3 ms·

I think one important distinction is at least they have some humility to admit they were wrong. I think Ed Zitron has rarely, if ever acknowledged he was wrong.

by sarjann 1mo ago

iLoveOncall 1mo ago
> I think one important distinction is at least they have some humility to admit they were wrong. I'd be amazed to see a source proving that statement. There's never been a retraction around the AGI claims for example as far as I'm aware.
- sarjann 1mo ago
  I can't find a counter to every statement they have made and not sure about your specific AGI claim but. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QMhtTO3u61A https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QMhtTO3u61A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ueDUrkOlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ueDUrkOlQ Examples of acknowledging he was wrong
  - iLoveOncall 1mo ago
    I only watched the first one so far but you misunderstood what he says, he doesn't admit being wrong at all, in fact he doubles down on wrong claims.
    - deleted 1mo ago
      [deleted]
    - krcz 1mo ago
      Interesting; he is clearly saying that they were ("as a field") "confident and wrong" to believe that "the economy would have been completely upended" by the appearance of a model as strong as GPT4. What seems to be missing, from your point of view, to consider it an admission of being wrong?
      - iLoveOncall 1mo ago
        This was posted in August 2026, so he's talking about the latest OpenAI models. I don't know where you got GPT4 from but clearly you are also misunderstanding everything he said. He's also just saying what he thinks people (the general population) want to hear ("AI won't take your job").
        sarjann 1mo ago
        What are you actually trying to get at? Had you even bothered to watch the 2nd (short) yet? My point was that he’s willing to acknowledge that he was wrong, that is what the clip shows. Also can you read minds now? ‘He's also just saying what he thinks people (the general population) want to hear’
        iLoveOncall 1mo ago
        > Had you even bothered to watch the 2nd (short) yet? Have you? He's clearly saying that it's society's fault if GPT-4 didn't lead to the great replacement of software engineers he predicted rather than the capabilities of the model. He's acknowledging absolutely no fault of his, rather blaming sOcIeTy for his own failures and lies.
achompas 1mo ago
I actually think you’ve got it backwards I think one of Zitron’s problems is that his moral righteousness has blinded him to how embarrassingly incorrect he is about the AI space. It’s similarly hubristic with the benefit of shielding from his adversarial framing.
- pfdietz 1mo ago
  I see this so much. "This shouldn't work, therefore it won't work." It's like the world is imagined to run on a moral causal framework rather than uncaring quantum mechanics.
- cduzz 1mo ago
  I have watched many of his screeds; I think he undercuts his thesis with excess bile. His core observation is that the unit economics of openAI and anthropic don't actually yield enough profit to pay off the huge debts that these two companies have incurred, and that as a result all the debt they've taken on will have to be written off which will trigger "the hyperscalers" to themselves suffer huge losses (likely wounding google and microsoft and destroying oracle). He is rather more negative about the utility of LLMs than lots of other people (myself included); but his overall view of 1. they're not completely trustworthy 2. they're really expensive to train 3. it isn't obvious that anyone's willing to pay the full freight for the resulting product 4. lots of large orgs "that should know better" have gone far down the LLM "AI" road because they're looking for "the next big thing" when they should be pivoting to "mature, stable" companies instead of "hypergrowth" companies. 5. there's lots of debt and obligations and no obvious way for all of it to be paid off from revenues from openai / anthropic. seems pretty reasonable. There seem to have been lots of bets placed on the hope that this stuff will continue scaling as it has in the past, if it is given more compute and data, and that bet is one that has yet to have demonstrated itself as correct. Elsewhere, people have pointed out that many of the "FAANG" companies have shed lots of people and driven lots of profits, largely on the back of internal use of LLM tools. That doesn't necessarily contradict the skepticism that anthropic and openAI will succeed, and given all their obligations, if they fail it'll be a big mess. But again, big Z doesn't do himself any favors when he rants about "failsons" or whatever.
greekrich92 1mo ago
Humility? I don't think they know what the word means let alone possess the capacity to demonstrate it.
- CamperBob2 1mo ago
  Altman has admitted that some things are taking longer than he expected, and has walked one or two things back (usually to keep people from throwing bombs at his house, but still...) Zitron continues to boast of a predictive record entirely unblemished by accuracy.
  - arealaccount 1mo ago
    When Altman “admits” things it seems more manipulative than humility
  - only-one1701 1mo ago
    The until Anthropic et al IPO to the tune of trillions Ed is more right than he is wrong.

