Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

youtube.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 78 posts

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#61

Post by verdverm »

therobots927 wrote: post #60
verdverm wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of the comments here that turned into an ideological battle, and that Zitron is a talking head who makes hyperbolic statements within his sometimes valid points. He's playing for a particular crowd, not doing good journalism and reporting. See how his statements created ideologically based comments here? We'd prefer better discourse on HN.

For the record I can’t wait for the “ideologically based” comments after this trillion dollar Jenga tower comes crashing down. This place will be censored to shit of course. But that won’t stop people like me from rubbing it in. You know being a Ycombinator proxy, you would think you guys could take a little bit of shit. You certainly don’t hesitate to shove ai down the throat of everyone, without consent obtained.

I have no affiliation with YC or HN, just commenting about the likely reasons the community flagged it.

when the comments under a post become ideological, as they have here, there is high probability we will flag the post, regardless of the OP content

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#62

Post by mirrormirroron »

trio8453 wrote: post #4

I don't understand the people who have the patience to listen to Zitron. It's all one-tone takes with no place for nuance, you kind of know what he's going to say and the fact the mixes genuine criticism with bad faith arguments doesn't help.

> It's all one-tone takes with no place for nuance, you kind of know what he's going to say and the fact the mixes genuine criticism with bad faith arguments doesn't help.

This is hillariously self referential.

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#63

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

ElProlactin wrote: post #7
trio8453 wrote: post #4

I don't understand the people who have the patience to listen to Zitron. It's all one-tone takes with no place for nuance, you kind of know what he's going to say and the fact the mixes genuine criticism with bad faith arguments doesn't help.

> I don't understand the people who have the patience to listen to Zitron. It's all one-tone takes with no place for nuance... But that's why some people give him the time of day. A lot of people prefer to see things in black and white because it's easier on the brain. Basically, Ed is doing the easy part (pointing out the malinvestment) and not addressing the harder part, which is to predict what comes next in reali…

"The malinvestment got sorted out and couple of decades on, immense wealth has been created."

Only to be re-malinvested in the same garbage hype that created it

Aside from Amazon, who shifted from selling books online to becoming a middleman for sales of others' products, and eventually to selling "cloud" services, is this wealth really derived from "buying and selling stuff online" as envisioned at the time of .com boom

The truth is that no one at that time would have defined "stuff" as advertising services, "cloud" services, etc., and that is where most of this wealth has come from

The so-called "tech industry" is not comprised of the "buying and selling stuff online", it is comprised of offering software for free, e.g., in the form of a "web app", a remote "service", etc. This is used as bait, a Trojan Horse, with the goal of intermediating other peoples' use of the internet, collecting data and performing surveillance

The focus of this "industry" is not on deriving revenue through "buying and selling stuff online", it is on collecting data. The data collection and surveilllance is not only applied to commercial use of the internet, e.g., "buying stuff online", it is applied to all use of the internet

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#64

Post by cassianoleal »

ElProlactin wrote: post #54
cassianoleal wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think there isn't? Or in fact that this is all that's happening, _possible malinvestment_? Neolibs have the most rigid, binary and least creative minds I've ever encountered...

> Or in fact that this is all that's happening, _possible malinvestment_? Speaking of rigid and binary thinking: do you think there's absolutely no value to LLMs and that every investment in them is malinvestment? > Neolibs have the most rigid, binary and least creative minds I've ever encountered... If it's so simple, why don't you explain how The Government is going to prevent private individuals and enterprises fr…

> Speaking of rigid and binary thinking: do you think there's absolutely no value to LLMs and that every investment in them is malinvestment?

No, I think there is tremendous potential value in some areas.

> If it's so simple, why don't you explain how The Government is going to prevent private individuals and enterprises from investing in things that some people (who may or not be right) believe are worthless?

Honestly, I don't know.

How does The Government (which one?) prevent monopolies from forming? How does The Government prevent anti-competitive commercial practices such as dumping? How does The Government prevent any practices that are against the best interest of the people whom it's supposed to be representing?

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#65

Post by tim333 »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #42
ElProlactin wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand the people who have the patience to listen to Zitron. It's all one-tone takes with no place for nuance... But that's why some people give him the time of day. A lot of people prefer to see things in black and white because it's easier on the brain. Basically, Ed is doing the easy part (pointing out the malinvestment) and not addressing the harder part, which is to predict what comes next in reali…

Ed Zitron already completely defeated the comparison that this is just another dot com boom/bust with eventual payout. You're telling yourself a just-so story.

He completely defeated the comparison that it's got an eventual payout? How so?

I don't think I've seen any solid argument there - just pointing out current stuff has limits which is no proof it won't improve.

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#66

Post by tim333 »

Mistletoe wrote: post #20
therobots927 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be able to quantify how useful it is? Trillions are at stake here, so you’ll need to get specific.

