Comment by dcre
6 days ago
It's a response to this: https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening
The post is silly, but I do not expect Zitron's commentary to be particularly illuminating as he is a charlatan himself. I could point to many examples, but here is a blog post I wrote about one case of him trying very hard to not understand a simple and familiar situation: https://crespo.business/posts/cost-of-inference/.
> ...as he is a charlatan himself.
What's the evidence for that?
See edit. Tens of thousands of lines of borderline gibberish for the gullible.
Thanks for the link. You make some good points.
I still fear for what AI training will cost (financially and ecologically). The outputs also seem like a force multiplier that's more likely to be used for bad than good, at least without better guardrails. And it doesn't seem to make people any better, aside from a narrow view of productivity.
Hopefully Ed is wrong. Or at least there are more articulate and methodical skeptics who can keep us grounded.
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One of the most widely ridiculed and discredited AI skeptics, outmatched only by Gary Marcus.
Note the date, then imagine this take repeated every single month up to now: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-a-i-bubble-is-burs...
Not to say all AI skepticism (especially concerning very short timelines) is necessarily unwarranted, but Zitron and Marcus are just professional contrarians selling a message to people who want their biases and priors affirmed.
The guy comes across as a non-technical grifter https://archive.is/m9pHl
Everyone's a charlatan until their claims come true. For that matter, your rebuttal comes with its own statements of faith, "I just don’t buy it."
Someone who predicts 15 of the last 2 recessions is a charlatan even when their claims come true.
But who was the charlatan? The person predicting the recession, or the government who stopped the predicted recession by adding another $5T to the debt pile, to almost inevitably cause a recession later, at a more politically convenient time for those in power today? The recession happened, as predicted, the government absorbed it for another day.
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Everyone is free to make their own judgment about who is offering a genuine analysis that clarifies reality rather than obscuring it.