There are good sources of well-argued AI skepticism, and then there's Ed Zitron.
That isn’t to say that he’s right, that’s just to say that while he gets creative in his phrasing numbers don’t lie and I haven’t seen anyone else present competing numbers that make sense.
If anyone has them to the degree with which he provides them then please, by all means, I’m interested.
I'm a web developer to myself who has done zero game or systems programming so I can't speak to that side of it, but you reminded me of it!
You should probably understand Thomas' comment in part as a reaction to Zitron attacking Thomas in a pretty low-brow fashion, essentially for saying "hey folks, AI coding works and you should be using it":
https://www.wheresyoured.at/how-to-argue-with-an-ai-booster/
The bottom line is that Ed Zitron, like Gary Marcus, built their entire brand on being AI contrarians; they can't say anything positive about it without qualifying it with a more damning negative. There's nothing wrong about having voices like that, but it makes them unreliable narrators. I am apprehensive about AI and its externalities, but I don't want to be caught citing either of them for that reason.
Sure, but an ad hominem is still an ad hominem regardless of one's personal feelings (it took me a good minute to figure out who "Thomas" is).
Otherwise, I agree, and I try not to cite extremists or bullies on either side. I don't even really care that much about defending Zitron, but I do put him on in the background because he does so many podcasts as I find it soothing to listen to someone rant and rave against the tech bro overlords, even if some of the shit he says annoys me. But he does show his work sometimes and wanted to point that out.
My argument here is just that Zitron says things that are wrong all the time.
You could fairly rebut me by saying I didn't substantiate that argument. That's true! That doesn't make the argument fallacious; it just means it isn't facially dispositive.
And I agree that he says things that are wrong much of the time, but not all the time. I also don't like him enough to care, but I do care enough to bring it up when I see multiple random attacks.
Really? I think we've heard C-suite blabbermouths and borderline nontechnical tech CEOs being amplified by social media making these assertions, but boy did the weakly efficient market deliver a relatively swift correction to that mindset, no?
Q: "What would it take to change your point of view?" A: "[AI] would have to solve all hallucinations forever, which they are completely incapable [of]."
Can you produce a human that is infallible? I'll wait.
Finally: https://martinalderson.com/posts/no-it-doesnt-cost-anthropic...
My hot take is AI is increasingly less unprofitable as the cost of serving tokens drops and Nvidia's ongoing offers to guarantee profitability is a sign that it isn't stopping anytime soon.
https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/nvidia-gpu-debt-backst...
You either believe in the underlying science and technology or you don't. But in a world where AI is a fad like cabbage patch kids and beanie babies, what's next?
AI will almost certainly not be a fad for software developers, or at the very least for web developers, but it's certainly possible that other industries will look back on "experimental AI days" and chuckle.
Even if there is a financial bubble (that pops), the technology is still not going away.
As for what's next, I dunno. I've heard people talking about similar tech that doesn't use neural nets/etc, but that is out of my wheelhouse.
But I think AI is here to stay and it has already proven useful. And sure, we will look back on today's models like we look back upon Gordon Gekko and his giant early cell phone. And I cannot fathom how one can not separate AI the science and technology from AI tech bros and CEOs. I agree the latter are going to go through some things as the AGI fails to arrive on their schedule, but IMO there's no turning back on the technology nor should there be.
Yes, I said as much. I've said this is two other places in this thread, but when they are talking AI being useful, they aren't just talking about for software development. The software industry is seeing far more AI adoption, by a very large margin, than any other industry, and the success of the current companies hinges on it being heavily adopted everywhere. I don't really care to defend Zitron because he does speak out of his lane far too much, especially when it comes to software, and those are the points the HN crowd latches onto. But that's not the bulk of what he talks about.
I didn't have a lot sympathy for the guy who described the Internet as a series of tubes yet I believe Al Gore caught far more flack for that bit about inventing the Internet than he deserved given the inventor of the Internet defended that very claim.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore_and_information_techno...
So if the bulk of what Zitron's talking about is valid, then what are the main points that aren't self-evident i.e. there's definitely either a buildout or a bubble in CapEx and only time will answer that question, not hot air and blatant market manipulation. What is he bringing to the conversation that we're all missing? Seriously, educate me.
> So then what is the deadline for AI reaching into all these new industries?
Obviously the "deadline" would before the US companies go bust (again, IF they do). And I'm confused about your use of "new" here but I'm going to assume you mean "other existing industries that haven't adopted yet." The discussions around this are that several industries already jumped on AI then walked it back, so it's more that we're already past the "reaching in" stage. I don't have links for you but there have been several articles about companies firing people "because AI" then hiring them back. I suppose AI drive-thru order takers would work as another example. Again, I don't have the numbers on this myself. And again-again, none of this is "in defence of Ed Zitron" or "this is why Ed Zitron is great" or any such thing, but these are the things he talks about (and once again, no, it's nothing groundbreaking).
> FWIW I avoid AI shills and doomers myself and focus on developing my skills working with the technology.
