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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?

#471

Post by solid_fuel »

nl wrote: post #467
solid_fuel wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could try checking the news. > In a remarkable interview with Y Combinator in November 2024, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, shared a vision that could redefine the technological landscape as we know it. Altman confidently revealed that OpenAI has a clear roadmap for achieving AGI by 2025. https://www.tomsguide.com/ai/chatgpt/sam-altman-claims-agi-i... Now Altman is claiming it'll be this year for sure: https://www.ms…

What specifically was he wrong about in either of those? I.e, something that can be falsified. > Altman claimed that AGI could be achieved in 2025 during an interview for Y Combinator, declaring that it is now simply an engineering problem. He said things were moving faster than expected and that the path to AGI was "basically clear." "AGI" isn't a useful term because - as noted in the article you linked - people dis…

Whoa, be careful, I think those goalposts just broke the speed of sound.

> Altman claimed that AGI could be achieved in 2025 during an interview for Y Combinator, declaring that it is now simply an engineering problem. He said things were moving faster than expected and that the path to AGI was "basically clear."

He was wrong that AGI was "now simply an engineering problem".

He was wrong that the path to AGI was "basically clear".

And if you want to play definition games and start waving your hands around and accept the claim "oh well actually we don't really know how to define AGI now", then he was wrong to claim that the path to AGI was "basically clear"!

Even if you play that game, it's still simple: either he was wrong about the path being clear, or he was wrong about the destination being clearly definable. That's still being wrong.

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

#472

Post by manlymuppet »

What’s particularly bad about Zitron is his financial analysis. Some people have the idea in their heads that “yeah, Zitron is wrong about a lot of things, but his economic data and analysis is tight.” That couldn’t be further from the truth.

The entire AI industry, especially the vested interests, are often full of shit, sure, but the sheer amount of misunderstanding that has surrounded the economy and its relation to AI has been mind boggling. There is much bologna being accepted as reasonable or even standard by HN comment sections.

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

#473

Post by marcosdumay »

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?

Yes, since 2024 the improvement has happened only in a few contexts, and the most famous¹ LLMs have also regressed in many contexts.

1 - Their numbers have also exploded, so I have no idea of any general rule.

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

#474

Post by melagonster »

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…

The end of white collar work mean that company can finish all jobs by new model.

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

#475

Post by Ygg2 »

Terr_ wrote: post #445
dinfinity wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He gives the example of Ray Kurzweil, who is similarly catastrophically wrong about everything Is he, though? It seems to me that a lot of his predictions were surprisingly close to the mark, especially given how long ago they were made.

I'm convinced all of Kurzweil's predictions through the years can be simplified as (and originate from) "whatever least-implausible dream scenario allows a man of Ray Kurzweil's exact age and health to barely avoid the hitherto-universal icy grip of mortality."

This SMBC comic https://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20100813.gif

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

#476

Post by paodealho »

nl wrote: post #410
tensor wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I'm aware, aside from toy prototypes, all software is still built by humans coding, albeit with better auto-complete.

This seems to be more a problem of your awareness than a lack of projects. Apart from every software engineer I know building almost completely with AI now there have been numerous projects posted on HN that are AI coded. There's also Claude desktop which is famously all AI built and very widely used.

Have you ever considered:

- that you don't know most people in the world

- that some of the people you know are using these tools because they were forced

?

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

#477

Post by dinfinity »

nl wrote: post #426
dinfinity wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He gives the example of Ray Kurzweil, who is similarly catastrophically wrong about everything Is he, though? It seems to me that a lot of his predictions were surprisingly close to the mark, especially given how long ago they were made.

Luu's piece linked his analysis! Kurzweil scores 7% accuracy. If you scroll to the appendix he grades individual predictions. https://danluu.com/futurist-predictions/

The list in the appendix is pretty telling: Yes, the moments are off by a lot, but many of the predictions describe reality well.

I'd say that 7% accuracy is on the low side and 86% on the high side. Looking through the list I'd put it more at 50-60% personally. For me that still means that I'd much rather hear about what he has to say about the potential future than most other people.

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

#479

Post by charleslmunger »

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?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-decries-accoun...

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

#480

Post by eaglelamp »

The first section of this post responding to "Meta, Google, and Microsoft are dying" is completely misrepresenting Zitron's arguments in the linked video. Zitron is making essentially an enshitification argument concerning Google and Meta. He's not talking about whether they will be able to squeeze out more revenue in the short run, but how they are willing to abuse their users to ensure that they do. Citing increased revenue for these companies is not arguing against Zitron's point.

Luu also fixates on Zitron mentioning Prabhakar Raghavan, but then proceeds to agree with Zitron's core point that Google has intentionally degraded it's search product to maximize revenue. Maybe Raghavan is not solely responsible, but it seems fair to hold him accountable for trends that accelerated under his leadership.

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