No, hes been extremely wrong multiple times, he should not be treated seriously

Its silly to say hes just early, when his predictions give specific timelines that don't work at all

- "so egregious that I am surprised it's not some kind of financial crime to say it out loud" — on OpenAI forecasting $11.6B for 2025 (https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/) actual: $13.07B. source is his own scoop (https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/)

- "artificial intelligence has three quarters to prove itself before the apocalypse comes" — Mar 2024

- "If OpenAI doesn’t either reduce their $8.5bn operating costs to $1bn or less and raise at least $5bn in the next year, they will die." — Jul 2024 2025 costs: $34B

- Generative AI “isn’t getting much more efficient” (Jul 2024 ). OpenAI’s frontier-model API price fell from $30/$60 per million input/output tokens for GPT-4 to $4/$20 for GPT-5.6 Sol, alongside major capability gains.

- “I would be shocked if [Musk’s] wealth doesn’t return to something more like he had in 2019 or 2020” (Dec 2022 ). Musk is now worth approximately $873 billion , several times his wealth when Zitron wrote this.

sauce https://x.com/pitdesi/status/2093783287097602052

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Denzel 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The actual quote and topic is far different than you’ve portrayed it. Here’s the actual quote: “ yet the company says that it expects to make $11.6 billion in 2025 and *$100 billion by 2029*, a statement so egregious that I am surprised it's not some kind of financial crime to say it out loud.” from https://www.wheresyoured.at/oai-business/

He goes on to specifically discuss how unrealistic $100B by 2029 is given that OAI is structurally unprofitable.

The fact that you’re skewing your misinterpretation of what he said so much shows your own bias I’m afraid.

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sfblah 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think it's fair to call his specific predictions "early." I'm saying his timelines are too short. Like almost all bearish market commentators, he doesn't understand the scope of the government stimulus. This is a systemic problem in market commentary. But, don't kid yourself. If the US stops massive deficit spending, a lot of what Zitron's saying moves forward on the timeline.

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asveikau 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not government stimulus driving this. It's that when you start with a "successful" company, the financial consequences of bad decisions or bad leadership can take a long time to have a negative effect, if at all, because financial success has a momentum to it.

I left Microsoft during the windows 8 cycle in large part because I could tell nobody knew what the hell they were doing, which is an objectively true statement about the time and place. My dad happened to buy Microsoft stock at that same time and did very well with it.

That's the paradoxical problem that I think all big tech has. Poor decisions by incompetent people, met with inexplicable financial success.

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achompas 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A prediction definitionally includes an outcome, and it _can_ include a timeline. (if you’re serious about your forecasting, then you generally include a timeline; forecasting is non-actionable if it does not include a timeline).

You might choose a different timeline for Ed’s outcomes. Okay: those are now your predictions, not his.

Zitron has done us the favor of including timelines with his predictions, so that Dan can invalidate almost all of them.

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Jtarii 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Would you say the 2012 apocalypse doomsayers were correct but just "early"? After all the sun exploding in a billion years will ultimately prove them correct.

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drdeca 4 hours ago | parent [-]

What? No, they were correct; the world ended in 2012.

	▲	WarmWash 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The world actually ended when harambe got shot in may 2016.

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adventured 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The US can safely reduce its deficit spending by $1 trillion and absolutely nothing big will happen.

The US typically adds that much annual GDP every 16-24 months at this point. The notion that somehow the gigantic ~$31 trillion economy will fall apart if the outsized deficits don't continue, is very absurd.

The exact same things were said of the Bush deficits. The US economy was supposedly dead in 2009-2010. Here in 2026 the economy is 50% larger inflation adjusted and it has left most of Europe in the dust. The housing bubble contagion was much worse than anything we're sitting on now with AI spend.

Why do I say $1 trillion instead of $2 trillion? There are plausible scenarios where increased taxes bring down the deficits (the Dems will take the House + Senate + Presidency, we'll see how much taxes go up), there's no plausible scenario where the deficits go away completely.

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enraged_camel 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>> I think it's fair to call his specific predictions "early." I'm saying his timelines are too short.

That means his predictions were either wrong, or meaningless.

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rtpg 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> OpenAI’s frontier-model API price fell from $30/$60 per million input/output tokens for GPT-4 to $4/$20 for GPT-5.6 Sol, alongside major capability gains.

on this specific point: tokens aren't fungible between models right? Like the argument Zitron makes is that improvements in output are due to, glibly, using more tokens to get there. We see people turn on new models and instantly use up all their tokens.

Like the actual measure is more something like "for this specific task, did it cost less now to do it than it did 3 years ago with these AI pipelines" right? The token pricing isn't actually relevant in that discussion.

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dofm 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you're saying that OpenAI forecast something and you're saying it's validation that the numbers match the forecast, I don't think you're really paying attention to the problems (with annualised run rate bullshit when these are proper companies who could be publishing proper numbers), with unclear financials that are designed to look good, etc.