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

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

#751

Post by IslandRebel »

minimaxir wrote: post #269
hypfer wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reads slightly weird and more like a pledge of alignment than a statement from the heart. But apart from that, I guess that's always the learning? Journalists (or people labeling themselves as such) often have their own story they want to tell, and usually do so by building it out of little blocks of reality stacked together to form the desired picture. I would predict a similarly frustrating experience being eq…

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…

> That's an unfair characterization of tech journalists in general.

Not at all. Journalists in general have a very poor reputation and Gaming/Tech journalists have an even poorer reputation. I have regularly found various stories to be incorrect and/or so poorly reported that I could spend all of 5 minutes doing a web search and find the original post / video or article and at best it is often misleading.

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

#752

Post by adroitboss »

root-parent wrote: post #745
janalsncm wrote: post #734

> February 2025: "I will keep writing this stuff until I’m proven wrong." Wrong (Zitron continues to write despite repeatedly being proven wrong) This was a good one.

The doctor said I was sick...but I did not die on Tuesday, so checkmate! You are confusing an imprecise prognosis with a false diagnosis. And The funniest part is that "he keeps writing, therefore he was proven wrong" contains no actual proof that he is wrong.

Imprecise and incorrect are the same thing when it comes to an exact science. His predictions include dates and that makes them binary. You can only be right or wrong. Being close is still incorrect, and he's not even close.

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

#753

Post by qnpnpmqppnp »

noobermin wrote: post #732
jen729w wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So Altman and Amodei should retire?

Altman and Amodei do not make a living out of that. They make a living out of being CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic. Whether they are doing well in this position is a different question, but that has little to do with their public predictions.

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

#754

Post by mtrovo »

simonw wrote: post #91
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…

As public companies, the megascalers publish pretty detailed financial reports.

This is the scary part as this is not entirely true if you care to look into it.

https://youtu.be/HXlcMbxzz0U?is=XdvcNJKGJxEwlB7I

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

#756

Post by RandomLensman »

johnbarron wrote: post #721
achompas wrote: post #334

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…

>> Those differ from Dan’s essay, which engages with the literal text of Ed’s numerous predictions during 2024 and 2025 which are demonstrably invalidated by their measurable outcomes. Dan Luu did not engage on anything more, than a disorganized wall of text, ranted like a teenager using toxic personal attacks, while obsessing over calendar errors and a placeholder in a spreadsheet. If this is what passes here for a…

What do you mean by "take down Bear Stearns"?

Btw., projections are just that - projections and I am not sure Acemoglu proved things mathematical (as in a mathematical proof) but rather within the context of a model/assumptions.

That financial markets/innovation can outpace the actual innovation is also not some new insight, but that alone doesn't necessarily make for a useful prediction.

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

#757

Post by qnpnpmqppnp »

johnbarron wrote: post #721
achompas wrote: post #334

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…

>> Those differ from Dan’s essay, which engages with the literal text of Ed’s numerous predictions during 2024 and 2025 which are demonstrably invalidated by their measurable outcomes. Dan Luu did not engage on anything more, than a disorganized wall of text, ranted like a teenager using toxic personal attacks, while obsessing over calendar errors and a placeholder in a spreadsheet. If this is what passes here for a…

If Ed Zitron was merely saying that there is a AI bubble on the markets that will ultimately collapse even if we're not exactly sure when and how, then such prediction would be less interesting but also much harder to disprove.

But that's not what he's saying. He's making very specific claims that are indeed proven wrong. You can't honestly say he's correct, and the burst of an AI bubble will not be a reckoning.

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

#759

Post by lstodd »

mschuster91 wrote: post #739
johnbarron wrote: post #721

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Those differ from Dan’s essay, which engages with the literal text of Ed’s numerous predictions during 2024 and 2025 which are demonstrably invalidated by their measurable outcomes. Dan Luu did not engage on anything more, than a disorganized wall of text, ranted like a teenager using toxic personal attacks, while obsessing over calendar errors and a placeholder in a spreadsheet. If this is what passes here for a…

> It took years to take down Maddoff, and more to take down Bear Stearns. It will take maybe 5 - 10 years of "Ed Zitron is wrong posts here" until Anthropic and OpenAI have to be bailed out by the US government, but the day of reckoning will come. Unfortunately, the market can stay irrational (far) longer than you can remain solvent. In any case... I doubt Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI have any kind of moat that can just…

> Who will get the bailouts instead is the pension funds and other investment vehicles

It's the same thing in the end. Bailouts don't come from outer space, we all pay for delusions of few.

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

#760

Post by ashkankiani »

This isn't a serious analysis of the actual thesis or any of the predictions in any meaningful way. I learned almost nothing from this shallow wall of text. It seems overly focused on "predictions" instead of the ideas behind the predictions, i.e.

- the existence and severity of the financial AI bubble

- the claimed efficacy of AI in terms of its utility vs the actual observed utility

- whether the net good provided by AI outweighs its very heavy costs

I find the section of listing a bunch of selected "predictions" and just saying "Wrong" to elucidate very little. Not that a sentence is sufficient to provide explanation, but Dan stops even doing that bare minimum partway through and just saying "Wrong" full-stop. The reasoning is left up to the reader I guess?

How is it wrong? What was the actual thesis behind it? Is the underlying idea wrong or just the specifics on execution? Was there undetermined factors that mled to the wrong prediction? What can we learn from those factors in order to update our model?

We saw that even though the underlying financials in 2008 were trash and lots of people knew they were trash, things didn't quite collapse in the time frame or way we expected, because an unknown part is how much shenanigans companies can do to extend the runway.

As an example, credit ratings agencies didn't drop ratings to match reality because of customer relation incentives, which is a factor that is not easy to account for and strongly affects the timing of the collapse.

I find the positive reactions to this blog to be confusing. I feel like I learned nothing at all, which makes sense considering under "why write this?" he says "I got four hours of sleep and my brain wasn't good for much of anything and I saw someone posted a screenshot of a reddit post dunking on Ed Zitron's prediction record."

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