I think one important distinction is at least they have some humility to admit they were wrong. I think Ed Zitron has rarely, if ever acknowledged he was wrong.

by sarjann 1mo ago

I think one important distinction is at least they have some humility to admit they were wrong. I think Ed Zitron has rarely, if ever acknowledged he was wrong.

iLoveOncall 1mo ago

> I think one important distinction is at least they have some humility to admit they were wrong. I'd be amazed to see a source proving that statement. There's never been a retraction around the AGI claims for example as far as I'm aware.

sarjann 1mo ago
I can't find a counter to every statement they have made and not sure about your specific AGI claim but. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QMhtTO3u61A https://www.youtube.com/shorts/QMhtTO3u61A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ueDUrkOlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ueDUrkOlQ Examples of acknowledging he was wrong
- iLoveOncall 1mo ago
  I only watched the first one so far but you misunderstood what he says, he doesn't admit being wrong at all, in fact he doubles down on wrong claims.
  - deleted 1mo ago
    [deleted]
  - krcz 1mo ago
    Interesting; he is clearly saying that they were ("as a field") "confident and wrong" to believe that "the economy would have been completely upended" by the appearance of a model as strong as GPT4. What seems to be missing, from your point of view, to consider it an admission of being wrong?
    - iLoveOncall 1mo ago
      This was posted in August 2026, so he's talking about the latest OpenAI models. I don't know where you got GPT4 from but clearly you are also misunderstanding everything he said. He's also just saying what he thinks people (the general population) want to hear ("AI won't take your job").
      - sarjann 1mo ago
        What are you actually trying to get at? Had you even bothered to watch the 2nd (short) yet? My point was that he’s willing to acknowledge that he was wrong, that is what the clip shows. Also can you read minds now? ‘He's also just saying what he thinks people (the general population) want to hear’
        iLoveOncall 1mo ago
        > Had you even bothered to watch the 2nd (short) yet? Have you? He's clearly saying that it's society's fault if GPT-4 didn't lead to the great replacement of software engineers he predicted rather than the capabilities of the model. He's acknowledging absolutely no fault of his, rather blaming sOcIeTy for his own failures and lies.

achompas 1mo ago

I actually think you’ve got it backwards I think one of Zitron’s problems is that his moral righteousness has blinded him to how embarrassingly incorrect he is about the AI space. It’s similarly hubristic with the benefit of shielding from his adversarial framing.

pfdietz 1mo ago
I see this so much. "This shouldn't work, therefore it won't work." It's like the world is imagined to run on a moral causal framework rather than uncaring quantum mechanics.
cduzz 1mo ago
I have watched many of his screeds; I think he undercuts his thesis with excess bile. His core observation is that the unit economics of openAI and anthropic don't actually yield enough profit to pay off the huge debts that these two companies have incurred, and that as a result all the debt they've taken on will have to be written off which will trigger "the hyperscalers" to themselves suffer huge losses (likely wounding google and microsoft and destroying oracle). He is rather more negative about the utility of LLMs than lots of other people (myself included); but his overall view of 1. they're not completely trustworthy 2. they're really expensive to train 3. it isn't obvious that anyone's willing to pay the full freight for the resulting product 4. lots of large orgs "that should know better" have gone far down the LLM "AI" road because they're looking for "the next big thing" when they should be pivoting to "mature, stable" companies instead of "hypergrowth" companies. 5. there's lots of debt and obligations and no obvious way for all of it to be paid off from revenues from openai / anthropic. seems pretty reasonable. There seem to have been lots of bets placed on the hope that this stuff will continue scaling as it has in the past, if it is given more compute and data, and that bet is one that has yet to have demonstrated itself as correct. Elsewhere, people have pointed out that many of the "FAANG" companies have shed lots of people and driven lots of profits, largely on the back of internal use of LLM tools. That doesn't necessarily contradict the skepticism that anthropic and openAI will succeed, and given all their obligations, if they fail it'll be a big mess. But again, big Z doesn't do himself any favors when he rants about "failsons" or whatever.

greekrich92 1mo ago

Humility? I don't think they know what the word means let alone possess the capacity to demonstrate it.

CamperBob2 1mo ago
Altman has admitted that some things are taking longer than he expected, and has walked one or two things back (usually to keep people from throwing bombs at his house, but still...) Zitron continues to boast of a predictive record entirely unblemished by accuracy.
- arealaccount 1mo ago
  When Altman “admits” things it seems more manipulative than humility
- only-one1701 1mo ago
  The until Anthropic et al IPO to the tune of trillions Ed is more right than he is wrong.