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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?

#651

Post by hypfer »

physicles wrote: post #630
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…

They really were separate. BuzzFeed News won a Pulitzer in 2021 (source: Wikipedia). It's unfortunate that they shared the same name.

[flagged]

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

#652

Post by sfblah »

dosisking wrote: post #615
pocksuppet wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not completely. It just means you can have an AI do the useless busywork instead of a human. Something can be economically useful but still have proponents in a firm.

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

#653

Post by TulliusCicero »

overfeed wrote: post #375
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…

On the flip side, I also see many people taking this thread as an opportunity to shit on Zitron as a person, and not "discussing his prediction". Incompetent/ blow hard/ dishonest are ones I remember off the top of my head. AI by itself, is surprisingly polarized; Ed Zitron even more so.

I mean if his personal work is incompetent or dishonest...?

One of the easy ways to evaluate this is: how has he taken being incredibly wrong about his extremely confident predictions over and over and over?

Typically with people like this, they completely shrug off being super wrong. It's barely even a blip on their radar, and even bringing it up is a good way to get them to immediately attack you to deflect attention from how bad their predictions or assertions were.

If you're constantly making predictions on Topic X, and said predictions are consistently, wildly wrong, and you never actually grapple with that or acknowledge how wrong you were in the past, then that's, at the very least, intellectually dishonest.

But by all means, someone link us to his blog posts where he goes over his wrong predictions without excuses or deflections. I'd be happy to change my mind.

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

#654

Post by sfblah »

BeetleB wrote: post #265
sfblah wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How well I remember people pointing to the scoreboard in early 2008...

How well I remember someone predicting 7 of the last 2 recessions... Yes, one day , we'll have a recession. It doesn't mean the doom prophets were correct.

Agreed, but look at it the other way. Do you really think we'll never again have a recession? Some people genuinely believe that.

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

#655

Post by sfblah »

watwut wrote: post #167
sfblah wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Chegg, but the fundamental problem with Duolingo is their product does nothing to teach people a foreign language. The nasty reality of that product is if you go through their entire learning tree in a language, you might be at a CEFR level A1 for that language. And, you spent 10x the time and 10x the money you would have spent via something like Lingoda to get the same outcome.

This claim is just not true. And gets tiresome. You roughly end up where those courses claim to be in reading and listening - depending on language it can be over B1. (No course finishes B2, some do have B2 content). I ended up being able to watch some (not all) netflix series in foreign langue and I was in early B1 section. I clearly learned. You also dont have to pay.

I speak 4 foreign languages, at (fully tested through exams like the DALF, DELE, Goethe Institute) levels of C2, C1, C1 and B2. Take an actual test proving your knowledge and get back to me.

I've spent a lot of time with Duolingo learners. They're all pre-A1. You're just lying to yourself to make yourself think your phone addiction isn't "that bad." Take a real language class.

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

#656

Post by sfblah »

asveikau wrote: post #511
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.

It's not government stimulus driving this. It's that when you start with a "successful" company, the financial consequences of bad decisions or bad leadership can take a long time to have a negative effect, if at all, because financial success has a momentum to it. I left Microsoft during the windows 8 cycle in large part because I could tell nobody knew what the hell they were doing, which is an objectively true sta…

I'll let you in on something. The "inexplicable" success is Fed interest-rate policy plus deficit spending.

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

#657

Post by sfblah »

adventured wrote: post #268
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.

The US can safely reduce its deficit spending by $1 trillion and absolutely nothing big will happen. The US typically adds that much annual GDP every 16-24 months at this point. The notion that somehow the gigantic ~$31 trillion economy will fall apart if the outsized deficits don't continue, is very absurd. The exact same things were said of the Bush deficits. The US economy was supposedly dead in 2009-2010. Here in…

I disagree. The massive divergence between US household income and European household income since 2009 tracks almost perfectly Fed interest-rate policy and government deficit spending.

The federal government has spent the time since 2009 lighting the furniture and the house on fire to support unsustainable increases in domestic standard of living by effectively mortgaging the future. The problem we have dwarfs anything that was happening during the Bush era.

Likely the difference between you and me is this: I'm 50 years old, already wealthy from tech, and planning to leave the US. You're probably still trying to earn your way. Sadly, I'm pretty sure we've pulled the ladder up, and folks like you are going to reap the whirlwind, as they say.

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

#658

Post by scared_together »

socalgal2 wrote: post #424

Danluu claims Ray Kurzweil's predictions are wrong. I asked > list 50 predictions by Ray Kurzweil that he made before 2005, the date he made the prediction, and whether to not his prediction was correct. If it was correct, give some proof. Of the 50 that were listed, 43 were correct, 7 incorrect.

You "asked"? Who (or more likely, what) did you ask?

Dan Luu's analysis of Kurzweil is in this article: https://danluu.com/futurist-predictions/

In the "Appendix: detailed information on predictions" he lists the predictions, and their truth or lack thereof. He was using a list on Wikipedia: https://web.archive.org/web/20170225013846/https://en.wikipe...

For example Kurzweil apparently predicted in 2019 that:

> Blind people wear special glasses that interpret the real world for them through speech. Sighted people also use these glasses to amplify their own abilities. Retinal and neural implants also exist, but are in limited use because they are less useful.

> No

Note that if Kurzweil makes a prediction that an event will occur before year X, and it happens in year X + 1, that still counts as a wrong prediction.

Can you get your un-named source to provide a detailed list of these predictions as Dan Luu did?

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

#659

Post by Paria_Stark »

pocksuppet wrote: post #566
layoric wrote: post #563

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?

How morally bankrupt can one be?

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

#660

Post by jen729w »

emp17344 wrote: post #430
mvdtnz wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever listened to Zitron speak? He's not exactly the type to hedge his predictions behind careful language about how hard predictions are. He makes every one of these predictions with absolute confidence and conviction.

So does everyone else, including prominent AI enthusiasts and tech CEOs. And most of those predictions are wrong, because predictions are really hard.

But this doesn't excuse Ed making a living from awful predictions, surely?

If you realise you're bad at something it seems immoral to keep charging people for it.

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