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

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

#611

Post by dosisking » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 4:55 AM UTC

pocksuppet wrote: post #565

layoric wrote: post #562

This critique is leaning really hard on their interpretation of "dying". They take the literal company is going to fail type of dying where as I have always taken it the same way he has presented it in his "rot-economy" context. They can remain financially "successful", but more and more people hate their products, their products are getting worse, their products are "dying". Google Search is still a good example, th…

If I have a billion trillion dollars but 20% of the population hates me, but I get to live in a giant solid gold mansion with an army of servants keeping the 20% away from me, have I really failed?

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

#612

Post by simianwords » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 4:55 AM UTC

irishcoffee wrote: post #153

simianwords wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's it with people who think a bubble is literally destined to happen because of some religious belief that history repeats itself? I find it fascinating to understand the theory of mind of such people. So much confidence.

Just speaking from a gambling/odds perspective: the odds that a bubble never pops again in the history of mankind is a 1 out of 100, where the odds of a bubble popping again are 99/100. Your religious finger-pointing cracks me up.

i don't think you understand what you have written not what i have written

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

#613

Post by wmf » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 4:56 AM UTC

oofbey wrote: post #575

layoric wrote: post #562

This critique is leaning really hard on their interpretation of "dying". They take the literal company is going to fail type of dying where as I have always taken it the same way he has presented it in his "rot-economy" context. They can remain financially "successful", but more and more people hate their products, their products are getting worse, their products are "dying". Google Search is still a good example, th…

Was Microsoft dying under Balmer? I think we’d say yes. Even if the SEC filings indicated otherwise.

https://danluu.com/ballmer/

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

#614

Post by dosisking » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 4:58 AM UTC

pocksuppet wrote: post #568

sfblah wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, people who make fun of AI's ability to eliminate white-collar work are exactly the same people who are white-knuckling it, hoping they can make another $300k next year to buy that Rivian. People who don't need a salary look at the situation more objectively and, in general, can see that a lot of white-collar work is in peril.

The flip side of that is that at least half of all white-collar work was already useless before AI. If it hasn't already been eliminated, there's no reason to assume a-priori that AI can eliminate it.

If half of all white-collar work was useless before AI, and AI can replace those workers, then one can logically conclude that AI is useless.

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

#615

Post by VirusNewbie » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 4:59 AM UTC

arthurlockman wrote: post #536

VirusNewbie wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He charges people money for a newsletter that reinforces completely detached from reality viewpoints. If he's just making stuff up, that's called grifting, and it's good people call that out.

> if he’s just making stuff up, that’s called grifting So then we should be calling Dario out every time he opens his mouth, right?

yes, we should also point out when he makes silly predictions that don't come true.

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

#616

Post by dosisking » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 5:01 AM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #270

bogzz wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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One of the best heuristics I've seen on whether there will be a fruitful outcome in taking someone seriously is how often they invoke labels (name calling, etc). Hasn't failed - both in real life and online.

On the contrary, it has just failed.

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

#617

Post by vasco » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 5:03 AM UTC

> I suspect he's relying on people's eyes glazing over when they see numbers and just not thinking about what the numbers mean.

This is one of the most important learnings one can make from working in professional environments.

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

#618

Post by Zetaphor » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 5:07 AM UTC

j2kun wrote: post #581

jxcole wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If many people hated their products, they wouldn't use them. If they didn't use them they would not be financially successful. Google is not dying just because you personally have a feeling the results are worse than before and there is no definition of dying that would be consistent with Google's current state. If Google were to die they would die the way Yahoo did, because a competitor was demonstrably better than…

You must not talk to a lot of retired people, for whom every tech product is a bewildering nightmare.

They're the ones who are dying. Gen Z grew up on the cloud

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

#619

Post by arthurbrown » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 5:08 AM UTC

The author asks "How can people take this seriously?"

I would reply the same regarding this article. Nearly all of these refutations are unconvincing.

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

The rebuttal: "Zitron's argument at the time was that hallucinations were as good as they were going to get, which meant that AI performance is capped at 2024 levels. Both the overall prediction and the mechanism were wrong. This one seemed wrong at the time, in that I noted here in 2024 that you can make AI code halfway decently by just putting it in a loop and having it run until the code compiles and tests pass"

Putting an LLM in a loop, burning tokens, and thrashing against a compiler and test suite is a ridiculous way to say that hallucinations have been "solved". Please. This is absurd.

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

#620

Post by oofbey » Wed, Sep 02, 2026, 5:12 AM UTC

wmf wrote: post #613

oofbey wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was Microsoft dying under Balmer? I think we’d say yes. Even if the SEC filings indicated otherwise.

https://danluu.com/ballmer/

Wow. Ballmer fans. Hot take - I like the novelty! And yeah, I never really thought about how Bing, Azure, and Office 365 are all actually stellar products. Somehow I missed that. Azure was particularly good in the early days when you could only run Windows servers, not Linux. That was also the Ballmer brilliance - cut off access to the alternatives and they’ll fade away to irrelevance. (Irrelevance is of course not the same as “dying”.) Along those lines, let’s not forget Windows Phone. Also underappreciated. Or Silverlight! Pure genius that one. So many gems from the Ballmer era.