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Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

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Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#31

Post by abirch »

cassianoleal wrote: post #16
ElProlactin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the people who have the patience to listen to Zitron. It's all one-tone takes with no place for nuance... But that's why some people give him the time of day. A lot of people prefer to see things in black and white because it's easier on the brain. Basically, Ed is doing the easy part (pointing out the malinvestment) and not addressing the harder part, which is to predict what comes next in reali…

> It's a bit like the first .com boom. There was a huge amount of malinvestment and the bubble popping was painful That's the point though, isn't it? How detached from reality must you be to think this is ok? "Painful" is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence. Painful means people lost their jobs, families broke up, depression, probably suicide, other forms of violence... There must be a better way to go about th…

Not sure how you would do things better without a centralized planning committee. Most people believe that bubbles are bad, but what's the alternative? People want to get rich quick.

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#32

Post by therobots927 »

zulban wrote: post #21
therobots927 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be able to quantify how useful it is? Trillions are at stake here, so you’ll need to get specific.

I can't quantify how useful GitHub is as a software developer either. That doesn't prove it's useless, just that it's hard to quantify.

I never said it was useless. But you better be able to quantify the value of something you’re spending trillions of dollars building.

This seems like common sense to me.

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#33

Post by surgical_fire »

trio8453 wrote: post #4

I don't understand the people who have the patience to listen to Zitron. It's all one-tone takes with no place for nuance, you kind of know what he's going to say and the fact the mixes genuine criticism with bad faith arguments doesn't help.

I find more nuance in his arguments than on the typical AI hyper in yhe HN comment session. I can sort of predict the talking points I find here.

Anyway, I think Zitron is wrong on the usefulness of AI, but I don't need to agree with him on everything. That is the weaker part of his arguments anyway (and, unsurprisingly, where critics here choose to engage with).

He has a very solid point on the viability and economics of AI, and I am still to see facts that contradict his analysis there.

In fact, what spooks me about AI is not that it can replace me. It can't, that much is clear. I am spooked about the probable economic downturn that it will spawn. All the reckless spending is fun until the bill has to be paid.

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#34

Post by cassianoleal »

ElProlactin wrote: post #23
cassianoleal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a bit like the first .com boom. There was a huge amount of malinvestment and the bubble popping was painful That's the point though, isn't it? How detached from reality must you be to think this is ok? "Painful" is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence. Painful means people lost their jobs, families broke up, depression, probably suicide, other forms of violence... There must be a better way to go about th…

I won't dismiss the human cost but boom and bust cycles have existed for a very long time. This isn't a new thing today, and it wasn't new then either. You can view these things 100% cynically, or you can also consider the possibility that markets over (and also under) shooting are also a form of discovery in which the value of new business models, technologies, etc. are determined. While I'm not personally a fan of…

> net-net it's probably better to live in economies where capital is abundant and malinvestment is possible, than to live economies where the opposite is true.

This is a false dichotomy. Not everything needs to exist at the extremes.

> boom and bust cycles have existed for a very long time. This isn't a new thing today, and it wasn't new then either.

Murder and domestic violence have existed for a very long time. Racism existed for a long time. Slavery existed for a long time.

Things can be fixed, or at least improved to reduce the human cost associated with what's essentially a governance choice.

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#35

Post by rcxdude »

cassianoleal wrote: post #16
ElProlactin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the people who have the patience to listen to Zitron. It's all one-tone takes with no place for nuance... But that's why some people give him the time of day. A lot of people prefer to see things in black and white because it's easier on the brain. Basically, Ed is doing the easy part (pointing out the malinvestment) and not addressing the harder part, which is to predict what comes next in reali…

> It's a bit like the first .com boom. There was a huge amount of malinvestment and the bubble popping was painful That's the point though, isn't it? How detached from reality must you be to think this is ok? "Painful" is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence. Painful means people lost their jobs, families broke up, depression, probably suicide, other forms of violence... There must be a better way to go about th…

I don't disagree, but there's a big difference between 'this is massively overinvested and valued and that's distorting the market around a useful product' and 'this is all basically a scam with no value to it whatsoever'. For some reason a lot of AI critics seem to be really hard pushing on the latter part despite it being by far the least credible take at this point. It might be overused, it might have some big negative externalities (though these are often overstated), it might have sucked up way more capital than it deserved, but it's also still very useful and valuable for quite a lot of people.

