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Posted by jatins 22 hours ago

How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?(danluu.com)
814 points | 925 commentspage 13
g8oz 18 hours ago|
Mo Bitar over on YouTube does the grumpy AI skeptic routine in a much more entertaining fashion.
simonw 18 hours ago|
His "Unethical guide to surviving AI layoffs" was solid gold: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgVBqcqUGE0

> Now, if your CEO has never heard the phrase Ralph Loop, oh man, you are less than 30 days away from your next promotion. I'm not even exaggerating. Walk into his office, close the door, and say, hey chief, been experimenting with something. It's called Ralph Loops. And I think it could change literally everything. And he's gonna say, what's a Ralph loop? And you will say, give me $18,000 worth of API credits and I'll show you. Now you won't actually do anything, because you can't do anything. Because nobody can, because nobody knows what they're doing. But by the time he figures that out, you'll have a new title, and equity bump. [...]

> Talk about automation constantly. Nothing arouses the slumbering capitalists than the mention of automation. Drop names too, bro. Like talk about specific team members you can automate out of existence. Be like, yo, I automated Gary, bro. Tag Gary in the message. Tag him in Slack in a very public channel. Be like, yo, I just automated @Gary. His function has been Ralph Looped. And tag your CEO in the same message. You think you're getting laid off after that?

nateglims 16 hours ago||
This is eerily similar to how a few people at work did some presentations about ralph loop and connecting agents to slack right when management was really pushing unrealistic AI productivity boosts. I was repeatedly asked to speed things up with AI while I was already heavily using AI to do work.
amazingamazing 20 hours ago||
The simplest argument against AI is the fact no public company appears to be making money on it, minus revenue that contributes to AI infrastructure.

Would love to see broken down counter example of public company.

So far Chegg and Duolingo have been devastated. Surely they could cut costs drastically with AI?

sfblah 20 hours ago||
I don't know about Chegg, but the fundamental problem with Duolingo is their product does nothing to teach people a foreign language. The nasty reality of that product is if you go through their entire learning tree in a language, you might be at a CEFR level A1 for that language. And, you spent 10x the time and 10x the money you would have spent via something like Lingoda to get the same outcome.
watwut 19 hours ago||
This claim is just not true. And gets tiresome. You roughly end up where those courses claim to be in reading and listening - depending on language it can be over B1. (No course finishes B2, some do have B2 content). I ended up being able to watch some (not all) netflix series in foreign langue and I was in early B1 section. I clearly learned.

You also dont have to pay.

sfblah 10 hours ago||
I speak 4 foreign languages, at (fully tested through exams like the DALF, DELE, Goethe Institute) levels of C2, C1, C1 and B2. Take an actual test proving your knowledge and get back to me.

I've spent a lot of time with Duolingo learners. They're all pre-A1. You're just lying to yourself to make yourself think your phone addiction isn't "that bad." Take a real language class.

simonuv 20 hours ago||
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vasco 11 hours ago||
> I suspect he's relying on people's eyes glazing over when they see numbers and just not thinking about what the numbers mean.

This is one of the most important learnings one can make from working in professional environments.

jimmoores 18 hours ago||
He's dead wrong about the usefulness of the technology, but he's dead right about the uncontrolled corrupt circular financing that is driving this crazy over-expansion and market distortion. He fulfils a very useful function as a counterweight to the big tech horse-shit hosepipe that sprays us every day.
psychanarch 18 hours ago||
Thanks for this post. Zitron is a prime example of how someone with little background, expertise, or domain experience can establish a grift in the outrage economy. Unfortunately, emotion and illusion when properly marketed can still go a long way in this world.
ChoosesBarbecue 20 hours ago||
Zitron in general is representative of the conspiratorial thinking that has infected all spectra of the political space. Zitron obviously occupies more of the left space.

Good critique of LLMs & the companies behind them is hard to find, and it is harder when people gravitate towards this sort of thinking.

copemaxxxing 20 hours ago||
Off topic:

> For example, with a style that could be described as the opposite of clickbait, Simon Willison has written what I suspect is the most widely read blog among programmers for the past 3-4 years (in the same way that, at various times in the past, Joel Spolsky or Jeff Atwood or Steve Yegge seemed to be the most widely read programmer among programmers). Among programmers and other serious users of AI, I would guess that Willison has a larger audience than Zitron.

I have no idea Simon Willison is the most widely read blog among programmers. I truly have no idea, and I've been programming for just a decade.

A lot of Simon's blogs posted here are when new LLM models are released, on how good are these LLM models create pelican riding a bike using SVGs. Nothing particularly interesting to me.

I truly have no idea why would people be interested in blogs about LLM creating pelican riding a bike svgs every single time a new model is released. Maybe its a proof of AGI/ASI for some?

I guess to me, Simon Willison will always be the "create-a-pelican-riding-a-bike-using-svg-dude".

dcminter 20 hours ago|
I used to read his posts about Django years ago (a little strange in itself as I'm not a Python guy) and it took me a while to realise he was the same person!
mvc 6 hours ago||
C'mon anthropic. Give him a job! :-)
AnodicElegy 20 hours ago||
Zitron has staked his bear position and isn't budging, so regardless if he's been wrong and wrong again, he'll be remembered for calling the bubble if/when it pops, if only because so few in the media have done so without equivocation.
insane_dreamer 16 hours ago|
Not about Zitron specifically -- I don't read his study, but I don't know that making some statements in interviews or blog posts is the same as making a "prediction" (into which one would put much more though)

also statements can be interpreted many ways:

"Meta is dying" was countered by "Meta's revenue has increased since Zitron said that". OK, but 1) revenue/profit is only one measure of "not dying"; 2) what's the time scale? Nokia and Xerox were highly profitable companies that dominated their industries, and any prediction that they would go out of business at their height would have been laughed at, and yet, it wasn't too much later that they pretty much did.

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