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Zitron has become the distorted reflection of the very AI boosters he criticizes and mocks. I think the worst thing that happened to him was AI skepticism beco

• jansport123 17d ago
  he makes a shit ton of money off this - in this attention economy we are doomed, people of every side find that going all in on something, no matter how intellectually dishonest, is much more profitable. Extreme AI bros or Extreme AI doomers seem dishonest. AI is an amazing technology - it is simultaneously not going to replace us in the next 3 years and it's not total garbage - the truth lies in the middle.
• matthewdgreen 17d ago
  Audience capture is a bastard.
• jmuguy 17d ago
  Its pretty clear if you listen to him now he's just (re)playing the hits for his audience. Its like MSNBC/Fox News for people who think they're too smart to fall for that. I used to think he was just early on some of this stuff but the sheer amount of content he produces its clear he's just cashing a check.
  • iwontberude 17d ago
    [dead]
• fallingbananna 17d ago
  I have the exact same feeling about him. He has built a following of people that want to hear his extra skeptical views. And even if he changed his mind about some things, he cannot admit it, as that is not what his followers want to hear from him. It's rare that people make the news and build a following by saying a very balanced, down to earth opinions... unfortunately.
  • cyanydeez 17d ago
    right, and look at current American politics. One side tried to tailor normal, routine and rational POVs. The other... EDIT: I do find it amusing when I write these types of comment, then suddenly realize the irrational man childs of the far right nationalist republic ethnostatists think they're the rational ones.
    • fc417fc802 17d ago
      There are plenty of people on the far right whose positions are rational provided that you agree with their views. Conversely, there are plenty of people on the far left whose positions remain irrational despite that you might agree with their views. It is a serious cognitive error both to fail to see the irrationality of those you agree with as well as to fail to see the rationality of those you disagree with.
      • iwontberude 17d ago
        [dead]
  • noir_lord 17d ago
    > It's rare that people make the news and build a following by saying a very balanced, down to earth opinions... unfortunately. Just gets you disliked by both sides, "certainty sells". Some folks would prefer a confident wrong/simple answer over a "well it depends/is nuanced" answer.
  • bunderbunder 17d ago
    I almost wonder if it's even possible now that so many of us get our information through algorithmic feeds. I listened to one Zitron interview on YouTube and my home page was immediately crammed full of similarly foamy-mouthed AI critics. (As well as plenty more Zitron.) And it's suggested some people with un-nuanced pro-AI takes, too. But what the algorithm has never, not even once, given me is a sober voice that calls attention to the nuances.
• devindotcom 17d ago
  >one's chosen enemies must be simultaneously terrifyingly powerful and incompetent dunces I've got some bad news for you.
  • pcstl 17d ago
    I really don't find it coherent to call someone who you keep consistently losing to stupid.
    • conception 17d ago
      Stupidity has always been terrifyingly powerful.
      • ben_w 17d ago
        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 bank balance reads a billion dollars, that's terrifyingly powerful.
        • applfanboysbgon 17d ago
          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.
• senderista 17d ago
  "audience capture"
• quickthrowman 17d ago
  Ed Zitron’s job is to convince people to pay him money to read what he writes, of course he’s going to preach to the choir, they’re paying him to do that and he knows it. This is why I always consider the agenda of an author, Ed Zitron’s agenda is to make money from subscribers who read his writing.
  • dgellow 17d ago
    That’s level 0 analysis, you’re supposed to go to the next steps and not stop here…
    • ai_critic 17d ago
      Sometimes it really is sufficient to say "This person is a grifter and from that all else follows".
      • dgellow 17d ago
        It’s fine if you do not want to engage with the person‘s work, but source of revenue is just one component to evaluate if someone is grifting
        • MarkusQ 17d ago
          From the article "A more common defense is to say, just in general, people attack Zitron because of Y (usually his style), but they never address his points." The article "engages with Zitron's work"; the post you responded to merely extended the discussion to speculate on why Zitron might be producing it. (btw, for the record, I'm an AI-hype skeptic and _also_ an AI-head-in-sand skeptic; as far as I can tell, both sides are full of malarkey.)
      • devindotcom 17d ago
        and sometimes it isn't.
        • 17d ago
• ifwinterco 17d ago
  You're not wrong but for a lot of AI boosters it's also a political position - remember Anthropic and half of SV at this point is run by wide eyed effective altruists. Ultimately one cannot separate technology or science from politics, it's inherently political
• KaiserPro 17d ago
  Audience capture is a terrible thing. I'm not sure I have the force of will to not succumb to it. I think the only way to avoid it is to be so sure of the thing you are doing that the audience reaction is not the key metric by which you measure your success.
  • marcosdumay 17d ago
    "Popular topic-expert" is a really cursed career to exist. Ideally we would reward expert opinions on track-record, instead of how they make us feel. But we don't. Also ideally, the expert's conclusion wouldn't impact their ability to pay the rent (as long as it's correct), but again, that's not the world we live in.
  • hypfer 17d ago
    "Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer"
• sapphicsnail 17d ago
  > I think the worst thing that happened to him was AI skepticism becoming a political position. It is a political issue in the sense that the discussion around AI can't avoid material and cultural issues. Ed Zitron definitely has an ax to grind and I'm personally turned off by his hyperbole, but I don't think something being a political issue means it's not worth discussing. I've also noticed the pro-AI crowd pivot to accusing people of not having actual reasons for hating AI, being victims of Chinese propaganda, etc as a way to avoid actually talking about specific issues that people have about AI and DCs.
