Ed Zitron

Oh my god lol https://t.co/TNgRQKfYzx https://t.co/VkHAzaXtW4 https://t.co/RMS20qXUy0

OpenAI talent exodus raises 'huge red flag' ahead of IPO cnbc.com

Uber’s COO has said that it’s getting “harder to justify” its AI costs because there was no way to show a link between AI spend and any meaningful increase in useful features. This is the first time I’ve seen a company say this directly. www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-and...

Uber's COO Says It's Getting Harder to Justify the Money Spent on AI - Business Insider businessinsider.com

Absolutely astonishing story from Reuters, saying that Anthropic’s valuation is based on theoretical revenues of $180-200bn in 2028, and that its “current EBITDA does not fully capture the economics investors expect the company to achieve at scale.” Misleading! www.reuters.com…

reuters.com

Had @author-calnewport.bsky.social on Better Offline to talk about AI companies “doom-trolling” consumers using scary stories about conscious computers, and how we need to make fun of those leading the scare-mongering. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b... Linktr.ee/betteroffline

The AI Industry Must Stop Doom Trolling w/ Cal Newport podcasts.apple.com

Here’s this week’s Better Offline. I run you through how Uber’s COO said the quiet part out loud - that AI’s outputs and efficacy do not match up with its ruinous costs - and how despite its bluster, the AI industry’s grift is failing. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b... Linktr…

The AI Industry Is Losing - Better Offline - Apple Podcasts podcasts.apple.com

Here's this week's Better Offline monologue. 70% or more of hyperscaler AI revenues are from Anthropic and OpenAI's compute spend and revenue shares. Without two unsustainable AI labs, the era of hypergrowth is coming to an end. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m... linktr.ee/bet…

Monologue: The Pale Horsemen Arrive podcasts.apple.com

New Better Offline: I’m joined by @paulkedrosky.com to talk about why nobody can find the ROI of AI, why there won’t be a Dot Com Bubble-style recovery for AI data centers, and how Google’s $80bn share sale shows we’re near the end. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/b... Linktr.ee…

Why AI Has No ROI with Paul Kedrosky podcasts.apple.com

Holy shit. Bloomberg just verified one of my biggest scoops - that Microsoft only has 2gw of operational capacity. I had it at 1.993GW in prep for the story that @aishadown.bsky.social and I did for the guardian. Vindication! www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Are Microsoft’s AI plans being held back by a shortage of chips? theguardian.com

Oh they’re never IPOing huh www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

bloomberg.com

Today’s free newsletter is about how LLMs are the perfect grift to exploit an economy dominated by do-nothing managers and executives disconnected from any real work, and how the facade is crumbling as companies pay the true cost of AI. www.wheresyoured.at/the-revenge-of-the-b…

Revenge of The Business Idiot wheresyoured.at

OpenAI is considering drastic price cuts to compete with Anthropic. OpenAI cannot under any circumstances afford this pay cut. This is fundamentally insane. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/open...

Exclusive | OpenAI Considers Drastic Price Cuts, Anticipating War for Users With Anthropic wsj.com

Ok 👍 www.businessinsider.com/ai-boom-enro...

AI boom has echoes of Enron but isn't doomed to disaster, tech guru says businessinsider.com

Today Microsoft moved all its GitHub copilot subscribers to token-based billing. If you want to see what happens when people have to pay the actual costs of AI, the day is finally here. It's obvious that every customer sees the deep, meaningful value and isn't angry at all.

Gotta admit after more than two years of being called a crank and a doomer for saying that businesses will flinch when they’re made to pay the real costs of AI it’s nice to see this in the newspaper

Here's my interview with CNBC on how Zuckerberg's vacuous talking points about AGI and open source exist to distract from how Meta burned $180bn in capex (and more off-balance-sheet) to make also-ran LLMs that don't deliver an iota of the promise of "personal superintelligence."

Wrote an 8000 word piece artfully framing ai data centers as the subprime mortgages of AI, only for Jim Cramer to outdo me by saying that he “likes data centers so much he wished he lived in one”

The AI bubble talk is everywhere now. It’s impossible to avoid. They’re afraid! They all feel in their bones that something is wrong. Everyone is waiting for the other shoe to drop, even the boosters are anxious. An era of smiles dawns!

I will say it is funny watching OpenAI boast about solving a complex math problem using millions of dollars of compute (and someone else’s work) all while remaining unable to solve the most obvious math problem (how to make their services profitable)

Meta selling its compute capacity...Oracle warning everybody that it might not get paid by OpenAI...going on a major business TV show tomorrow...the Summer of Smiles has begun

Anthropic's newest model is straight up saying that the AI labs effectively no path to profitability outside of an economic miracle that arrives in time with their debts. Incredible stuff. Congratulations on Anthropic for creating a model powerful enough to realize it's a shitty business. lol

Fidelity’s Director of Global Macro saying that the AI trade has been “dead money” for three months, and that it’s inflationary, meaning (as I’ve discussed multiple times) that the more debt they raise the more expensive debt becomes and the more they build data centers the more expensive it gets

ahhahahah they did a new AI 2027 called “AI 2040” that begins basically saying that in 2027 “most of the work of AI agents will be slop.” Turns out the thing that everybody took seriously was just dogshit science fiction written by imbeciles