Comment by bananamogul

> his main thesis that AI companies are not going about this in any sustainable way

The point isn't that his thesis is fucked, just that his analysis tends to be free with details in a way that shouldn't inspire confidence, e.g. mixing up EBIT and EBITDA.

Someone elsewhere in this thread referenced this guy [1]. His takes properly summarise the lack of care Zitron appears to display for getting detailed arguments right.

If you're deeply familiar with financial jargon, I think he's fine. But if you're not, it's easy to get whisked into woo-woo nonsense that's falsely precise due to mis-using (and in some cases, very clearly mis-understanding) core financial and economic concepts.

[1] https://bsky.app/profile/peark.es/post/3mmhtcib3622i

An example of him in July 2024: https://www.wheresyoured.at/pop-culture/

>And yes, that sound you hear is the slow deflation of the bubble I've been warning you about since March...

>How does GPT – a transformer-based model that generates answers probabilistically (as in what the next part of the generation is most likely to be the correct one) based entirely on training data – do anything more than generate paragraphs of occasionally-accurate text?

etc.

Basically the essence is he's skeptical of AI / LLMs being any good so thinks all the investment is down the drain. Meanwhile AI progresses such that Fable can probably beat most humans and IQ tests, maths and the like. And the 'bubble' didn't deflate yet.

My take is that as a PR guy, used to people hyping stuff and not that up on comp-sci he fundamentally doesn't get what's going on. He assumes it's all hype rather than the steady progress in computing reaching brain equivalent levels and beyond.

Here's some criticism: https://bsky.app/profile/peark.es/post/3mmhtcib3622i (see the full thread)

I'm not qualified enough myself to judge Zitron's reporting, nor this criticism. But George Pearkes is a reasonably respected financial analyst.

> Show us on the doll where Zitron touched you

Comment read sensibly until this bit.

Ya, there are already three pure ad hominem comments here with no examples. Zitron isn't even anti-AI per se. He clearly talks out his ass at times (like AI doesn't work for developers... which he's not saying so much anymore, I don't think) but his main talking points are around numbers and profitability.

I don’t have numbers, but I would like to point out that he's missing a crucial number as well. The fact that maxing out a subscription's limit makes a user generate an amount of tokens that costs much more than the subscription itslef isn't enough to back his claim. What we need to know, is the average use of subscriptions. Think about Gyms. My gut feeling is that, if we run the numbers, we see that by maxing out a gym subscription we can get more value out of it than what we paid for. And still, gyms are profitable because the average customer is using less than what they're paying for. Now, I still think AI companies will have to rise their prices (they are already doing that), but the situation could be less dramatic than what people pointing at those figures based on subscription maxing are claiming.

You're biasing for quantity of argument vs. quality of argument. That's Zitron's MO: writing 10k word rambles that cover 20 topics, ostensibly with tons of links to sourcing, but with most of the sources not actually saying what Zitron implies they do.

Nobody has the patience to read a comprehensive point by point rebuttal to any of it, it's just too tedious.

You say "numbers don't lie". But they do, when the numbers being presented have been adversarially chosen. You just find numbers (no matter how low quality) that fit the chosen narrative, you throw out the numbers (no matter how high quality) that rebut it. If you're trying to predict the future, you can't afford that of bias. If you're an anti-AI grifter, you can't afford to not have that bias, your entire livelihood depends on only showing things that support the narrative.

"The biggest thing we’ve learned from the large language model generation is how many people are excited to replace human beings, and how many people just don’t understand labour of any kind"

Really? I think we've heard C-suite blabbermouths and borderline nontechnical tech CEOs being amplified by social media making these assertions, but boy did the weakly efficient market deliver a relatively swift correction to that mindset, no?

Q: "What would it take to change your point of view?" A: "[AI] would have to solve all hallucinations forever, which they are completely incapable [of]."

Can you produce a human that is infallible? I'll wait.

Finally: https://martinalderson.com/posts/no-it-doesnt-cost-anthropic...

My hot take is AI is increasingly less unprofitable as the cost of serving tokens drops and Nvidia's ongoing offers to guarantee profitability is a sign that it isn't stopping anytime soon.

https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/nvidia-gpu-debt-backst...

You either believe in the underlying science and technology or you don't. But in a world where AI is a fad like cabbage patch kids and beanie babies, what's next?

He's a college drop out with no experience in programming or technology.

He has zero numbers and is completely making stuff up to a gullible audience.

The real numbers show high demand for all these services to the point where the companies are rate limiting the services because demand is TOO high.

This but instead it's people insisting that AI will replace my job (been three months out for at least 3 years now) because they know it involves words.

To be fair he has a background in technology PR and Marketing (which he’s been very critical of) which I would count as more worthwhile when assessing the actual value of the product.

I mean you can say he’s not a “science guy” but he’s undeniably “smart”.

Talking with a friend of mine who's been in development for some time and I had been talking a little bit about the skill required to wield AI effectively and that people were expecting it to be something that required less skill than it does.

He said his version of this observation is "your agents are only as good as you are." I think he's right, and the key is to practice and build the skill.

>> LLM technology doesn't work very well for software development

This comment is so obviously false (in my experience) I'm wondering what sort of niche environment you're working in

While that's true - it does not impute Ed's position with greater accuracy or authority. I don't know if Ed is wrong, but I get this vague sense that he is being led on by his emotions.

I am sympathetic to some of his criticisms that the enthusiasm and financial commitment has run far ahead what can be delivered. But I don't quite share his intensity over the doom and gloom. There probably will be a correction. It will probably sting. But I don't expect it to be the near wipe-out that Ed's passionate voice seems to steer towards.