alt Hacker NewsBefore you spend 20 minutes reading this article, it's worth understanding that the writer has been posting popular but consistently wrong takes for 2+ years (e.g. https://www.wheresyoured.at/peakai/ from March 2024) arguing that AI is failing, is a waste of money, is bad, will never work, etc.
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Can you point to anything specific from the article that you'd describe as consistently wrong? Not disagreeing with you, but nothing popped out to me after skimming the article.
The quality of AI doomerism takes is matched only by the quality of AI boosterism takes. Ed's kind of interesting as a temperature sensor but I don't feel like you can really take anything he writes seriously.
I highly recommend folks read Wired's profile on him: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-pr-ed-zitron-profile/
Tim Lee also pointed out that when Ed has posted details on some of his analysis, they have had some....oddities: https://x.com/binarybits/status/2034377838883700953
Yeah they seem clickable because anything Anti-AI is a bit soothing right now, but he is constantly wrong and usually is pushing the angle of "these businesses aren't even profitable!"
Instantly close the tab as soon as the popup to subscribe to his newsletter pops up.
What if you phrase the question from "will AI ever be useful" (a term as utterly vague as "IT") to "will it ever be able to promise the financial gains these companies are hoping? Especially with local models eating their lunch :shrug:
And its been 3 years of AI boosters telling me that my job as a litigating attorney will not exist in 2 months. Yet here I am, gainfully employed.
He also does PR for AI companies and only really acknowledges this in interviews. As far as I know he never discloses it in his rants.
> Before you spend 20 minutes reading this article, it's worth understanding that the writer has been posting popular but consistently wrong
So, judge the book by it's cover?
> arguing that AI is failing, is a waste of money, is bad, will never work, etc.
Then the opposite should be easy to prove. AI is succeeding, is efficient, is universally good, and is working everywhere it's tried. Are those true?
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Not sure where I heard this, but I'm reminded of a story about someone predicting the dotcom crash early, circa 1998. For 2 years they were demonstrably crazy, and missed out on massive stock market gains. Then they were right. (And yes, tech slowly bounced back after that.)
Predicting the timing of such a thing is notoriously difficult. I don't think being wrong about timing 2 years ago means there won't be a correction.