What you are doing is "motte and bailey".

The motte is "AI useful". The bailey is "Singularity is nigh".

Windchaser 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The unified position which many folks deny is "AI is powerful" or, alternatively, "AI will be powerful soon".

(I'm personally still skeptical about this, but I'm being pulled towards accepting it).

"AI is useful" is too low of a bar, and "singularity is nigh" is too high. "AI is on its way to upending society" is about in the middle, and still vastly contentious among laypeople.

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enraged_camel 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>> The motte is "AI useful". The bailey is "Singularity is nigh".

But there are people like Ed Zitron, frequently posted and cited here, who disagree even with the former.

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scotty79 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think Ed Zitron is mentioned just because his name is Zitron. He just repeats ad nauseam opinions concentrated around one simple, very boring pole on a wild and interesting landscape of emerging reality. Anybody could be doing that. A lot of people do that. Yet no other is named Zitron. And that's why I heard name Ed Zitron hundred times. That's how you become a voice of (a part of) the generation. Just have a memorable name and repeat the same opinion over and over that people can flock around comfortably. Content is irrelevant.

Personally I prefer to follow explorers rather than swamp-sitters.

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8note 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

to an extent zitron is saying its not useful, but as a more nuanced opinion, "ai is not cost effective, nor is it improving profits or revenue"

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scarmig 2 hours ago | parent [-]

From a random article I grabbed of his (https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/):

"it isn't clear whether generative AI actually provides much business value at all"

"cannot seem to find a product that people will pay for, in part because the results are so mediocre"

"Last week, we got our first real, definitive glimpse of what’s around that corner that future. And boy, was it underwhelming."

"OpenAI claims that o1 “performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology.” Just not in geography, it seems. Or basic elementary-level English language tests. Or math. Or programming. "

"Worse still, it's kind of hard to explain why anybody should give a shit about o1."

"o1 shows that OpenAI is both desperate and out of ideas."

"the software is not becoming more useful"

Honestly, every other line is quotable in this context.

	▲	lackoftactics 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yep, he is a PR stunt guy, and the number of videos that come up when you type Ed Zitron into YouTube should tell you how many people are eager to feed their cognitive biases.
	▲	dwaltrip an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It’s comical and honestly incredibly embarrassing… But it seems we have somehow optimized away shame. It wasn’t good for profits, I guess.