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Ed Zitron is mad as hell

ft.com

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Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell

#51

Post by frozenseven »

runlaszlorun wrote: post #35
luma wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is being driven entirely by spite not insight Zitron is a PR dude who runs a PR company and has never had any experience, training, or meaningful contributions to technology. He found twitter success posting shittakes about AI, ran that into a podcast, and now he's in the FT. Zitron is a professional contrarian and PR man, saying "AI sucks" has found him fame and success.

Meanwhile, he's done deeper analysis than anyone else I've seen on financial statements and actual costs from AI for the large players and I absolutely don't think he's wrong. Unfortunately, this seems to strike a chord for you.

When confronted with an actual analysis from a technical person, he immediately resorts to insults and hand-waving: https://old.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1n2c12q/arti...

Not unlike his blog posts and podcasts. Spiteful insult-laden rants (he even admits to this on occasion). If you're looking for a financial analysis on AI, I'd literally look anywhere else.

Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell

#52

Post by throw0101c »

Is the "mad as hell" an allusion to the movie Network?

> In one impassioned diatribe, Beale galvanizes the nation, persuading viewers to shout, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" from their windows. He is soon hosting a new program called The Howard Beale Show, top-billed as "the mad prophet of the airwaves".

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_(1976_film)

Scene:

> It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone."

> Well, I'm not going to leave you alone.

> I want you to get mad!

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RujOFCHsxo

* Transcript: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechne...

Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell

#53

Post by pizlonator »

frozenseven wrote: post #51
runlaszlorun wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, he's done deeper analysis than anyone else I've seen on financial statements and actual costs from AI for the large players and I absolutely don't think he's wrong. Unfortunately, this seems to strike a chord for you.

When confronted with an actual analysis from a technical person, he immediately resorts to insults and hand-waving: https://old.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1n2c12q/arti... Not unlike his blog posts and podcasts. Spiteful insult-laden rants (he even admits to this on occasion). If you're looking for a financial analysis on AI, I'd literally look anywhere else.

To be fair that actual analysis had a lot of assumptions and zitron was pointing out the hand waviness of those assumptions.

Super weird to say that someone is hand waving when what they are doing is pointing out that an argument is hand wavy.

Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell

#54

Post by JimDabell »

card_zero wrote: post #28
JimDabell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Objecting to his writing and tone is one thing, but Ed is not dishonest or sloppy. Do you think somebody can honestly hold all of these opinions at the same time? > this shit doesn't impress me even a little > everything I am describing is unfathomably dangerous > expensive, stupid, irksome, quasi-useless new product > I refuse to sit here and pretend that any of this matters. So it’s simultaneously unimpressive, u…

In context: > ... this shit doesn't impress me even a little. Wow, you created a superficially-impressive research project that's really long and that cites a bunch of shit it found online that it made little attempt to verify? > ... everything I am describing is unfathomably dangerous ... expensive, stupid, irksome, quasi-useless new product... Generative AI is a financial, ecological and social time bomb ... > I'm…

> The research is unimpressive, the bubble is dangerous, the product is stupid, and the tech doesn't matter as much as it is claimed to.

No. Why are you sane-washing him? That’s not what he said.

> everything I am describing is unfathomably dangerous

> I refuse to sit here and pretend that any of this matters.

He is very clearly saying two mutually exclusive things in the same article. He wants you to believe that AI is pathetic and useless, and he wants you to believe it’s unfathomably dangerous.

This is not the writing of somebody who has taken a cold, hard look at the facts and is trying to inform people. This is the writing of somebody who wants to make as many people despise AI as possible and is stringing together as many anti-AI positions as he can even though they cannot form a coherent, rational position together.

Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell

#55

Post by coloneltcb »

jsnell wrote: post #34
mark_l_watson wrote: post #21

I can’t read the linked FT article but I wanted to mention that Ed Zitron’s podcast Better Offline is interesting for me because he has a contrarian view of tech that is often different from my own. Some of his recent podcasts on the funky economics of excessive AI investments and data center investments vs. any real payoffs for society. I feel my own views slightly shifting when I listen to him. I value material tha…

Interesting if he really is more convincing in speech than in writing. His writing is certainly flamboyant, but the aggression and expletives seem more targeted at hyping up people who already believe the things he writes, not for making people change their minds. He found a niche in anti-tech grift, and is now exploiting the niche for all he can. But you might want to actually fact-check a few of the things he says…

This is exactly on point. Also, his day job is shilling AI companies.

Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell

#57

Post by frozenseven »

pizlonator wrote: post #53
frozenseven wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When confronted with an actual analysis from a technical person, he immediately resorts to insults and hand-waving: https://old.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1n2c12q/arti... Not unlike his blog posts and podcasts. Spiteful insult-laden rants (he even admits to this on occasion). If you're looking for a financial analysis on AI, I'd literally look anywhere else.

To be fair that actual analysis had a lot of assumptions and zitron was pointing out the hand waviness of those assumptions. Super weird to say that someone is hand waving when what they are doing is pointing out that an argument is hand wavy.

Martin Alderson didn't comment on anyone's "asshole" or cite tabloid-level hearsay as an accurate source of information.

Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell

#58

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #21

I can’t read the linked FT article but I wanted to mention that Ed Zitron’s podcast Better Offline is interesting for me because he has a contrarian view of tech that is often different from my own. Some of his recent podcasts on the funky economics of excessive AI investments and data center investments vs. any real payoffs for society. I feel my own views slightly shifting when I listen to him. I value material tha…

"I can't read the linked FT article ..."

No archive.ph CAPTCHA:

   curl -K/dev/stdin  1.htm
   url https://www.ft.com/content/4c8d6420-d088-4660-8973-c4996cd990fb
   user-agent "Mozilla/5.0 (Java) outbrain"  
   header accept:
   eof
   firefox ./1.htm

Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell

#59

Post by ludicity »

JimDabell wrote: post #54
card_zero wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In context: > ... this shit doesn't impress me even a little. Wow, you created a superficially-impressive research project that's really long and that cites a bunch of shit it found online that it made little attempt to verify? > ... everything I am describing is unfathomably dangerous ... expensive, stupid, irksome, quasi-useless new product... Generative AI is a financial, ecological and social time bomb ... > I'm…

> The research is unimpressive, the bubble is dangerous, the product is stupid, and the tech doesn't matter as much as it is claimed to. No. Why are you sane-washing him? That’s not what he said. > everything I am describing is unfathomably dangerous > I refuse to sit here and pretend that any of this matters. He is very clearly saying two mutually exclusive things in the same article. He wants you to believe that AI…

The first paragraph reads to me, clearly, as what he is trying to convey, and the latter was simple enough for me to break down into what the previous commenter suggested.

In any case, I just said I know him personally and he does take a cold, hard look at the facts, so that's that!

Re: Ed Zitron is mad as hell

#60

Post by packetlost »

duncan-donuts wrote: post #47
nchmy wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, he's a lunatic and/or grifter for that and many other reasons

Serious question – what’s the grift?

Ad revenue from podcasts? Building up a personal brand to monetize in arbitrary ways later?
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