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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?

#921

Post by runarberg »

heaney-555 wrote: post #877
runarberg wrote: post #871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The center is not always the reasonable viewpoint. And sometimes the doom-and-gloom guy is correct.

Right, but as the article linked lays out in detail, Zitron has been repeatedly and consistently objectively incorrect .

There are plenty of doom-and-gloom people to go around. Even if Ed Zitron is wrong about a lot of things, the doom-and-gloom part may still be accurate.

Personally I am way to the left of Ed Zitron, I actually think he isn’t doom and gloom enough.

My personal prediction is that whatever happens the people with all the money will find a way to spin the narrative in their favor and history will judge people like me (and Ed Zitron) as having been wrong.

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

#922

Post by scared_together »

pyrale wrote: post #794
scared_together wrote: post #666

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 augu…

The added value other than the stock market would be in making major life decisions.

In the case of the 2008 crisis, specific knowledge of the timing could matter for buying or selling a house.

In the case of technological predictions, specific knowledge of the timing could affect whether you want to take a university program in a given field or join a certain company.

If a predictor can’t help with picking stocks or making big decisions, then what are these predictions for, entertainment? Actually an HN comment on Dan Luu’s post about futurists really did suggest that futurists are practically entertainers.

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

#923

Post by Analemma_ »

DrewADesign wrote: post #911
rrrx3 wrote: post #873

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ed's whole cornerstone thesis is that "AI doesn't work." Like, if I had to sum him up in a short sentence, that's what it'd be that or "Angry but doesn't know much"

No, the cornerstones of his thesis are: - LLM’s potential and capability are dramatically overstated - Business leaders are either driven by the Emperor’s New Clothes effect, or the legitimate fear of stock price or valuation drops, to admit it. - The amount of money being dumped into this industry will never pay off. He’s snide and condescending, to the detriment of his message. I can completely understand why peopl…

> No, the cornerstones of his thesis are: [...] The amount of money being dumped into this industry will never pay off.

That has only been a cornerstone of his thesis for the last 10 months or so, once Claude Code and Codex began making gobs of revenue. Before that the cornerstone of his thesis was "nobody will ever pay for AI" and then he silently pivoted, without acknowledging any error, once it was clear that was not true.

This is what bugs people about Zitron and why people aren't listening to him. He's has repeatedly been proven wrong, and every time it happens he just silently moves the goalposts and never admits any mistakes. It's fine-- actually, correct-- to write someone off once it's clear that every time they get disproven they'll just move to a new thesis instead of reflecting on what went wrong and what assumptions might be fundamentally incorrect about their thinking.

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

#924

Post by tim333 »

misswaterfairy wrote: post #468
tim333 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patrick Boyle had a vid specifically on whether there was Enron style fraud. The conclusion was no, though he thinks things may be a bit bubbly https://youtu.be/NufJ7g63KSY

It's worth considering that it might not be 'Enron-style' fraud, because that's the best comparison have at the moment. What event did people compare Enron to, before Enron became 'Enron'? It's probable we're witnessing an entirely new fraud, we just don't have all of the details yet.

Boyle's take was the companies have iffy financing but it's all declared in the small print in their financial reports so not fraud as such, but they kind of rely on the public skipping over that and not caring. It reminds me a bit of the dot com bubble when people bought into companies with terrible finances but just didn't bother about that in the boom.

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

#925

Post by ersatz-matty »

> I don't benefit in any particular way if AI does well, except insofar as anyone who holds broad index funds benefits, but I do care about accuracy.

Does Dan Luu still work at Nvidia?

> I had ChatGPT give me a list of predictions (with no attempted tilt towards correct or incorrect predictions) and then I skimmed/read the posts that ChatGPT linked to.

yeah alright

> If I really thought about it, I probably could've found something better to do with the time

Extremely likely.

> And yet, it would seem that my fact checking process is a lot more thorough than Zitron's.

Dan says in his post he fact checked with Chat-GPT and Claude, so: lmao.

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

#926

Post by queenkjuul »

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…

Utility for investors i guess sure, but for people that aren't investors, it mattered much less when RIM went under than that they still did.

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

#927

Post by braiamp »

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…

Ok, I was thinking that probably they were saying that he was accidentally right, but missed the timing. It's not that. It isn't that he was accidentally right in a certain scenario also. It's that "I reinterpret the prediction to make it fit my own vision of the world"... that's not how prediction works. Hell that's not how anything would work.

Here's an actual prediction I made about a year ago: LLMs have to demonstrate that they make productivity gains that explain the costs or economics will make this problem solve itself, via higher energy cost and loss of business/productivity.

That prediction is unbound in the time horizon but it's bound by conditions that explain the triggers and how they will behave. Such prediction is useful. Hell, I could even make a prediction on why the timeline can't be bound while making a prediction on the timeline: I predict that in the next 3-5 years this will have to solve itself, because there's a limit on how much money irrational actors can pour onto something that have limited value. 7-10 years is way too much. I at least hope their coffers are that deep... if this drags on long enough, at some point people are going to want a change

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

#928

Post by queenkjuul »

scared_together wrote: post #922
pyrale wrote: post #794

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 augu…

The added value other than the stock market would be in making major life decisions. In the case of the 2008 crisis, specific knowledge of the timing could matter for buying or selling a house. In the case of technological predictions, specific knowledge of the timing could affect whether you want to take a university program in a given field or join a certain company. If a predictor can’t help with picking stocks or…

If you're starting a 4 year degree, whether the bubble bursts tomorrow or 6 years from now isn't that important: what's important is whether you want to start a degree in the bubble's field.

Likewise if you're signing a 30 year mortgage, knowing vaguely that the housing market is precarious is still valuable even if you don't know if it'll collapse tomorrow or in 6 years: you'll be on the hook either way if you sign today

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

#929

Post by queenkjuul »

retsibsi wrote: post #869
emp17344 wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is Zitron’s repute evaluated entirely on the basis of failed predictions? Predictions are incredibly hard. AI enthusiasts and thought leaders have made so many demonstrably incorrect predictions it’s hard to keep track. Based on this metric, Altman and Amodei should never be taken seriously again.

Isn't that pretty much his whole thing, confidently telling us what will happen? Of course his reputation should suffer if his predictions are wrong, as should those of the others whose correctness : confidence ratio is too low. (But if their reputation/power/relevance mainly comes from things other than their punditry, we can't really stop 'taking them seriously' altogether.)

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