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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?

#641

Post by albedoa »

hypfer wrote: post #624
minimaxir wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an unfair characterization of tech journalists in general. When BuzzFeed News was around, I worked closely with them on technical aspects and projects to ensure that everything was correct and accurate, and there were very receptive to it; it was not a "directionally correct" thing, the journalists wanted to avoid any unintentional. That was also one of the reasons I was open-minded to helping Ed even though w…

Not to dunk on your friends and all, but wasn't Buzzfeed the exact outlet at the forefront of dismantling the credibility of the word "journalism"? Like.. they surely had valid pieces, but I remember them also being the ones smashing the system and trust to pieces by being very social-media-engagement-native (for the lack of a better term). __ The LLM as this beautiful straight man default human simulator tells me th…

It's wild to watch you lecture someone who just made you aware of the topic that you are lecturing him about.

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

#642

Post by alastairr »

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…

"Being too early is indistinguishable from being wrong"

Tim O' Reilly

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

#643

Post by borzi »

I agree that Zitron is not honest and a denialist regarding the usefulness of AI, but the "profit" chart is just completely misleading as most of these companies have made large investments in OpenAI/Anthropic and list the gains in their share price as "profits" - so yes, while the asset prices are rising, that's typical in any financial bubble. Google is actually cash flow negative for the first time in history (which imo should be what measures profitability: income from products and services - costs to produce them) so Zitron's core thesis that there are no returns in AI is playing out as far as I can tell...

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

#644

Post by thelastgallon »

teekert wrote: post #635

Ah well, people love hearing what fits their world view. So if you hate LLM assisted development or vibe coding, Ed is predicting the future you want ("Don't be afraid, it's going away soon!"). As with any sudden change, there are people that tap the brake instinctively. And people like Ed thus get popular. That, and he has a nice way of speaking like everyone's gone mad but you and him ;) Have to admit I have enjoye…

I like this version:

AI Economics for Dummies: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/ai-economics-for-dummies

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

#645

Post by hypfer »

albedoa wrote: post #641
hypfer wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to dunk on your friends and all, but wasn't Buzzfeed the exact outlet at the forefront of dismantling the credibility of the word "journalism"? Like.. they surely had valid pieces, but I remember them also being the ones smashing the system and trust to pieces by being very social-media-engagement-native (for the lack of a better term). __ The LLM as this beautiful straight man default human simulator tells me th…

It's wild to watch you lecture someone who just made you aware of the topic that you are lecturing him about.

[flagged]

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

#646

Post by mrweasel »

emp17344 wrote: post #378
achompas wrote: post #335

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…

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.

Years back John C. Dvorak talked about predictions. He's was being ridiculed for his comment that there was "no evidence that computer users would want to use a mouse" (which was sort of true at the time). One of his point was that he had made a crazy amount of predictions on various topics, some came true, many didn't. People just remember the one you got right, and the ones you got horribly wrong.

Ed Zitron is just one AI crash away from being known as the guy who saw this coming. Everything else he has said can be completely wrong, he just needs to be somewhat correct on a minor crash.

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

#647

Post by thelastgallon »

borzi wrote: post #643

I agree that Zitron is not honest and a denialist regarding the usefulness of AI, but the "profit" chart is just completely misleading as most of these companies have made large investments in OpenAI/Anthropic and list the gains in their share price as "profits" - so yes, while the asset prices are rising, that's typical in any financial bubble. Google is actually cash flow negative for the first time in history (whi…

circular financing, layers of financial engineering: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48424983

Also, Google's recent profits are boosted from including SpaceX. $94.18 billion.

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/google-par...: On Aug. 6, Alphabet filed its 13F with regulators covering its second-quarter trading activity. Given that SpaceX went public on June 12, Google's parent company is now required to include its SpaceX holdings in its quarterly 13F.

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

#648

Post by Ekaros »

eutropia wrote: post #543

Do his predictions about the datacenters being a risky and unprofitable business suffer the same fate as the others?

Fundamentally someone at some point needs to pay for them. And this should mean by actual end customer payments. Now to get size of those payments and how much collectively needs to be spend start to look to me rather questionable. It is big number to spend.

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

#649

Post by TulliusCicero »

mrweasel wrote: post #646
emp17344 wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Years back John C. Dvorak talked about predictions. He's was being ridiculed for his comment that there was "no evidence that computer users would want to use a mouse" (which was sort of true at the time). One of his point was that he had made a crazy amount of predictions on various topics, some came true, many didn't. People just remember the one you got right, and the ones you got horribly wrong. Ed Zitron is just…

Correctly predicting nine out of the last five recessions.

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

#650

Post by scared_together »

torginus wrote: post #343

I find it ironic, that one of the most memorable articles Dan Luu has written imo is about how futurists faked 'exponential scaling' about semiconductors, and we ran out of the 'good kind' of scaling, Dennard scaling a while ago, and people interested in maintaining the narrative have been making up marketing numbers, which are believable to outsiders, but not to those who know: https://danluu.com/futurist-prediction…

I can agree that the Gemini usage number is a marketing number NOT to be taken at face value. And so does Dan Luu, in the "Some reactions to Zitron" section of the article:

> BTW, a funny thing about Gemini hitting 500M users being "so unrealistic that someone at Google should have been fired, and that someone is Sundar Pichai" is that Zitron has also (incorrectly) said that Google doesn't know how to grow, and that as a result they're shoving AI everywhere. Dennis Snell pointed out that, if Zitron takes his own statement seriously, Google can make Gemini's user numbers go to any number it wants by doing the exact thing Zitron said they would do, sticking AI everywhere.

> You can't actually take Zitron's statement about Google's lack of growth leading to AI desperation seriously and also take it seriously when he says that Sundar is committing some kind of gross malpractice by naming a number like 500M users.

Other than the Gemini usage numbers, which are the marketing numbers being taken at face value?

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