute wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

This just assumes Luu's piece has good argument that refutes Zitron's thesis when it doesn't. Saying Zitron is wrong because XYZ made $2 instead of $1 is different then Zitron staying XYZ is unlikely to make $10 in time when all signs still point to overperforming at $2 is not enough. It's a stupid reason to dunk.
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