  • mapontosevenths 17d ago
    > It is a political issue in the sense that the discussion around AI can't avoid material and cultural issues. I'm not even sure it's political. I think it might be a religion now. He doesn't think that AI is bad, he believes that AI is bad.
  • Danox 17d ago
    It’s too late to worry about political repercussions everything‘s political at this point in time…
  • pcstl 17d ago
    I never said it's not worth discussing, I'm just saying that it becoming a charged issue was bad for Zitron specifically because his style of content fell in demand with the most irrational parts of the crowd.
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• maxglute 17d ago
  How? AFAIK, his arguments based around the economics remains the same, he just seems increasingly dramatic and exacerbated, which is understandable when you realize industry + ecosystem (politics/reporting) is tulip mania delulu and insists 1+1=100, or 30 trillion, or whatever. His position isn't based on AI progress - it's based on AI economics, at this point he can be an obnoxious rationalist slamming flat earthers - just because he's annoying/smug doesn't mean he's less right on fundamentals which if anything is more clear now.
  • tptacek 17d ago
    When you predict a company is going to fail and instead it sets revenue records you're not "dramatic and exacerbated". You're refuted. Luu's post includes a (long!) list of specific predictions that aren't "exacerbated"; they're simply wrong. Luu's point isn't that AI is going to succeed or that the "AI bubble" will never pop. It's that these predictions are all wrong. If you agree "directionally" with Zitron, all that means is that you're skeptical of AI. That's a totally reasonable position to have, but it has nothing to do with whether Zitron's predictions are good or bad.
    • maxglute 17d ago
      >You're refuted. No, the whole thesis is XYZ likely fail because REVENUE RECORDS is not enough to dig out of hole relative to MAGNITUDE MORE SPEND. Saying Zitron wrong because XYZ made $2 for every $10 it spends revenue needed to justify spending. Fixtaing on the $1-$2 is misdirection/innumeracy, the thesis is in reaching the $10 relative to time, i.e. that $2 has to be $10 in X time, but the current velocity suggest it will not be. I agree with Zitron directionally on accounting, I in fact disagree with him on AI... I am extremely AI pilled, i.e. I think there is a future where AI is worth trillions and will capture large swatch of economy. The transformation will be extreme, unlike any past revolutions... but the accounting suggest that future isn't coming in time to rescue current AI incumbents from finance blackhole, which some may survive, i.e. bail outs, nationalization... but the $$$ suggest however we get there, there will likely be massive $$$ corrections involved irrespective of adoption.
• axegon_ 17d ago
  I'm not a huge fan of his style myself but fundamentally he isn't wrong. The whole "growth" so far has been all show and no go. I see people pouring in millions only to end up bankrupt a few months later. Evangelists portray those instances as rare and simply "skill issues" and "they don't know what they are doing but I am". Anyone that's ever had several servers running at home and seen the electricity bill at the end of the month knows it - I do as well. And we are talking about servers that use power, only a fraction of a server running 4x H100s at 100% 24/7. For those of us that have - we are talking servers that have one or two xeon silvers at best, 15% load on average. And I live in a country where the electricity is veeeeeeeeeeeery affordable. I'm not taking into account training, or investment to get it going, just inference. 20 bucks subscription a month, dario, you ain't fooling anyone with above-room-temperature IQ (Celsius). Even the expensive subscriptions - we know that's not the real price. And the limits, bumping up prices every two weeks and so on, just to keep the lights on while draining investors... Zitron's claims are pretty impossible to deny: the moment those companies go public, the real prices will need to come out of the shadows and end up on your monthly bill. At the same time I fail to see the real world benefit to this, even in software: it's like comparing Lego (before they began their anti-consumer bs) to cheap Chinese toys. The moment you look at them side-by-side, you know which one is a premium product and which one is a cheap Chinese toy. While I have been a big supporter of open source since I was a child, I was never biblical about using open source - if some proprietary piece of software does a better job than the open source one - fine, take my money. Not anymore. I see the abysmal state of cyber-security as a direct consequence of slop. Slop-written code, slop-reviewed code, tests pass(also slop), ship it. Yeah, I'm not trusting you with my data, the hell with that, I'm self-hosting everything, adios. And I sure as hell don't trust the ai-bros for anything either. And there's another thing: Microsoft was clear about it: github is constantly down because they can't handle the load. App stores are bumping up developer fees. Anyone can slop together a todo app(which was never hard to begin with). It's still a winner-takes-all economy - no one is going to install a todo app and migrate from Google/Apple just because. So the 1000 todo apps released daily will simply be a hole in the pocked of the people who slopped them together and another reason to be paying 500 bucks for 64 gigs of ram and another 500 bucks for a 2tb nvme. Raspberry pi's started off as educational platforms for 35 bucks and their commitment was to keep them at those prices. That aged well, right? If I decide to upgrade my uconsole, I have to pull out another 350+ bucks for a raspberry pi. All thanks to the sloppification. The bubble can't pop soon enough and frankly I don't care what it takes down with it.
• VCFundedGenYer 17d ago
  No? He's been pretty spot on.
  • minimaxir 17d ago
    This very submission is about cases where Ed has not been pretty spot on.
    • mark_l_watson 17d ago
      but the article cherry picks. the article ignores Zitron’s economic arguments about data center costs vs. future profite.
      • simonw 17d ago
        Are any of those predictions that have been proved right yet?
• deleted 17d ago
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