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

danluu.com

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

#451

Post by getnormality »

tptacek wrote: post #338
solid_fuel wrote: post #281

I would be interested in seeing a similar list of predictions from Altman, Amodei, etc with annotations about how many have come true. Ed Zitron is a blow hard and frequently overstates things to the point where it is hard to take seriously, but so are the AI industry leaders. I have heard multiple breathless press releases warning that the end of white collar work is "just 6 months away" and that people not using th…

Dan Luu's piece talks about this! He gives the example of Ray Kurzweil, who is similarly catastrophically wrong about everything, just in the opposite direction as Zitron. Luu's point isn't that anti-AI analysis is bad; it's that Zitron is bad. Zitron is bad in this analysis no matter what Altman says. It could be the case that Altman is also bad.

Altman and Zitron are like pro wrestlers. Their speech acts aren't for truth, they're for some spectacular effect on your feelings and your imagination that keeps you coming back for more.

I encourage anyone interested in this to read On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt, the best popular philosophy work in a long time.

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

#452

Post by jtcond13 »

supermdguy wrote: post #306
jsrozner wrote: post #217

Though the bubble has not popped, I don't see the following discussed in the post: Zitron would probably point out (as have others) that many of the hyperscalers are booking valuation increases in Anthropic, OpenAI as "Other Income", which is substantially increasing their reported revenue and earnings. It's roughly: - Hyperscalers like Goog, Meta, Msft invest cash in Anthropic, OpenAI, in exchange for equity - The o…

Wait are the hyperscalers booking unrealized gains as income? Or are they selling their positions?

Useful piece on this from Owen Lamont:

https://www.acadian-asset.com/investment-insights/owenomics/...

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

#453

Post by Supermancho »

applfanboysbgon wrote: post #374
tty456 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they also not trust their code review processes?

Have you considered that they do trust their code review processes, and that they don't trust the generated code because it doesn't pass their process?

> they don't trust the generated code because it doesn't pass their process

That's not a credible scenario. Developers can either make changes by hand, or by asking an LLM, which is the common process when there is a downstream failure. Humans dont metaphorically throw their hands up and say "well the tool doesn't meet our expectations at every scale so we're not going to use it". Granted, most developers scale back how much they rely on it based on experience (good and bad).

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

#455

Post by Pxtl »

jimmis wrote: post #354
solid_fuel wrote: post #281

I would be interested in seeing a similar list of predictions from Altman, Amodei, etc with annotations about how many have come true. Ed Zitron is a blow hard and frequently overstates things to the point where it is hard to take seriously, but so are the AI industry leaders. I have heard multiple breathless press releases warning that the end of white collar work is "just 6 months away" and that people not using th…

To be fair, Zitron's career is as a commentator. To some extent, I expect CEOs of companies to make ridiculous claims. At the end of the day, when shareholders come knocking, what they care about is whether or not your company is growing. No such mechanism for social media personalities. You can be wrong 90% of the time, and your audience will still praise you for the 10% of the time you were right.

I don't think of Zitron as a journalist, I think of him as an entertainer, no different from all the columnists paid to tell people that what they already think is right.

The fact that you're holding him to a higher standard than fabulously compensated professional c-suite officers whose products are used in matters of life and death is... kinda weird?

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

#456

Post by robomartin »

Everything everyone is predicting has almost zero value. Nobody owns a crystal ball. Right now there could be someone working in a garage somewhere that could shake the entire LLM world to the core with a unique insight and innovation.

Think about the world before the 2017 "Attention Is All You Need" paper.

Did anyone predict that paper, what preceded and followed it?

Nope.

Same case now.

Maybe the word "prediction" is the problem; "guessing" would be better.

OK, what the heck. I'll make a prediction too:

You better buy SpaceX stock now. The way things are going in the US, the only way we build AI data centers at scale will be in space. Politicians have turned data centers into punching bags to be used to gain votes. We can't build power plants and people are being led to believe all kinds of things. Regardless of which, if any, are true or not, the rate of construction of AI data centers in the US is and will be seriously constrained by realities on the ground.

Hence my prediction: It's all going to space.

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

#457

Post by GaryBluto »

solaire_oa wrote: post #406
bogzz wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Even if Zitron is hopelessly wrong and a complete fool, he's an engaging writer. Like the original article itself states, it's not about the numbers, it's about catharsis. The transparent absence of AI tells in his articles is refreshing, and just rampaging against the AI boosters who lack empathy and self-awareness (which so many of them absolutely do) is cathartic. Even if it's all bunk, fake, and stupid, it's nice…

This sounds incredibly neurotic and more than a little cultish. How long until Zitron starts a nice little AI-free settlement in Guyana?

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

#458

Post by Pxtl »

pcstl wrote: post #225
devindotcom wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>one's chosen enemies must be simultaneously terrifyingly powerful and incompetent dunces I've got some bad news for you.

I really don't find it coherent to call someone who you keep consistently losing to stupid.

That's literally the meaning of the statement "the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent".

Irrational means stupid.

Stupid can win for a very long time, and in the end the "loss" is born mostly by bag-holders.

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

#460

Post by blululu »

socalgal2 wrote: post #429
tptacek wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dan Luu's piece talks about this! He gives the example of Ray Kurzweil, who is similarly catastrophically wrong about everything, just in the opposite direction as Zitron. Luu's point isn't that anti-AI analysis is bad; it's that Zitron is bad. Zitron is bad in this analysis no matter what Altman says. It could be the case that Altman is also bad.

I'm going to need some evidence that Kurzweil was wrong. AFAICT he was right in 80%+ of his predictions with several more on track.

It’s linked in the article. The 85% accuracy is just shameless self promotion.

https://danluu.com/futurist-predictions/#:~:text=flowing%20i...

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