A.I. Critic Ed Zitron is Worth a Listen - On the Media Podcast \ stacker news ~AI

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A.I. Critic Ed Zitron is Worth a Listen - On the Media Podcast www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sfcB3OSZuc

278 sats \ 10 comments \ @kepford 6 Feb AI

I've been reading Ed Zitron for a while now. His newsletter is pretty great. He and I align on our criticisms of Silicon Valley, not so much on politics, Bitcoin, or economics though.

He's a pretty good curmudgeon. I don't co-sign all his points on this appearance but I think he is mostly correct though. More correct than the AI is gonna take over crowd at least. His observations about Sam Altman and LLMs are dead right. He glosses over some stuff and his position on the value of AI might be overstated but I haven't really heard anyone come close to countering him.

I'd love to hear some AI proponents push back. I feel like there is a lot of pie in the sky and not enough real talk about AI.

One of my favorite quotes from this episode is the "AI doesn't know anything" Its all guesses. And few people really get that about ChatGPT. I use the tools. I think they have value but its being propped up right now by a ton of cheap fiat. Its gonna crash hard. Not gonna be pretty.

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251 sats \ 2 replies \ @freetx 6 Feb

Its simultaneously funny and horrifying to me how the silicon valley crowd.....you know the rational / new atheist crowd....so completely and lazily anthropomorphizes LLMs

They know LLMs don't know anything, yet they still do it. They ascribe all sorts of agency to what is in reality a text prediction algo.

Even when they are being critical of their own products, they use words like "hallucinate" which implies a sort of consciousness that doesn't exist.

Like you, I use these tools all the time and find them very useful. However, I can't decide if the SV crowd is just attempting a cheap con on the public or if they themselves are in fact hoodwinked by their own creation.

72 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 6 Feb

Honestly, Altman is just a scam artist. Look at his shitcoin. Its been glossed over due to OpenAI but that dude is a straight up scammer. He's a good one and the fiat system rewards his type of behavior.

72 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 6 Feb

For all the talk and arrogance towards people of faith from this crowd... they are doing many of the same things. I have rarely been impressed by these people. It has long been clear to me that most of them have daddy issues and do believe in God. They just hate him and are grasping at anything that they can replace Him with. Its sad.

I'm not talking about all atheists or agnostics either so save your hate. I completely understand not having faith in a higher power. At times in my life I have been there. I don't have all the answers and I don't think you are stupid for not believing what I believe. Its belief and faith. Not science.

41 sats \ 2 replies \ @kepford OP 6 Feb

@siggy47 if you have fear about AI I'd recommend listening to this interview. I'm not afraid at all but to me the big concern about AI that Zitron mentions that is worth considering is the bubble. Its gonna pop and I know almost 100% of the tech world is being pulled into they hype cycle. I've seen this before and its gonna pop because a lot of this hype is out and out lies and ignorance.

I wish Ed would realize that the root of all of this is fiat and cheap money but I don't see him anywhere near that conclusion.

55 sats \ 1 reply \ @siggy47 6 Feb

I was kind of kidding about fear, saying it because lots of big money jerks are rushing into it from bitcoin. A nice popped bubble may not be so bad

41 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 6 Feb

The sooner it pops the better. Thank you Chinese "thieves".

57 sats \ 0 replies \ @StillStackinAfterAllTheseYears 6 Feb

Zitron's a fantastic tech skeptic, and I'm always happy to hear his voice, even on topics we differ on. Smart, intense guy.

51 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 6 Feb

Hmm. I can't help but feel like Ed Zitron has an axe to grind here. I agree that we shouldn't necessarily buy all the AI hype. At the same time, I think he isn't applying the same skepticism to Deepseek's claims. As he said, the performance metrics are pretty gameable. And in terms of all the videos of Deepseek performing amazing things---selection bias. YTubers are incentivized to overhype stuff. So it's going to take more time to see how well Deepseek performs vs. o1 and other SoA models out in the wild.

I also think AI is becoming commodified. The winners of the AI war won't be the ones who have the best model. It'll be the companies that have the most useful set of features and UI to go along with it.

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 6 Feb

100% I just like someone pushing back. I think Zitron is a contrarian and good one. He's found a market for his perspective. I think he's going to far but not nearly as far off as the other side is going.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @kepford OP 7 Feb

Funniest thing I have heard in response to this podcast was someone convinced it was AI generated. It wasn't. It had been to long since this person had heard the NPR style. Yeah, it's pretty lame. So lame AI can nail it.