Some numbers for the people in the back. https://isaiprofitable.com/

That doesn't actually show profit in the GAAP sense.

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#67

Post by tim333 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #57

Zitron is recently a very effective HN comment trigger Guaranteed defensive replies, usually personal attacks, HN commenters cannot seem to ignore him He must be on to something Big Tech is a slave to the dynamics of attention and popularity. They monitor these dynamics in real-time Perhaps Zitron is getting more attention and becoming more popular He was recently on Bloomberg and now CNBC

There's a big boom on and he's one of the two best known naysayers. The other, Gary Marcus, has gone a bit quiet recently.

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#68

Post by pasquinelli »

ElProlactin wrote: post #55
pasquinelli wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A lot of people prefer to see things in black and white because it's easier on the brain. people also tend to sheild their sacred cows with gestures toward nuance. maybe i'm misreading you, but it sounds like your criticism of him is he has correctly identified a problem and is reporting on it, but he hasn't taken the next step of predicting the next twenty years of consequences. sounds to me like a reporter doing…

A reporter doing his job well (in this context) would understand that using non-cash accounting events to make hyperbolic posts about cash burn is simply not honest. I don't have a problem with skepticism around AI investments (I agree with a lot of the skepticism) but if you're going to make public arguments about these investments, you should have a grasp of basic accounting principles.

can you go a little more into that? i myself am not an accountant; what is zitron being dishonest about?

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#69

Post by ElProlactin »

pasquinelli wrote: post #68
ElProlactin wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A reporter doing his job well (in this context) would understand that using non-cash accounting events to make hyperbolic posts about cash burn is simply not honest. I don't have a problem with skepticism around AI investments (I agree with a lot of the skepticism) but if you're going to make public arguments about these investments, you should have a grasp of basic accounting principles.

can you go a little more into that? i myself am not an accountant; what is zitron being dishonest about?

https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/

> Exclusive: OpenAI Losses Increased Nearly 8X in 2025, With Spending Hitting $34 Billion

Start with the headline. He's comparing the net losses between 2024 and 2025, but $41.55 billion of the 2025 loss is a non-cash charge from "changes in fair value of convertible interests and warrant liability" tied to the for-profit conversion. He notes this but doesn't actually seem to understand (or want to explain) what that means.

It's a non-cash charge. This is not money actually going out. It's not an operating loss.

He could have used the increase in operating loss or expenditures to make his point, but he basically chose the biggest number he could find and present it in a way that distorts what it is. The only two possibilities seem to be that he is trying to be bombastic ("8X") or he actually doesn't understand what he's looking at.

> It then marked $3.74 billion of losses as “net loss attributable to noncontrolling members capital,” leaving the net loss attributable to the company as $5.09 billion.

> It’s unclear what this means, nor how OpenAI reconciled the removal of $3.74 billion in costs.

This is so strange because it's basic consolidation accounting: allocating a share of losses to minority equity holders. There's nothing sinister about it, and it's not anything that's being hidden. This is a standard practice for companies and anyone who is positioning himself as having the requisite expertise to comment about the financials of AI companies (or any companies for that matter) should know this basic accounting and an absolute nothingburger.

There are other aspects of his writing that are pretty distorted. Like, he states "I’m not sure how this company finds a way toward any kind of sustainability or profitability" while ignoring that OpenAI actually improved its gross margin from around 28% to 43%. Whether it ever becomes sustainably profitable is still a big question mark but again, someone acting as a financial commentator should know this stuff. So he's either feigning ignorance to sell his narrative (and newsletter subscriptions), or he's really ignorant.

Re: Ed Zitron on CNBC: GenAI Doesn't Work, and Big Tech Is Out of Hypergrowth Ideas

#70

Post by ElProlactin »

cassianoleal wrote: post #64
ElProlactin wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or in fact that this is all that's happening, _possible malinvestment_? Speaking of rigid and binary thinking: do you think there's absolutely no value to LLMs and that every investment in them is malinvestment? > Neolibs have the most rigid, binary and least creative minds I've ever encountered... If it's so simple, why don't you explain how The Government is going to prevent private individuals and enterprises fr…

> Speaking of rigid and binary thinking: do you think there's absolutely no value to LLMs and that every investment in them is malinvestment? No, I think there is tremendous potential value in some areas. > If it's so simple, why don't you explain how The Government is going to prevent private individuals and enterprises from investing in things that some people (who may or not be right) believe are worthless? Honest…

> No, I think there is tremendous potential value in some areas.

So who is going to decide what has tremendous (real) value and what doesn't? And how are they going to force private individuals and enterprises to invest only in what has (in their estimation) value while at the same time ensuring that the level of investment permitted is sufficient to realize the value but not excessive so as to cause malinvestment?

Post reply on HN