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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?

#691
post #391
post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone with a bit of understanding of accounts and finance I don't think Ed's analysis is very good. He's not someone who would pass a finance exam.

Is the source material good, in your opinion?

> Is the source material good, in your opinion?

No. For the same reason listening to Jim Kramer to get market data is a bad idea.

There are other, better sources for those data.

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

#693
post #27
post #3

> For any of his posts that I read, while there are numbers thrown around, the numbers don't actually connect to a coherent argument. In many cases, as we saw above, the numbers don't even really support his argument (such as an MAU decline in Facebook causing Meta financial problems which would then cause Meta to spuriously insert AI in places it doesn't belong). I suspect he's relying on people's eyes glazing over…

I don’t understand the issue, cannot you ignore his commentary and just look at the numbers?

No, particularly not when he manipulates and selectively discloses them.

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

#694

Over the past few years, I had helped Ed with some difficult nuances around the obscure technical aspects of serving LLMs (e.g. benchmarks and model caching); he has also shouted myself and Simon Willison out positively multiple times. I stopped assisting him because he repeatedly misused said advice to the most cynical interpretation ("how can this be interpreted to make AI boosters sound crazy?) and often made it m…

He made a blog post, literally last month, and it said that AIs have no use outside of coding. It just shows he's done zero research on the things he talks about all day. Radiologists are using them, ad firms, artists, translators, law firms, auditors... It's hard to think of a white collar firm not using them.

One thing I've noticed is that since LLMs came out, scientific papers with poor English have essentially disappeared. Just one of the many ways that AI is changing the world. People are using AI in all kinds of fields.

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

#696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valid criticisms of AI - safety critics who think AI can take over the world like Yud (I find this the least credible but still valid) - Bernie type of critics who think AI can cause widespread job losses - Ruxandra Teslo who thinks AI can remove meaning which I feel is the most serious one [1] What are not valid - environmental like emissions and water usage - AI is useless and it will take the economy with it becau…

> - environmental like emissions and water usage Water usage, sure. But emissions has plenty of reasonable concern. There are the various xAI data centers have/are running using mobile gas turbines. In general, the extreme amount of power is going to put pressure on the grids. I hope this leads to the world doubling down on renewables to offset it all, but is that going to happen? Hell, the US actively paid [0] to st…

Eating meat is much worse than using AI though (both in terms of emissions and local environmental impact), yet no one talks about that

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

#697
post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sto…

> The prediction was early, overestimated how long of a tail RIM would experience, but how wrong was it? Was the prediction of some utility? Wrong enough that the utility is seriously diminished. Predicting a specific quantity dropping to a specific level at a specific date is a lot more valuable than saying “those guys are cooked”. And even if some minuscule utility existed: why should predictors be so coddled by th…

RIM is dying now -> useful for stock trading

RIM is dying in the next four years -> useful for life planning.

Anyway, i just wanna get on record that i predict an ai bubble pop event in the next 12 months.

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

#698

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…

You can define any word to be whatever you want and thus have linguistically correct predictions that are functionally useless.

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

#700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

S&P 500 - All time high DJIA - All time high Unemployment rate - Near all time low (for last 20 years) Number of US small businesses - All time high US GDP - All time high [Sources] https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-une... https://www.sellerscommerce.com/blog/small-business-statisti... https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP

They haven’t allowed a recession to happen since ~2009 when they massively inflated their way out of the worst of the last one. Learned to have the cake and eat it too. The only problem is after a few rounds of this the currency becomes worthless, and we’re well on our way. Inflation is a major component of those numbers rising.

GDP growth is adjusted for inflation. If you are seeing GDP growth then the population is getting richer (as a bloc).
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