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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?

#981

Post by threatripper »

pocksuppet wrote: post #954
dash2 wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Have they improved? Is there evidence of that? Got a task you were doing in 2024 and 2026 and the results of each?

There is plenty of evidence that they have improved in all benchmarks and also in my private experience. But have they improved in the things they still fail at? No, they still fail at them. You need only one example of failure to prove that it still fails. They still fail a lot on many real world tasks.

So, depending on what you ask, they may have not improved even a tiny bit.

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

#982

Post by chrisco255 »

reticulates wrote: post #566
chrisco255 wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of startups are not funded by OpenAI or Anthropic. They are not a significant source of venture capital. Meanwhile, OpenAI is pulling in $40B+ per year and Anthropic $65B+ per year. You are mixing up valuations with liquid cash and you're also making sweeping statements about how those startups are spending their cash. A majority of a raise is not spent on AI compute. Situational Awareness blew up b…

You’re applying pre-AI investing to a post-AI world. Yes, a decade ago, a startup raised money and spent 90% of it on people. The people built software which had incredible margins. Build it and then print money for ever more. That’s not the case any more, these startups no longer have incredible margins, they’re not collecting $100/m per user and banking $99 of it. They’re collecting $1000 and sending $999 of it to…

$800M a year is less than 1% of their quoted revenues at $100B+ / year. Claiming credits as revenue would be tax fraud. Credits to clients for services are counted as debits against

There are zero serious companies collecting $1000 on revenue and sending $999 as a cost of goods sold to Anthropic/AI. It would be unprofitable to even run a proxy to Anthropic on such thin margins. But I digress.

No company was banking $100 and keeping $99 in the "before times" either. These are fantasy numbers not even the most highly optimized software company produced. As an example, Slack famously went public in 2019 and it had revenue of $401M with a gross margin of ~79%, meaning they were pulling in $316M in gross profit. That is the figure before labor, administration, R&D, sales & marketing, etc. They actually operated on a net loss after factoring for those expenses, despite their high gross margin, which is common in high growth startups (Amazon famously ran losses or marginal profits until decades after their founding because they continuously reinvested in expansion).

Credits reduce revenue by all basic accounting standards. You can accuse these companies of fraud, it is within the realm of possibility, but it would also be You are making conflicting arguments at the same time. There exist startups that are able to generate gross profit with some consumption of AI services, they are also able to invest nearly 100% of their capital into AI to generate those profits without needing to spend on traditional labor, and yet AI is not sustainable. By your own circular logic it is of course sustainable, but by grounded logic, you have to understand any business that goes from zero 4 years ago to $100B+ in annual revenue today with double digit growth rates is offering the world something of value. Anyone who has tried AI sees some value in it. There is some revenue and profit to be made here. Betting against that in the long term will just lose you money and sanity.

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

#983

Post by selfhoster1312 »

unreal37 wrote: post #857
eloisant wrote: post #836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like too many people have a binary vision of the world, i.e. you're either "pro AI" or "anti AI". Ed Zitron doesn't say that AI doesn't work, that its impact on the world will not increase. He's basically saying that (1) the current data center investments are based on unrealistic revenue projections and (2) hyperscalers are using accounting tricks to move around "money" in a circular way to make it look like…

If you ever listen to more than a couple of Zitron interviews, it's clear that he's not the "reasonable centrist" viewpoint on AI. He's the doom-and-gloom guy. Maybe there is someone out there positive on AI itself and calling out reasonable objections to some of the extreme things. But that's not Zitron.

As someone who's strongly anti-AI, i find Zitron to be absolutely too much pro-AI for my taste. He defends AI that's not LLMs. He barely touches on ecological impacts of AI, and barely mentions the enshittification of things. He's only really against the LLM craze, OpenAI/Anthropic over-evaluation (because Deepseek and local models will do the same for nearly free), and the crazy speculative bubble around datacenters.

If you find him very negative about AI, and i find him very positive about AI, he might just be this reasonable centrist.

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

#984

Post by selfhoster1312 »

8note wrote: post #948
eloisant wrote: post #836

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like too many people have a binary vision of the world, i.e. you're either "pro AI" or "anti AI". Ed Zitron doesn't say that AI doesn't work, that its impact on the world will not increase. He's basically saying that (1) the current data center investments are based on unrealistic revenue projections and (2) hyperscalers are using accounting tricks to move around "money" in a circular way to make it look like…

> Ed Zitron doesn't say that AI doesn't work Ive seen him say it does work pretty consistently? He also talks about other things that are more interesting, but he still says it doesnt work

From anything i read/watched of him, the shorthand is "it doesn't work". When taking more than a few words to explain, it means it's not replacing humans altogether, because the output is low-quality and needs human quality control. In the end, he's not arguing LLMs are not working (as in returning 500 in your browser), but that the promise of autonomous agents replacing humans for increased productivity is a lie and doesn't work.

