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simianwords 7 hours ago

Ed Zitron speaks to a particular type of angry tech conservative. He’s not speaking truth or exposing anything. He’s the soothing voice the tech nerds of yesterday year are yearning for.

The angry polemic that goes on and on and on with cuss words used liberally is just meant to evoke emotion and cathartic resolution to the type of people mentioned above. Not truth.

The thing is, there are a lot of people that find comfort in what he’s writing - primarily because it’s a coping mechanism against how quickly things are moving and a way to deal with being left behind. When you spend time, years, building institutional knowledge and making a whole identity out of it, you obviously will feel bad with the threat of it being commoditised.

I would write against the content of the article but I find it easier and more illuminating to write what he has said before instead. Then it shows how incorrect the guy has been and with what confidence he keeps speaking with.

simianwords 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm collecting many kinds of predictions Ed Zitron made so that you can see for yourself whether he has a good track record.

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> While complex, generative AI is a technology that probabilistically generates answers, and has no "intelligence." It is inherently limited by its architecture, and in turn can only get "better" in a linear fashion. I see no signs that the transformer-based architecture can do significantly more than it currently does.

He wrote this in 2024 before reasoning models came out. Remember how ChatGPT was in 2024? Do you think this person is someone who gets predictions right?

> Furthermore, I hypothesize a race to the bottom in generative AI will significantly hamper OpenAI's ability to expand revenue, compounded by the fact that we're approaching the limits of transformer-based architecture.

He wrote this in 2024 and since then Anthropic's revenue increased by 160x to $40 B dollars a year and OpenAI's increased by 6x. Do you think this person gets predictions right still?

> I believe we're reaching the upper limits about what generative AI can do and how accurate its outputs can be,

He wrote this in 2024, do you really think we have reached upper limits? Huh?? What I'm using today is significantly more accurate and 2 tiers above what we had.

> And if there are true industry-changing possibilities waiting for us on the other side, I am yet to hear them outside of the fan fiction of Silicon Valley hucksters.

He says this about AI when we have with all honesty have had industry changing possibilities like agentic coding.

> There are indications that consumers have also lost interest. As pointed out by Alex Kantrowitz’ Big Technology newsletter, traffic to ChatGPT on both mobile and web has started to stagnate, if not decline. In January 2024, ChatGPT had 1.6 billion visits — 11% below the all-time peak of 1.8 billion. This makes it only modestly more popular than Bing, which had 1.3 billion unique visits during that period. On the mobile front, ChatGPT has an estimated 6.3 million US users — or 1.7 times less than the total of new Snapchat users added during Q4 2023.

He agrees with the claim that the consumer interest has declined. Since he said this, there was a 9x growth in active users.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wStScmT748&t=1s

"AI Bubble Already Bursting?" (8 months back)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8ByoAt5gCA&t=1s

"A.I bubble is bursting with Ed Zitron" (1 year back)

He's been constantly crying bubble for years now.

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> AI video won’t get truly fixed just by waiting a year.

This is what he had said in 2024, and you just need to compare video from then and now to check whether the predictions came true. Why would anyone trust what this guy has to say?

james2doyle 6 hours ago | parent [-]

How’s that meme go? "We are 2/3 years into being 6 months away from AI taking all white collar jobs".

The criticism goes both ways. The word "fixed", in Ed terms, can be translated to "become a viable business that justifies the spend".

In regards to AI video, I think the fact that Sora is no long around is an indicator. And there is seemingly no real appetite for AI video outside of memes, jokes, and misinformation, probably indicates that the prediction around AI video has come true.

simianwords 4 hours ago | parent [-]

This website can't run if this sort of rhetoric is accepted: "they told lies so we can tell lies".

Frankly this is anti-social and should not be tolerated here.

>In regards to AI video, I think the fact that Sora is no long around is an indicator. And there is seemingly no real appetite for AI video outside of memes, jokes, and misinformation, probably indicates that the prediction around AI video has come true.

His point was about the performance and accuracy and not about the community/market. He was wrong.