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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?

#791

Post by ben_w »

ModernMech wrote: post #785
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These tech giants need AI to continue to grow This is unfalsifiable. AI is juicing the tech majors’ growth. And in the modern economy, it may be necessary for them. But did Disney need the internet to grow in the 1990s? No, probably not. Did streaming give it all kinds of new growth victors? Yes. And would ignoring the internet for that last three decades have probably killed it? Also yes.

How much did Disney invest in backbone Internet technologies in the 1990s?

Irrelevant. If AI turns out to be a short-lived fad, a bubble that pops and we all laugh at in a few year's time, Google's investments in AI were simply wasted, it does not follow that Google itself will die from having made the investment. Same for Meta, whose current name is due to a previous bad investment we laugh at.

The popping of the investment bubble of AI, that might kill Tesla and SpaceX, perhaps also Anthropic and OpenAI, but most of the tech giants won't be all that badly hurt.

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

#793

Post by ModernMech »

ben_w wrote: post #791
ModernMech wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much did Disney invest in backbone Internet technologies in the 1990s?

Irrelevant. If AI turns out to be a short-lived fad, a bubble that pops and we all laugh at in a few year's time, Google's investments in AI were simply wasted, it does not follow that Google itself will die from having made the investment. Same for Meta, whose current name is due to a previous bad investment we laugh at. The popping of the investment bubble of AI, that might kill Tesla and SpaceX, perhaps also Anthr…

Maybe, but it does make the analogy poor. Also what was said was they need AI to continue to grow, not that they will die without it. Some big companies just hit a ceiling and do consulting or become a bank. Look at GM or IBM. Apple is already halfway there.

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

#794

Post by pyrale »

scared_together wrote: post #666
rtpg wrote: 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…

> Predicting a specific quantity dropping to a specific level at a specific date is a lot more valuable than saying “those guys are cooked”.

It's also way harder, and the added value isn't that great, if you're not interested in playing the stock market.

As an example, explaining why the 2008 crisis was structurally bound to happen is probably more valuable to a policymaker than knowing whether it would start in august or september.

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

#795

Post by echoangle »

scared_together wrote: post #666
rtpg wrote: 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…

> why should predictors be so coddled by their observers?

Because prediction is hard and no one is so good at it that they won't make errors like that.

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

#796

Post by Zsfe510asG »

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…

Zitron predicted the downfall of Oracle as someone mentioned below. He also predicted that the overhyped data center construction plans (Project Stargate, repeated vague Nvidia pledges) would not materialize.

If he got MSFT's cloud revenue growth wrong for this year, how much of that is selling shovels to OpenAI and how much is circular?

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

#797

Post by Zsfe510asG »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #790
coldtea wrote: post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can do that, but then you’re no longer discussing his predictions. You’re discussing your predictions, and your own positioning. Depends if you care about the "prediction" part or if you care about the assessment of the situation (regardless of date). If someone in 2000 said "the subprime mortgages market is a bubble and will blow no later than 2003", they got the prediction wrong, but their assessment would be…

Predicting things 5 years too early is often as useless as not predicting anything. You can say "AI will be able to _____" and be right 99.9 times out of 100, but the question is when. You can say "The AI market will go to 0" and be at least directionally right eventually. But none of it matters if you get the timing wrong.

It would matter if we had politicians who acted before bubbles collapse instead of bailing out the perpetrators after the fact.

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

#798

Post by yousif_123123 »

Things in general I think he's right about:

1. Revenue if anthropic and openai is unlikely to grow to the high levels they need to pay for their commitments. Many of their heavy users (coding) will eventually offset a lot of usage to more efficient and cheaper open weight models. I know of people in a company I was at that spend thousands of dollars a month on tokens. I am sure that what they're using it for can be substituted in large part by way cheaper models.

2. A lot of corporate AI usage is being pushed by management that doesn't really understand the extent of its useful, and just wants to call themselves an AI-first company.

3. If this datacenter build-out proves to be beyond the actual demand, there might be a big economic crisis as to how much of the financial system is getting tied up with it (insurance money, private credit).

Whether openai and anthropic actually die, I'm not sure. But I don't think they'll be the next big tech companies. I think eventually they'll be absorbed by others.

The whole thing I think, can be summarized as: LLMs will be commodity like. And it's price will go down and eventually will run locally, it's not at all clear that this will bring AGI and that it's worth infinite amount (or trillions) of investment ahead of the actual demand or the AGI level do-it-all-for-you AI being reached.

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

#799

Post by SilverBirch »

fyredge wrote: post #465

Looking at the refutations of Zitrons predictions in TFA, it boils down to two categories: 1. Zitron claims model capability has peaked 2. Zitron claims AI lab growth (user and revenue) has stalled. In the first case, TFA refutes by claiming 'wrong' repeatedly, which does not convince me of anything. If anything, Zitron is probably right in this regard, since the majority of progress in recent LLM tech has been setti…

This is kind of a "I'm not here to tell you about Jesus he either lives in your heart or he doesn't".

I am an engineer, I have about 15 years of experience. I have been using AI in my job since mid 2025. Over that time it has gone from being an interesting toy that could kind of help but would often hinder, to being an absolutely explosively powerful tool. Just from personal experience it is the thing that has improved the most of any of my tools in career. And over that time my spend on AI has sky rocketed.

You don't have to believe me, it's obviously just anecdotal, but for anyone in the same position as me (And there really are lots of us), to claim model capability peaked in 2024 is just staggeringly dumb. It'd be like claiming electric cars peaked in 2008. I don't know how further to convey this to you.

It may very well be the case that the financial side is a bubble that horribly bursts. But the technology is real and the claims Ed has made are just wrong.

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

#800

Post by kif »

It is a curious exercise to look at the predictions of AI companies/their CEOs, too.

Frequently we'll hear from Amodei that AI is 6 months or 12 months out from replacing Software Engineers. Or we'll hear that their model is safe when regulators step in, but suddenly it's too dangerous and hacked its way towards its goal when other companies claim the same.

What they have in common with Ed Zitron is that they are both trying to sell you something.

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