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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?

#751
post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI companies will never go to zero because AI is part of the Military Industrial Complex now. All the money is coming from the military and government for surveillance and power and war.

Speaking of wrong predictions... the entire US military budget would have to be spent on OpenAI/Anthropic to keep the bubble from bursting.

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

#752
post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being early is the same as being wrong. Being lucky is the same as being right.

Nice saying. If in the prediction "given [intricate analysis] the whole [shebang] goes [bust] at [date]", only the [date] turns out to be wrong, I'd say it is still a valuable prediction however, though it was wrong.

Problem is even his “intricate analysis” was wrong: for example he was saying the models wouldn’t keep improving… in 2024.

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

#753
post #164

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?

#754

> 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?

#755

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?

#756
post #91

> 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?

#758

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?

#759

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.

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