The OpenAI Bubble
wheresyoured.at
wheresyoured.at
I completely believe him on it being a bubble, that this is not-a-Uber-situation, and that it's worse than whatever-you-might-call-it — but get a grip, dude. Yes, bubble. People and their investments are going to get hurt. But there is also some really nice things we'll get out of this (that, of course, might not make up for the damage that it'll do) It's also pretty clear his ever-longer articles are just him testing out his upcoming book. But the tone is starting to overshadow the substance, which is a shame, because the underlying argument is solid enough to stand on its own without the theatrics.
This Zitron guy keeps saying AI isn't actually useful, doesn't he? That's patently false.
I feel like the only sane person left in my team, like everyone else has stopped giving a shit, pretending to get work done at insane velocity on borrowed time.
It's no longer "can AI be useful" to me, it's "how do we avoid people frying their fucking brains".
and those that don't fall into this trap will be dragged in sooner or later by peer pressure and bullshit KPIs.
I care alot about software and code. I write without AI, code and prose. Yet I would say it is useful for context sensitive search and autocomplete on steroids. I wonder why it should be more? It’s the intellisense I always wanted - just not worth a trillion I'd say.
And another point: if your coworkers do their job exclusively by vibing, then where’s the point of producing software? Your competitors can recreate it easily. There’s no value in AI generated artifacts and so there’s no value in operating the AI.
Just write the damn code
It is hard to describe how utterly stupid that comment is from my perspective.
I was just walking earlier today listening to an AI converted audio book of Knowledge and the Flow of Information by Fred Dretske.
It is exactly the kind of thing that I would have never found just a few years ago.
Or it must be you just such a genius that already knows everything unlike us mere mortals that get incredible value from the models.
In reality you are just the standard IT dipshit that vastly overestimates their own intelligence.
people around me use models to replace their critical thinking though, and i consider this a structural issue - with how incentives are laid out at my workplace but also as a cognitive trap where you think you get more done, but you're actually unlearning fundamental skills instead of supplementing your existing ones.
this is a good summary: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-025-02686-z
For example, I am learning about finance and Rust right now with LLM help. I'm not about to ace Wharton undergrad exams or deploy Rust to prod without LLM assistance, but LLMs have been such a solid enabler in getting going with these things that I have been trying to learn more about for some time.
I think the person to whom you are replying could also benefit from them if he stopped blaming the problems he is seeing on AI itself and correctly recognizes that the people he works with are the problem.
How people use AI is a structural problem. Just because you have an easy time using it to learn (good for you, genuinely) doesn't mean that such a product existing in a free market capitalist society isn't going to end in disaster where people will at best fall victim to the dunning-kruger effect constantly and stop valuing their peers' time and at worst roast their brains by unlearning how to acquire actual skills.
And it's not like the AI labs don't know this is happening. Their research arms regularly publish papers confirming dependence and deskilling are not uncommon in very carefully worded language. And still Anthropic is happily extending your Fable trial!
Yes sure, my coworkers are the tip of the iceberg here, but that doesn't mean AI is value-neutral. And we're not even discussing the ethics axis (because honestly, tiring; capitalism doesn't value ecology or any ethics when inconvenient and AI isn't special there)
The less your colleagues care, the faster the company gets there. Unfortunately.
This is a problem with your company and the people with whom you work, not with AI.
He constantly says LLMs do not and will not measure up to the hyperbolic capabilities the CEOs of their companies, their boosters, and a compliant tech media say they will do.