3 ms·

I don't think Zitron has been right about anything in the last 5 years. But he talks a good talk.

by ikidd 2mo ago

piloto_ciego 2mo ago
I cannot understand why people listen to him? I feel like I must be living in an alternate universe to a substantial amount of people? It's bananas...
- mariuolo 2mo ago
  > It's bananas... Actually, it's lemons (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Zitron https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Zitron). Sorry, I couldn't resist:)
  - piloto_ciego 2mo ago
    Boooooooo! <the dad joke make me smile, but insert Zoidberg meme here>
- dumberquestions 2mo ago
  Well he's saying what a lot of people desperately want to believe.
  - piloto_ciego 2mo ago
    this strikes me as a much more plausible answer, thanks. A LOT of people are really scared about the future. That's kind of stupid for a lot of reasons, but I suppose you're right, selling people what they want to hear has a long history.
- Moomoomoo309 2mo ago
  The problem with his work is that a lot of the conclusions he comes to are a step too far, but the problems he identifies with how money is moving or how much datacenters cost or how no one has ever built a 1GW datacenter and we're expected to believe they can build a bunch of them, or even a 10GW data center - those are real.
  - piloto_ciego 2mo ago
    I am not so sure that those are actual problems? I mean, "they're problems" - but everyone is still acting like it's 1996! The world is changing fast... And if he can consistently be so wrong on those things, and has no real education in the field, then why the hell should I listen to him when he's screaming FUD at the top of his lungs? It reminds me of the gold guys who constantly talk about how the dollar crash is mere months away. One day that is likely true, but when those guys predict it month after month and get it wrong all of those times, I don't really take their theses seriously.
    - Moomoomoo309 2mo ago
      There's certain figures he gives that paint the picture well enough without him having to really even make the argument. For example, in his piece "The More You Buy, The More You Lose"[1], a few paragraphs in, he says: "Hyperscalers will have sunk over $1.3 trillion dollars into generative AI by the end of 2026, and have plans to spend a trillion dollars more next year. On a very rational level, nothing that large language models (LLMs) have done, do or will do in the future can or will ever bring in the more than $2 trillion (or more) in brand new revenue that will be required to make any of this worth it." He explains some more numbers in the following paragraphs (that aren't needed to make my point), but the problem isn't even that AI can't make any money, it's that the scale of the money spent is so colossal, what they would need to do to actually make it back is insane! They'd need to actually replace most of the workers in the world because that is such a ridiculous, unimaginable amount of money! It outclasses all of their combined revenue significantly, and remember, these companies don't tell us how much money they make from AI (anymore), they bundle it in with other things, and if it was good, you know they'd be shouting it from the rooftops how much they were making. I also don't take seriously any of his predictions that have dates attached to them - after all, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. I don't trust his timing, but the numbers don't lie. [1] https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-more-you-buy-the-more-you-lose/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-more-you-buy-the-more-you-lo...
tcp_handshaker 2mo ago
Every post about Zitron here seems to have a comment like yours at the top. Another thing those comments have in common is that they offer no logical or rational explanation of why he is supposedly wrong.
- tim333 2mo ago
  It's quite hard work to research why wrong. His always writing 10000 words doesn't help. I'd say he's over skeptical of AI being a real thing and he cherry picks the financials. (earlier comment from me with some details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49073112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49073112)

I don't think Zitron has been right about anything in the last 5 years. But he talks a good talk.

by ikidd 2mo ago

I don't think Zitron has been right about anything in the last 5 years. But he talks a good talk.

I cannot understand why people listen to him? I feel like I must be living in an alternate universe to a substantial amount of people? It's bananas...

mariuolo 2mo ago
> It's bananas... Actually, it's lemons (https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Zitron https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Zitron). Sorry, I couldn't resist:)
- piloto_ciego 2mo ago
  Boooooooo! <the dad joke make me smile, but insert Zoidberg meme here>
dumberquestions 2mo ago
Well he's saying what a lot of people desperately want to believe.
- piloto_ciego 2mo ago
  this strikes me as a much more plausible answer, thanks. A LOT of people are really scared about the future. That's kind of stupid for a lot of reasons, but I suppose you're right, selling people what they want to hear has a long history.
Moomoomoo309 2mo ago
The problem with his work is that a lot of the conclusions he comes to are a step too far, but the problems he identifies with how money is moving or how much datacenters cost or how no one has ever built a 1GW datacenter and we're expected to believe they can build a bunch of them, or even a 10GW data center - those are real.
- piloto_ciego 2mo ago
  I am not so sure that those are actual problems? I mean, "they're problems" - but everyone is still acting like it's 1996! The world is changing fast... And if he can consistently be so wrong on those things, and has no real education in the field, then why the hell should I listen to him when he's screaming FUD at the top of his lungs? It reminds me of the gold guys who constantly talk about how the dollar crash is mere months away. One day that is likely true, but when those guys predict it month after month and get it wrong all of those times, I don't really take their theses seriously.
  - Moomoomoo309 2mo ago
    There's certain figures he gives that paint the picture well enough without him having to really even make the argument. For example, in his piece "The More You Buy, The More You Lose"[1], a few paragraphs in, he says: "Hyperscalers will have sunk over $1.3 trillion dollars into generative AI by the end of 2026, and have plans to spend a trillion dollars more next year. On a very rational level, nothing that large language models (LLMs) have done, do or will do in the future can or will ever bring in the more than $2 trillion (or more) in brand new revenue that will be required to make any of this worth it." He explains some more numbers in the following paragraphs (that aren't needed to make my point), but the problem isn't even that AI can't make any money, it's that the scale of the money spent is so colossal, what they would need to do to actually make it back is insane! They'd need to actually replace most of the workers in the world because that is such a ridiculous, unimaginable amount of money! It outclasses all of their combined revenue significantly, and remember, these companies don't tell us how much money they make from AI (anymore), they bundle it in with other things, and if it was good, you know they'd be shouting it from the rooftops how much they were making. I also don't take seriously any of his predictions that have dates attached to them - after all, the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent. I don't trust his timing, but the numbers don't lie. [1] https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-more-you-buy-the-more-you-lose/ https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-more-you-buy-the-more-you-lo...

tcp_handshaker 2mo ago

Every post about Zitron here seems to have a comment like yours at the top. Another thing those comments have in common is that they offer no logical or rational explanation of why he is supposedly wrong.

tim333 2mo ago
It's quite hard work to research why wrong. His always writing 10000 words doesn't help. I'd say he's over skeptical of AI being a real thing and he cherry picks the financials. (earlier comment from me with some details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49073112 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49073112)