Yeah, it's not like there are AI-focused hedge funds crashing and burning right now.

Ed Zitron is enjoyably mouthy and rude about AI and AI people, but it’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that someone most people have never heard of helped create the AI backlash. He is just putting it into words.

You know what created the AI backlash as well as anyone, and it is: AI and AI people.

If e/acc voices were not so abrasively, obtrusively YOLO about their technology, if their entire take on what they earn millions to do was not so easily reduced to “yeah it sucks that your job will go away, learn AI I guess LOLz” then there would be far less to have a backlash against.

Being lectured about the future by people who do not have a fucking business plan for how they will repay a trillion dollars and who might actually crash the economy does tend to grate on the nerves of the reality-based. Being told again and again that we will be ruled over by two firms that ultimately amount to the corporate equivalent of trust fund kids, that is annoying.

If you want to convince people otherwise, find an analyst who is not churning out AI slop.

As to the “predicting it for years” thing, the first correct-with-specifics predictions of the subprime crisis were published in 2004, by a pretty fringe outlet (karmabanque) and its author, Max Keiser. I remember not being shocked at all when it finally happened, or being shocked at LIBOR rigging. Because Max Keiser presented his reasoning on his crazy radio show, and told his listeners what signs to look out for.

If someone is right for the right, well-informed reasons and presents that reasoning, it doesn’t always matter all that much if their background is unconventional. They tend to be dismissed, and they were back then. “People will always need houses” is what we were told, as if that was enough to ward off massive structural problems.

This is a non-argument and your comment is currently at top of this thread. You have not rebutted a single claim Zitron makes.

You called him him an influencer, waved at "practitioners" and declared that token factories will be fine because that is your opinion.

If his analysis is wrong, identify the error.

Yes - correct. I have been saying this since this guy gained eminence.

He doesn't need AI background to commentate on financials. Your post reads like a personal attack. His record talking about stock market doesn't matter either. There is about 0 information in anyone talking about what stock market is going to do.

So his point is that big % of cloud revenue of Microsoft/Google/Amazon come from companies that:

1)are very unprofitable

2)need to raise staggering amount of capital to survive

3)are financed by their suppliers and that money is circling back to them

Your counter-argument is this:

>> It truly doesn't matter whether closed source Frontier lab models are spewing tokens or large foreign open weight models are doing it, the token factories will be just fine, and that's really all I care about.

This might be true but there are 2 majors questions here. One is exposure to Anthropic/OpenAI. If they go bust/can't IPO at expected price it's a big loss hyperscalars will need to admit. The second question is how much of that cloud revenue comes from training. This part of the demand is going shrink or disappear in the bad scenario.

1) Doesn’t make him wrong, and his thesis is looking more and more correct every day

2) The bullish AI side is full of grifters and folks that were block-chain and NFT “experts” before they became AI “experts.” 99% of the folks in AI know almost nothing about AI apart from thinking it’s cool and having played around with it a bit.

The folks that correctly call BS on a thing tend to not be deep in the thing. Thats how they see things that are completely obvious to anyone but those so deep in they can’t see what’s right in front of them. That’s playing out big time right now with AI.

The only folks that don’t see a massive AI bubble ready to burst right now are those that have drunk so much Kool-Aide that they long since stopped having any clarity in judgment.

The implosion of “situational awareness” last week due to a complete lack of situational awareness that most Wall St pros called total amateur hour is a textbook case of this unfolding.

Your example article of a “more balanced take” actually supports what Zitron is saying.

>They are two-party round-trips: a hyperscaler invests in an AI lab that is also its cloud customer, so the investment comes back as cloud revenue.

They may not label as circular financing but this is still the exact same thing he’s bringing awareness to in his article.

Too bad that take is AI slop.

Is your ad hominem attack any better?