I did a bit of that but I'm no longer employed and have been taking a break from programming for a few months.
Those sorts of numbers apply to the common folk like you and me IMO.
They do not apply to the billionaire class. They just don't. The CapEx play either pays out when the buildout is justified or it soft lands for them with a bailout like we just saw NVDA do today with OpenAI. No matter what, in the end, we'll be holding any bar tab in our retirement accounts if they're being "managed." How many times must this game play out for the unchanging outcome to settle in?
What I do think is that datacenters will now end up in other less-regulated countries just like California's plastic "recycling" ends up getting burned as garbage in the third world. So there's that I guess.
https://www.thenewlede.org/2025/07/postcard-from-california-...
Oh, I understand that. I'm not American, but I know I will still be affected if this all goes bust. I'm not in the best state of mind right now, though, and the thought of everything burning to the ground isn't really concerning me.
Also, interesting article. I was aware about plastics getting shipped to other countries but had no idea they were starting to refuse.
I don't think the AGI is nigh, it may even be far, but there was an article today that demonstrated something close to the path I've long believed AI will take into industry and it scares the Bejesus out of Anthropic and OpenAI because it reduces them to glorified neoclouds in the long run if one can replicate this process with open weight models. And oh no, Dario Amodei and his ilk will have to settle for being centi-millionaires. Tragic.
Yep! I'm a pretty self-aware dude, I like to think :)
The YouTuber I actually pay attention to is House of El who is an up-and-comer, doesn't pander to either side of the debate, and is very pro-AI software engineer. She also shows her work.
> 2008 sucked and the failure to clean it up and punish the guilty is the road to 2026
I'm in Canada which was not hit as hard but ya, I hope your next administration actually holds the guilty accountable. Though I've seen people loudly argue that will result in an endless war of retaliation? Honestly, I only started paying real attention to American politics in January 2025.
> I don't think the AGI is nigh, it may even be far
Not according to Sam Altman as of today! Just in the nick of time too when the cheap Chinese models showed up! What luck! XD
I have not yet read the article you shared but have it opened in a tab for later. Probably should have waited to respond until later but trying to reduce my screen time today.
Nobody has the patience to read a comprehensive point by point rebuttal to any of it, it's just too tedious.
You say "numbers don't lie". But they do, when the numbers being presented have been adversarially chosen. You just find numbers (no matter how low quality) that fit the chosen narrative, you throw out the numbers (no matter how high quality) that rebut it. If you're trying to predict the future, you can't afford that of bias. If you're an anti-AI grifter, you can't afford to not have that bias, your entire livelihood depends on only showing things that support the narrative.
This is the crux of my argument: Zitron provides numbers and he provides a lot of them sourced from reliable and trustworthy sources. He provides counterarguments to numbers-sparse arguments by using even more actual, real numbers with a logical theory formed from them.
This should make it rather easy to dispute his claims, no? So then where are the equally rational disputes?
Just this article has a dozen instances of numbers being used to prop up the argument. They're mostly irrelevant to whatever argument Zitron is trying to make at the time. Some others are straight up misrepresentations. HN really is not a good forum for point by point rebuttals for that many cases. Do you think there's a particularly high impact use of numbers in this article?
Either way it looks like he didn't just "repeat the numbers". He updated them and provided more data to back them up.
Especially if part two of your theory comes to fruition and they have to raise prices. I might of forgotten my Netflix subscription when it was 10 dollars a month but certainly not if it was 200 you know?
Having a subscription might make people run agents overnight, or casually generate images for fun, or start more coding projects. The reason gym memberships work is that people like the idea of going to the gym a lot but don't really enjoy actually doing it very much and fall off over time, leaving the gym for the rare person who's really into fitness to use it cheaply.
is AI like that where most users will get bored? or is it like movies where they'll try to get their money's worth?
User's getting bored will also spell trouble for the subscription model. I don't think we'll see a world where the average normie is going to be running agents in a loop overnight to make software. They'll get bored use it to cheat on their homework and as a Google replacement, generate silly images for a week then get bored of that, and then realize the have no actual reason to be spending $100/month and drop down to a lower tier or just cancel all together and live within the free-tier limits.
So if that happens, the labs are now left only with power users that can actually generate asymmetric cost. The market will bifurcate into free-tier users and "get their money's worth" users. So the risk isn't that the top 5% of users use more tokens than the subscription has any right to give you, it's that everyone else cancels their plans and only those top 5% of users remain.
The labs will have to put stricter rate limiting and token limits on the subscription plans to avoid MoviePass style burn.
Gyms get away with it because most don't let you cancel easily. You pay monthly, but are locked in for 6 months or a 1 year at a time (Adobe subscription style). Maybe the labs will start to do the same? Let you pay $20/month, but you are forced into an annual commitment?
Another point against your gym analogy. When people don't have that much disposable income why would they subscribe to something they semi regularly use? And if it becomes more expensive why would they not cancel it?
I don't see where the difference is with gym subscriptions here.
I mean you can say he’s not a “science guy” but he’s undeniably “smart”.