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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?

#31

Post by devindotcom »

pcstl wrote: post #5

Zitron has become the distorted reflection of the very AI boosters he criticizes and mocks. I think the worst thing that happened to him was AI skepticism becoming a political position . This gave him a captive audience - as long as he says what they want to hear , which means that he can never ever concede that he might have been wrong or that AI might actually be progressing or having successes. This is not conduci…

>one's chosen enemies must be simultaneously terrifyingly powerful and incompetent dunces

I've got some bad news for you.

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

#32

Post by ChoosesBarbecue »

simianwords wrote: post #18
tolugenius wrote: post #14

I've been doubting him myself (his recent articles just hedge on data centers more than anything else) but then I want to ask, are there any valid critics of AI? Not a "code is bad but it'll get better" but actual criticism in the nature of the financing, politics, etc. I think separating AI as a tool and it's capabilities and AI as product that needs to make a profit is helpful, however most people are really hedgin…

Valid criticisms of AI - safety critics who think AI can take over the world like Yud (I find this the least credible but still valid) - Bernie type of critics who think AI can cause widespread job losses - Ruxandra Teslo who thinks AI can remove meaning which I feel is the most serious one [1] What are not valid - environmental like emissions and water usage - AI is useless and it will take the economy with it becau…

> - environmental like emissions and water usage

Water usage, sure. But emissions has plenty of reasonable concern.

There are the various xAI data centers have/are running using mobile gas turbines.

In general, the extreme amount of power is going to put pressure on the grids. I hope this leads to the world doubling down on renewables to offset it all, but is that going to happen? Hell, the US actively paid [0] to stop a turbine project.

[0]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1e1vg0gjl5o

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

#33

Post by fzeroracer »

Posting revenue numbers as an example of a company not dying seems rather foolish. Microsoft's gaming side is floundering and dying and Linux has been growing at an unprecedented rate as a result of Microsoft's decisions. Not to mention the geopolitical aspects at play here as countries make a serious consideration to drop Windows.

These companies are all heavily buoyed by their investments in AI which is essentially an oroboros of money.

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

#34

Post by achierius »

simianwords wrote: post #18
tolugenius wrote: post #14

I've been doubting him myself (his recent articles just hedge on data centers more than anything else) but then I want to ask, are there any valid critics of AI? Not a "code is bad but it'll get better" but actual criticism in the nature of the financing, politics, etc. I think separating AI as a tool and it's capabilities and AI as product that needs to make a profit is helpful, however most people are really hedgin…

Valid criticisms of AI - safety critics who think AI can take over the world like Yud (I find this the least credible but still valid) - Bernie type of critics who think AI can cause widespread job losses - Ruxandra Teslo who thinks AI can remove meaning which I feel is the most serious one [1] What are not valid - environmental like emissions and water usage - AI is useless and it will take the economy with it becau…

> - environmental like emissions and water usage

Those are two very different things, and the former should be a serious concern. If AI does indeed become a double-digit percentage of electricity usage as the AI labs themselves predict, then it becomes a significant contributor to emissions, full stop.

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

#35

Post by vehemenz »

If we sample from Zitron’s claims, a lot of them are wrong. Probably most of them.

I think his contribution to the discourse is the bigger picture. These companies are going into potentially economy-wrecking debt over a speculative future that looks much foggier than the last two previous technological booms.

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

#36

Post by cyanydeez »

simonw wrote: post #3

> For any of his posts that I read, while there are numbers thrown around, the numbers don't actually connect to a coherent argument. In many cases, as we saw above, the numbers don't even really support his argument (such as an MAU decline in Facebook causing Meta financial problems which would then cause Meta to spuriously insert AI in places it doesn't belong). I suspect he's relying on people's eyes glazing over…

[flagged]

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

#37

Post by whateveracct »

i relate to zitron cuz of how much he seems to genuinely hate the people in charge of this AI bubble. he, like me, seems to wish that when this all falls apart they get proportionate harm to go.

that'll obviously never happen. it's wishful thinking and venting tbh. that's why i like listening to his stuff.

it's better than reading the wholly AI slop docs my CEO keeps sending out

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

#38

Post by fwip »

reducesuffering wrote: post #29
baggachipz wrote: post #20

Hate on him all you want (he's gotten very repetitive for the sake of subscribers and reads), but the basic premise that the modern AI industry is a circular-dealing, point-of-diminishing-returns grift still holds. The bubble is here and the longer it inflates, the worse the pop will be. Sure the goalposts have moved, but the basic numbers don't math.

> The bubble is here Zitron implied 2 years ago that OpenAI would collapse by now. How's that bubble popping going? All NVDA+memory co+frontier lab numbers are accelerating

The market can stay irrational for quite a while.

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

#40

Post by karmakurtisaani »

simianwords wrote: post #18
tolugenius wrote: post #14

I've been doubting him myself (his recent articles just hedge on data centers more than anything else) but then I want to ask, are there any valid critics of AI? Not a "code is bad but it'll get better" but actual criticism in the nature of the financing, politics, etc. I think separating AI as a tool and it's capabilities and AI as product that needs to make a profit is helpful, however most people are really hedgin…

Valid criticisms of AI - safety critics who think AI can take over the world like Yud (I find this the least credible but still valid) - Bernie type of critics who think AI can cause widespread job losses - Ruxandra Teslo who thinks AI can remove meaning which I feel is the most serious one [1] What are not valid - environmental like emissions and water usage - AI is useless and it will take the economy with it becau…

Another one: data centers making electricity more expensive while not contributing much to the local economy.
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