Comment by supern0va
1 day ago
>according to Ed Zitron
So, unsourced vibes from a shady guy whose entire empire is built on being against AI?
I genuinely don't know how folks can continuously buy into anything he has to say after that Wired piece. The credibility there is seriously lacking.
Please, continue to be skeptical of the labs. But people need to stop talking about this dude as if he's the Holy Grail of the anti-AI movement. It's going to blow up in y'alls faces.
Ed actually provides sources and goes into an incredible amount of detail as to how he came to his conclusions. The average AI booster just goes "I totally built ten businesses off vibe coding but I can't tell you anything because it's a SECRET!". And the mainstream tech media is so in the pocket of big tech and AI corporations that they might as well just publish their PR emails at this point. Yeah, I'll listen to Ed thank you very much.
I think it's telling that most critics don't address his actual points, but instead his credibility because he's a "hater".
Ed actually seems to make some really serious errors in his work. Tim Lee called out a particularly egregious one here, though it's one of many: https://x.com/binarybits/status/2050562429709377986
That said, I really mean it when I say that I don't actually think Ed is a good choice for the anti-AI movement. I think an actual opposition is useful, but he ain't it.
I really recommend you read the Wired profile if you haven't yet and form your own opinion: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-pr-ed-zitron-profile/
I read the profile and didn't see anything really wrong. Why would PR companies have to believe in their clients? Why does he have to be held to higher moral standards than Sam Altman who’s a total lying snake?
The error you call out is hardly “serious”, as the whole argument is uninteresting. It is a stupid indefensible error but the argument about revenue being 20% or 30% lower than reported isn’t that central to his overall thesis. Stuff that matters is inference cost, profitability, actual training costs.
> So, unsourced vibes from a shady guy whose entire empire is built on being against AI?
Actually he provides sources when he analyses stuff and imho much better than the usual corporate "Sam Altman says we should ask ChatGPT how to raise babies" crap. Also, I don't know many 'shady' guys who have built entire "empires", nor does he seem to actually have an empire. Usually being shady means you are kind of unknown and all. I am not glorifying Ed, don't even know him personally. I am not even impressed with his writing style much to be honest. But he brings important facts and information to light, which otherwise would have been lost in the cacophony of corporate media light treatment of these con-men. Holy Grail? Blowing up in our faces? WTF are you talking about?
>Actually he provides sources when he analyses stuff and imho much better than the usual corporate
You said it was likely an internal leak to the WSJ "according to Ed Zitron". Did Ed have a source for that, or was it just vibes?
The source was the article in the WSJ itself, which then referred to their source at the Anthropic. Which kind of is a textbook definition of "leak". Because otherwise Anthropic would have their lawyers hunting both the employee breaking their stringent NDA and the WSJ as well...
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