5 ms·

If you ever listen to more than a couple of Zitron interviews, it's clear that he's not the "reasonable centrist" viewpoint on AI. He's the doom-and-gloom guy.

If you ever listen to more than a couple of Zitron interviews, it's clear that he's not the "reasonable centrist" viewpoint on AI. He's the doom-and-gloom guy. Maybe there is someone out there positive on AI itself and calling out reasonable objections to some of the extreme things. But that's not Zitron.

runarberg 1mo ago
The center is not always the reasonable viewpoint. And sometimes the doom-and-gloom guy is correct.
- heaney-555 1mo ago
  Right, but as the article linked lays out in detail, Zitron has been repeatedly and consistently objectively incorrect.
  - runarberg 1mo ago
    There are plenty of doom-and-gloom people to go around. Even if Ed Zitron is wrong about a lot of things, the doom-and-gloom part may still be accurate. Personally I am way to the left of Ed Zitron, I actually think he isn’t doom and gloom enough. My personal prediction is that whatever happens the people with all the money will find a way to spin the narrative in their favor and history will judge people like me (and Ed Zitron) as having been wrong.
- CamperBob2 1mo ago
  Not this time.
selfhoster1312 1mo ago
As someone who's strongly anti-AI, i find Zitron to be absolutely too much pro-AI for my taste. He defends AI that's not LLMs. He barely touches on ecological impacts of AI, and barely mentions the enshittification of things. He's only really against the LLM craze, OpenAI/Anthropic over-evaluation (because Deepseek and local models will do the same for nearly free), and the crazy speculative bubble around datacenters. If you find him very negative about AI, and i find him very positive about AI, he might just be this reasonable centrist.
- ainch 1mo ago
  Out of curiosity, what would you like to hear him saying about non-LLM AI?
  - selfhoster1312 1mo ago
    There's plenty of arguments to be had. I guess there could be some useful applications of non-LLM AI (eg. translation tools), but quality output is still a concern. Environmental impact is also still a concern. If output is of sufficient quality, who reaps the benefits is a concern ; if not, who pays the price of shittier products is a concern. Whether LLM or non-LLM tech, the question of surveillance capitalism and how models need to be fed swaths of privacy-invading data (eg. self-driving cars filming everything all the time) is also a concern. Overall, i think the ecological concern is still the biggest one. We are at the start of a major climate crisis, and any self-preserving measures were already hard fought by industry. I fear that any form of AI investment will lead (because it's already leading) to destroying any hope of saving an inhabitable planet.
    - Mentlo 1mo ago
      To play devil's advocate - unless you were to take the position of declaring bankruptcy on the possibility that a complex society of competing actors can agree on climate change - and therefore this being an unsolvable problem that you need AI to solve, as humans can't handle the complexity. I find a lot of the debate on either climate change or AI collapses if you point out that "we shouldn't do this, we should ALL just do this" is an extremely unrealistic position in an international complex ecosystem of competing actors.
      - selfhoster1312 1mo ago
        > "we shouldn't do this, we should ALL just do this" is an extremely unrealistic position No it's not. It's only if people like you are so defeatist about it. Look what happened with CFC gazes, leaded paints and asbestos. Sure we still have more problems to face but some problems are so serious that we can in fact gather consensus. > an unsolvable problem that you need AI to solve That is completely wrong on so many level. I understand you're playing the devil's advocate, but do you understand this is a messianic-level delusion that's made up by religious psychopaths so people buy into their products without thinking twice? If you don't have hope, the only rational solution is not to give in to AI, it's to Luigi Mangione or Unabomber your way to a better world. Personally, i choose hope: we can solve this problem (and every other, who strangely have more or less the same culprits).

runarberg 1mo ago

The center is not always the reasonable viewpoint. And sometimes the doom-and-gloom guy is correct.

heaney-555 1mo ago
Right, but as the article linked lays out in detail, Zitron has been repeatedly and consistently objectively incorrect.
- runarberg 1mo ago
  There are plenty of doom-and-gloom people to go around. Even if Ed Zitron is wrong about a lot of things, the doom-and-gloom part may still be accurate. Personally I am way to the left of Ed Zitron, I actually think he isn’t doom and gloom enough. My personal prediction is that whatever happens the people with all the money will find a way to spin the narrative in their favor and history will judge people like me (and Ed Zitron) as having been wrong.
CamperBob2 1mo ago
Not this time.

selfhoster1312 1mo ago

As someone who's strongly anti-AI, i find Zitron to be absolutely too much pro-AI for my taste. He defends AI that's not LLMs. He barely touches on ecological impacts of AI, and barely mentions the enshittification of things. He's only really against the LLM craze, OpenAI/Anthropic over-evaluation (because Deepseek and local models will do the same for nearly free), and the crazy speculative bubble around datacenters. If you find him very negative about AI, and i find him very positive about AI, he might just be this reasonable centrist.

ainch 1mo ago
Out of curiosity, what would you like to hear him saying about non-LLM AI?
- selfhoster1312 1mo ago
  There's plenty of arguments to be had. I guess there could be some useful applications of non-LLM AI (eg. translation tools), but quality output is still a concern. Environmental impact is also still a concern. If output is of sufficient quality, who reaps the benefits is a concern ; if not, who pays the price of shittier products is a concern. Whether LLM or non-LLM tech, the question of surveillance capitalism and how models need to be fed swaths of privacy-invading data (eg. self-driving cars filming everything all the time) is also a concern. Overall, i think the ecological concern is still the biggest one. We are at the start of a major climate crisis, and any self-preserving measures were already hard fought by industry. I fear that any form of AI investment will lead (because it's already leading) to destroying any hope of saving an inhabitable planet.
  - Mentlo 1mo ago
    To play devil's advocate - unless you were to take the position of declaring bankruptcy on the possibility that a complex society of competing actors can agree on climate change - and therefore this being an unsolvable problem that you need AI to solve, as humans can't handle the complexity. I find a lot of the debate on either climate change or AI collapses if you point out that "we shouldn't do this, we should ALL just do this" is an extremely unrealistic position in an international complex ecosystem of competing actors.
    - selfhoster1312 1mo ago
      > "we shouldn't do this, we should ALL just do this" is an extremely unrealistic position No it's not. It's only if people like you are so defeatist about it. Look what happened with CFC gazes, leaded paints and asbestos. Sure we still have more problems to face but some problems are so serious that we can in fact gather consensus. > an unsolvable problem that you need AI to solve That is completely wrong on so many level. I understand you're playing the devil's advocate, but do you understand this is a messianic-level delusion that's made up by religious psychopaths so people buy into their products without thinking twice? If you don't have hope, the only rational solution is not to give in to AI, it's to Luigi Mangione or Unabomber your way to a better world. Personally, i choose hope: we can solve this problem (and every other, who strangely have more or less the same culprits).