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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?

#381

Post by RetroTechie »

simianwords wrote: post #78
Retr0id wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is invalid about the environmental angle? (aside from the dubious water claims)

Here's what I find invalid about environment angle. I fundamentally don't think it is wrong to increase emissions as long as you consider the tradeoffs and externalities. Every single action you do in life has externalities - if you start opposing all of them then what really is your point? You just hate people doing stuff. If you think emissions are so harmful, try putting a number to it. I implore you to do the exe…

> There's way more to lose by slowing down AI because of emission control than to gain by reducing emissions.

If AI works out as proponents would make you believe, then either you'll see masses of people out of a job - for which society is unprepared. Or you'll see a big, society-wide productivity boost. Read: consuming non-renewable resources on this planet even faster (not just energy).

Society as a whole would benefit if rollout would slow down. Give us time to reflect on those 2nd-order effects & how to address them. But instead we have the opposite: a crazy race with big AI labs trying to out-spend & out-do the other guy, ignoring externalities everywhere.

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

#382

Post by iLoveOncall »

aesthesia wrote: post #373
iLoveOncall wrote: post #282

Easy to claim things as wrong without prodiving any facts. Can I try? > But when people bring him up, they're of course not generally citing his anger Wrong. > Google has been increasing the relative priority of revenue over the user experience over time Wrong. > I'm curious what people do after being on the wrong side Wrong. Some of the claims categorized as "wrong" are also completely true, such as training hitting…

> Some of the claims categorized as "wrong" are also completely true, such as training hitting diminishing returns. New models are barely an improvement and most people I know stuck on Opus 4.6 over any newer one for example. OK, but the first instance of a claim of diminishing returns was in February 2024, when GPT-4 was the best model available. Do you really think improvement since then has been minimal?

I personally think improvement has been minimal since ChatGPT was released actually.

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

#383

Post by daishi55 »

sfblah wrote: post #99

I don't think Zitron is wrong, exactly. He's just early. There are a lot of analysts who have faced the same criticism over the past 10-15 years. IMO the issue is that they fail to understand the staggering size and scope of the government fiscal + monetary interventions across those years. Essentially, the government has jammed all the risk into the future to repeatedly rescue near-term results. I think something si…

I don’t think you read the article, which documents many cases of him being wrong

For example saying in 2024 that LLMs had peaked. That’s not early, that is already, definitively wrong.

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

#384

Post by applfanboysbgon »

ben_w wrote: post #348
conception wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stupidity has always been terrifyingly powerful.

Not really. Things can look stupid when we don't understand them, but there has to be some intelligence somewhere at some point even if the arrival of wealth then suffocates it with sycophants. If Musk or Trump or GWB were all *merely* the idiots they're often mocked as being, chances are we'd never have even heard of them. They almost certainly weren't even "merely average". Now, stupidity that arrives after the ban…

1. Trump was born wealthy. There was no "arrival of wealth" that smothered the intelligence you suppose he might have used to earn the wealth, because he didn't earn it.

2. You don't understand. Trump is successful because of his stupidity, selfishness, and vile behaviour. Not despite it. In 2016, the Republican primary field had 20 or so candidates on a wide range of reasonableness. Trump crushed them all, because he most represents the average Republican voter. If he were more intelligent, or if he cared more about anyone other than himself, they would not have voted for him. His arrogance, lack of intelligence and morals is quite literally his strength because it's what makes him so relateable to the American masses.

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

#385

Post by Denzel »

inferniac wrote: post #138
sfblah wrote: post #99

I don't think Zitron is wrong, exactly. He's just early. There are a lot of analysts who have faced the same criticism over the past 10-15 years. IMO the issue is that they fail to understand the staggering size and scope of the government fiscal + monetary interventions across those years. Essentially, the government has jammed all the risk into the future to repeatedly rescue near-term results. I think something si…

No, hes been extremely wrong multiple times, he should not be treated seriously Its silly to say hes just early, when his predictions give specific timelines that don't work at all - "so egregious that I am surprised it's not some kind of financial crime to say it out loud" — on OpenAI forecasting $11.6B for 2025 ( https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/ ) actual: $13.07B. source is his own scoop ( h…

The actual quote and topic is far different than you’ve portrayed it. Here’s the actual quote: “ yet the company says that it expects to make $11.6 billion in 2025 and *$100 billion by 2029*, a statement so egregious that I am surprised it's not some kind of financial crime to say it out loud.” from https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai-business/

He goes on to specifically discuss how unrealistic $100B by 2029 is given that OAI is structurally unprofitable.

The fact that you’re skewing your misinterpretation of what he said so much shows your own bias I’m afraid.

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

#386

Post by overfeed »

nomel wrote: post #262
Retr0id wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is invalid about the environmental angle? (aside from the dubious water claims)

I personally see it as: These companies subsidizing green energy expansion, because it's now the cheapest power to expand. These companies are going to help "correct" the widespread problem with utility monopolies, in the US. Datacenters are deploying their own power generation, partly because power cost no longer aligns with power generation costs . This mismatch is motivating research into local nuclear power gener…

> These companies subsidizing green energy expansion, because it's now the cheapest power to expand.

Unless you consider natural gass green energy, it's quite the opposite for the moment. This is because the AI build-out is about speed, not cost-effectiveness. That is why xai's Colossus I & II were illegally running gas turbines, and Google recanted its pledge for data center renewables targets.

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

#387

Post by minimaltom »

aksj5Hg wrote: post #181
hydrolox wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the blog: > Although Zitron's past predictions have generally been wrong, maybe he'll be right about something in the future. Perhaps some of these companies will have valuations decline for some reason. But, even if there's some kind of massive AI crash and OpenAI and Anthropic go to zero, in terms of the societal impact, if on top of that, some other event occurs that prevents further progress in models beyond…

[flagged]

You made a poor characterization of the content of the post and were rebutted with direct quotes. It happens, thats okay! Its not an attack on your character. There's no need to feel defensive!

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

#388

Post by sushisource »

skybrian wrote: post #194
DonsDiscountGas wrote: post #162

Consider two propositions: P1. AI is useful powerful and (P1a) will continue to get more useful and powerful at the same rapid pace it's been improving 2. AI companies are very profitable, and (P2a) will be wildly profitable (eg $30T TAM) in the next few years These are completely separate. But in practice people seem to be either proAI (both true) or anti AI (both false). P1 is clearly true and I find it hard to tak…

I can certainly see one happening without the other, but I'd expect P1 and P2 to be correlated at least some of the time?

In my mind the most obvious scenario where AI gets used a lot but AI companies (exlc. NVIDIA / chip makers) aren't worth much is the hardware becomes capable of running the current state-of-the-art models locally, cheaply, and those models are basically "good enough" for 90% of tasks.

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

#390

Post by minimaltom »

psvv wrote: post #171

I don't really care what Zitron says or pay attention to him because it seems clear to me he has some kind of agenda. But this article is not nearly as impartial as it claims to be. It interprets all Zitron's claims in a narrow and overly-literal way. Missing the point and refuting a technicality. For example, looking at the last 3 year's revenue/profit growth. This tells us nothing without looking at a larger contex…

Yeah, I think this is fair criticism, and I definitely felt the pointedness in the tone as well.

On the overly-literal / narrow thing, I think thats the culture around evaluating predictions overall. Like, all those posts around christmas where people make predictions and evaluate how last year went. The rigor is the norm.

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