I overall agree with his interpretation, but i'm afraid he might be wrong in the conclusion that noone is going to replace human labor with shittier agent slop. As long as we humans don't really have regulations and choice for proper quality of service, companies might just in fact enshittify everything with slop and make more profits while we suffer from lower-quality products and support.

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

#985

Post by watwut »

sfblah wrote: post #654
watwut wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This claim is just not true. And gets tiresome. You roughly end up where those courses claim to be in reading and listening - depending on language it can be over B1. (No course finishes B2, some do have B2 content). I ended up being able to watch some (not all) netflix series in foreign langue and I was in early B1 section. I clearly learned. You also dont have to pay.

I speak 4 foreign languages, at (fully tested through exams like the DALF, DELE, Goethe Institute) levels of C2, C1, C1 and B2. Take an actual test proving your knowledge and get back to me. I've spent a lot of time with Duolingo learners. They're all pre-A1. You're just lying to yourself to make yourself think your phone addiction isn't "that bad." Take a real language class.

> Take a real language class.

It is simple. I do not want to and have absolutely no reason to take the language class. So, why would I? They costs money, time and are not something to look forward to. I got actual visible measurable results. Why would I changed?

Besides, language classes also fail. Going to language classes for years and not being able to use the language in any practical situation was always fairly common result.

> I've spent a lot of time with Duolingo learners. They're all pre-A1.

I know people who tested B2 after doing nothing but Duolingo German. And like I said, I can watch Netflix shows and read books in language I used Duolingo for. That is definitely something.

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

#987

Post by root-parent »

janalsncm wrote: post #962
root-parent wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s more like if Zitron was a doctor his prognosis would be “you’re going to die on Tuesday” and you come back on Wednesday (after not dying on Tuesday) and he defends it by saying “everybody dies”.

I cant believe you think this is a logical argument :-) If these are humans please gives us LLMs :-)

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

#988

Post by ainch »

selfhoster1312 wrote: post #983
unreal37 wrote: post #857

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever listen to more than a couple of Zitron interviews, it's clear that he's not the "reasonable centrist" viewpoint on AI. He's the doom-and-gloom guy. Maybe there is someone out there positive on AI itself and calling out reasonable objections to some of the extreme things. But that's not Zitron.

As someone who's strongly anti-AI, i find Zitron to be absolutely too much pro-AI for my taste. He defends AI that's not LLMs. He barely touches on ecological impacts of AI, and barely mentions the enshittification of things. He's only really against the LLM craze, OpenAI/Anthropic over-evaluation (because Deepseek and local models will do the same for nearly free), and the crazy speculative bubble around datacenters…

Out of curiosity, what would you like to hear him saying about non-LLM AI?

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

#989

Post by mtrovo »

simonw wrote: post #835
mtrovo wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the scary part as this is not entirely true if you care to look into it. https://youtu.be/HXlcMbxzz0U?is=XdvcNJKGJxEwlB7I

The thing about $1.65T being "hidden from the balance sheets" is overblown. How do we know about that money if it's hidden? Because it isn't - it's in other public SEC documents, which the $1.65T claim also slightly misinterprets. https://finterm.ai/blog/big-tech-hidden-debt-fact-check.html is one good explainer on that.

[dead]

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

#990

Post by selfhoster1312 »

ainch wrote: post #988
selfhoster1312 wrote: post #983

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's strongly anti-AI, i find Zitron to be absolutely too much pro-AI for my taste. He defends AI that's not LLMs. He barely touches on ecological impacts of AI, and barely mentions the enshittification of things. He's only really against the LLM craze, OpenAI/Anthropic over-evaluation (because Deepseek and local models will do the same for nearly free), and the crazy speculative bubble around datacenters…

Out of curiosity, what would you like to hear him saying about non-LLM AI?

There's plenty of arguments to be had. I guess there could be some useful applications of non-LLM AI (eg. translation tools), but quality output is still a concern. Environmental impact is also still a concern. If output is of sufficient quality, who reaps the benefits is a concern ; if not, who pays the price of shittier products is a concern.

Whether LLM or non-LLM tech, the question of surveillance capitalism and how models need to be fed swaths of privacy-invading data (eg. self-driving cars filming everything all the time) is also a concern.

Overall, i think the ecological concern is still the biggest one. We are at the start of a major climate crisis, and any self-preserving measures were already hard fought by industry. I fear that any form of AI investment will lead (because it's already leading) to destroying any hope of saving an inhabitable planet.

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