21–30 of 64 posts
I value material that makes me re-visit my own assumptions about the world.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel obliged to say that this isn't true of Ed at all. He does a lot more "real journalism" than most of the journalists I've interacted, and grills the people he's interviewing on technical details more than anyone else I've seen in the field. I had a stressful five minutes this morning talking about using floating point numbers being weird for some financial applications because he wouldn't accept a shoddy answer…
> Objecting to his writing and tone is one thing, but Ed is not dishonest or sloppy. Do you think somebody can honestly hold all of these opinions at the same time? > this shit doesn't impress me even a little > everything I am describing is unfathomably dangerous > expensive, stupid, irksome, quasi-useless new product > I refuse to sit here and pretend that any of this matters. So it’s simultaneously unimpressive, u…
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Zitron is a PR dude who runs a PR company and has never had any experience, training, or meaningful contributions to technology. He found twitter success posting shittakes about AI, ran that into a podcast, and now he's in the FT. Zitron is a professional contrarian and PR man, saying "AI sucks" has found him fame and success.
It's concerning that FT don't take more of an econs-of-AI-investment angle, explored here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45399893 (Maybe Doctorow has too much of a Guardian vibe, compared to Zitron?) The Economist would argue that the investor is always right, so maybe that's too hard of a line for FT to press
I've said this many times but I'll say it again. The FT is not some single opinion org. It has many writers and many editors of various opinions. The FT itself does not take any angle, only it's writers and editors, who can have contradictory views and still publish articles in the same media org.
This holds for most newspapers and makes that whole fake news argument so infuriating. As if journalists had even 15 minutes in a day to coordinate how to present an issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Viralized lukewarm hot takes expanded to tl;dr pseudointellectual drivel that makes readers feel sophisticated for powering through.
I started listening but got too reminded of the Rush Limbaugh Family Guy episode to continue more than a couple of times. It's all rage. 5 minutes of hate for our generation. Not constructive and not healthy.
I can’t read the linked FT article but I wanted to mention that Ed Zitron’s podcast Better Offline is interesting for me because he has a contrarian view of tech that is often different from my own. Some of his recent podcasts on the funky economics of excessive AI investments and data center investments vs. any real payoffs for society. I feel my own views slightly shifting when I listen to him. I value material tha…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel obliged to say that this isn't true of Ed at all. He does a lot more "real journalism" than most of the journalists I've interacted, and grills the people he's interviewing on technical details more than anyone else I've seen in the field. I had a stressful five minutes this morning talking about using floating point numbers being weird for some financial applications because he wouldn't accept a shoddy answer…
> Objecting to his writing and tone is one thing, but Ed is not dishonest or sloppy. Do you think somebody can honestly hold all of these opinions at the same time? > this shit doesn't impress me even a little > everything I am describing is unfathomably dangerous > expensive, stupid, irksome, quasi-useless new product > I refuse to sit here and pretend that any of this matters. So it’s simultaneously unimpressive, u…
> ... this shit doesn't impress me even a little. Wow, you created a superficially-impressive research project that's really long and that cites a bunch of shit it found online that it made little attempt to verify?
> ... everything I am describing is unfathomably dangerous ... expensive, stupid, irksome, quasi-useless new product... Generative AI is a financial, ecological and social time bomb ...
> I'm tired of reading stories about Sam Altman perpetually saying that we're a year away from "everything changing" that exist only to perpetuate the myth that Silicon Valley gives a shit about solving anyone's problems other than finding new growth markets for the tech industry. I refuse to sit here and pretend that any of this matters.
So he's saying it's a bubble, and yes it can be unimpressive (when pompous claims are examined), dangerous and stupid (because it's a bubble), and at the same time can not matter (because its inflated value is based on claiming it does matter).
The research is unimpressive, the bubble is dangerous, the product is stupid, and the tech doesn't matter as much as it is claimed to.
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> this is being driven entirely by spite not insight Zitron is a PR dude who runs a PR company and has never had any experience, training, or meaningful contributions to technology. He found twitter success posting shittakes about AI, ran that into a podcast, and now he's in the FT. Zitron is a professional contrarian and PR man, saying "AI sucks" has found him fame and success.
It's concerning that FT don't take more of an econs-of-AI-investment angle, explored here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45399893 (Maybe Doctorow has too much of a Guardian vibe, compared to Zitron?) The Economist would argue that the investor is always right, so maybe that's too hard of a line for FT to press
I've said this many times but I'll say it again. The FT is not some single opinion org. It has many writers and many editors of various opinions. The FT itself does not take any angle, only it's writers and editors, who can have contradictory views and still publish articles in the same media org.