(to me it's a bit like criticising oil companies by claiming that oil doesn't actually produce any useful power after its refined. There's a lot to criticise about them but the fact that their product is very useful is in large part why it's so hard to do something about the rest of the problems they cause)

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#36

Post by pasquinelli »

ElProlactin wrote: post #7
trio8453 wrote: post #4

I don't understand the people who have the patience to listen to Zitron. It's all one-tone takes with no place for nuance, you kind of know what he's going to say and the fact the mixes genuine criticism with bad faith arguments doesn't help.

> I don't understand the people who have the patience to listen to Zitron. It's all one-tone takes with no place for nuance... But that's why some people give him the time of day. A lot of people prefer to see things in black and white because it's easier on the brain. Basically, Ed is doing the easy part (pointing out the malinvestment) and not addressing the harder part, which is to predict what comes next in reali…

> A lot of people prefer to see things in black and white because it's easier on the brain.

people also tend to sheild their sacred cows with gestures toward nuance. maybe i'm misreading you, but it sounds like your criticism of him is he has correctly identified a problem and is reporting on it, but he hasn't taken the next step of predicting the next twenty years of consequences. sounds to me like a reporter doing his job well.

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#37

Post by jordemort »

returnInfinity wrote: post #25

Folks if you believe this Ed guy, you're soon going be really disappointed. LLMs are big, Codex app is huge. You can control the browser from within codex app with just natural language. Tell codex to perform a few actions, you go get coffee and come back to work done. This is real boost in productivity.

How many days in a row can you do this, and then still be able to get things done when Codex is unavailable or the price has been raised to $UNAFFORDABLE?

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#38

Post by Mistletoe »

Timshel wrote: post #26
Mistletoe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some numbers for the people in the back. https://isaiprofitable.com/

The header looks not too bad until you realize that 2/3 of the industry revenue is Nvidia ... If you remove the shovel sellers (Micron/Nvidia/AMD) revenue is left at $183B.

Yep you see how deep the scam goes. It’s like in the gold rush if the ONLY people that made money were the one shovel seller.

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#39

Post by cassianoleal »

rcxdude wrote: post #35
cassianoleal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a bit like the first .com boom. There was a huge amount of malinvestment and the bubble popping was painful That's the point though, isn't it? How detached from reality must you be to think this is ok? "Painful" is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence. Painful means people lost their jobs, families broke up, depression, probably suicide, other forms of violence... There must be a better way to go about th…

I don't disagree, but there's a big difference between 'this is massively overinvested and valued and that's distorting the market around a useful product' and 'this is all basically a scam with no value to it whatsoever'. For some reason a lot of AI critics seem to be really hard pushing on the latter part despite it being by far the least credible take at this point. It might be overused, it might have some big neg…

I agree with you, for what it's worth.

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#40

Post by cassianoleal »

abirch wrote: post #31
cassianoleal wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a bit like the first .com boom. There was a huge amount of malinvestment and the bubble popping was painful That's the point though, isn't it? How detached from reality must you be to think this is ok? "Painful" is carrying a lot of weight in that sentence. Painful means people lost their jobs, families broke up, depression, probably suicide, other forms of violence... There must be a better way to go about th…

Not sure how you would do things better without a centralized planning committee. Most people believe that bubbles are bad, but what's the alternative? People want to get rich quick.

This is also a false dichotomy. There's a lot in between neolib free markets and centralised planning.
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