How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?

How has it taken so long for this to get some proper attention?

I'm not Ed's biggest fan, but he's been pointing out some very important things for quite some time now, regarding the ludicrous over-investments going on around so many companies that are completely and utterly devoid of profits and will likely never have any.

I think lot of people including Ed are mixing 2 things the AI tech itself and the economic viability with the inflated values of companies building it currently. Me personally I am optimistic about the tech itself but don't see the current AI companies valuations being realistic or even the economic systems they are building around AI/LLM. As it will all be comoditised down to cost of compute + cost of electricity in the end.

I used to pay attention to Ed Zitron, exactly because he seemed to be someone who did the research, and looked at numbers. Until one day, I realized that seems to only look at numbers as long as it serves his agenda. When it doesn't, he looks away or makes the case for why the numbers are wrong, and shields himself from these "incorrect" numbers - or people who would point to anything suggesting that AI is not a total fad.

In April 2025, Zitron wrote [1] "I am sick and tired of everybody pretending that generative AI is the next big thing." This was at the time when AI coding tools had already gone "mainstream" with devs, and pretty much everyone was using tools like GH Copilot, Cursor, or something similar.

So I replied with this observation, saying how, at least within software engineers, AI is being adopted faster than any technology before [2]. To stay objective, obviously I brought receipts: sharing how, based on an older survey I ran, ~75% of devs in that survey said they used AI coding tools. Zitron made fun of the small sample size (216 people), blocked, and pretended like AI had zero PMF anywhere in the world.

I stopped taking him seriously since then. And I'm wondering ever since: does he deliberately only look at numbers and facts that he can tell the AI doomer story around? Or is it more that he finds that there's not many people who are "informed sceptics", and decided to play this role?

[1] https://x.com/edzitron/status/1916903519594156407?s=20

[2] https://x.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1916906481686921483?s=20

Examining Dan Luu's predictions would be harder since he doesn't even date his articles.

Was this hit piece prompted by Zitron being mentioned in the tech scene lately?

https://lwn.net/Articles/1091245/

I don't know. If you post walls of text and ramble on like Luu, perhaps you are sitting in a glass house?

This article cherry picks:

Ed Zitron mostly covers the costs of data centers, circular spending, and predictions of large the market for AI has to be to justify the data center expenditures.

I was disappointed this article didn’t really cover Zitron’s main arguments.

Maybe a paid article placement? I don’t know, but I was dissapointed: I read Zitron’s material and I wanted to see good counter arguments to his rants about costs of data centers, circular spending, and predictions of large the market for AI has to be to justify the data center expenditures arguments.

His biggest error was the blanket rage against "AI" when it should have been focused on LLMs and data centers.

AI is a big field. Hating on AI is like hating food because you don't like broccoli.

Robotics AI that replaces high risk labor and even low risk repetitive stress labor is nothing but a win for humanity.

I knew him personally years ago and he broke my trust, my own opinion is that Ed wants to be popular and make money. He couldn't care less about being a diligent reporter that cares about the subject matter, he's a hype merchant jumping on one side of the band wagon to get clicks.

On the off chance Dan sees this: one of the footnotes ("Some Zitron predictions" > July 2024) is broken. Right now it's showing a little 0 that doesn't actually link to anything if you click it :(

Most surprising thing to me here is tech giants growing 50%+ in 2 years. What's up with that?

I've said this before in here but Zitron is completely captured by his audience at best and a grifter at worst. A couple of months ago he was tweeting that people were crazy talking about _agents_, that they didn't _exist_ and that people talking about them were shills or bots. The responses were full of incredulous software developers saying but but but I use them every day, they're so good they're scary actually...

Zitron is just, like Dan Luu says, wrong about everything and doesn't care anymore, he's in the business of extracting money from his engagement.

This entire genre of pundit is just a person who has figured out that you can sell copium to the masses. Once upon a time this was a decentralized "this is how Ron Paul can win" thing on Reddit, but it was inevitable that slowly it would coalesce around these kinds of engagement bait people. Every subculture has its own such figureheads who DESTROYS opponents with FACTS and REASONING or whatever, but really it's just a reality TV show. The Alex Jones, Gary Marcus, and so on of the world are mostly just selling an entertainment product.

It's just a question of what the entertainment is. Some people feel good about being told "we were being hoodwinked; there are lizard people" and others feel good about being told "you'll be 100x healthier and good looking if you take these supplements" and others feel good about being told "these people are evil demons who are stealing your water" and others feel good about being told "these idiot rich people are going to lose their shirts" and so on and so forth. It's like how I like slice of life shows and hate horror movies and my wife likes horror movies.

In a sense, the misinformation gambit of LLMs did not come fully to fruition in the West (as much as it has in 3rd world WhatsApp forward land) because the locals were already a fertile ground of poor epistemic hygiene and well served by human providers of misinformation. Hacker News itself only has some hundred thousand commenters or so and even this requires a practice of aggressive information curation to prevent unrepentant misinformation repetition nodes from polluting one's belief set.

> Among programmers and other serious users of AI, I would guess that Willison has a larger audience than Zitron.

You don't say.

I’ve come this far without knowing who Ed Zitron is…

Hate on him all you want (he's gotten very repetitive for the sake of subscribers and reads), but the basic premise that the modern AI industry is a circular-dealing, point-of-diminishing-returns grift still holds. The bubble is here and the longer it inflates, the worse the pop will be. Sure the goalposts have moved, but the basic numbers don't math.

Ed Zitron sells subscriptions to his blog. Whether he’s right or wrong is irrelevant.

I feel like just saying "wrong" to some of these feels a bit unconvincing.

e.g.

>April 2025: "It also, at this point, is pretty obvious that generative AI isn't going to do much more than it does today." >>Wrong

Is generative AI really doing much more today relative to 1.5 years ago? Sure there have been sone improvements, but i feel like nothing fundamental has shifted in that time period. Nor would i really expect it to even if the statement was false, but it seems too early to tell.

Zitron reminds me of a lot of people who got oversized reputations after the 2008 financial crash. They predicted it, or could spin past statements as predicting it, and rode off that.

But from that point on they basically assumed this role of what financial punditry call perma-bears, people who constantly predict financial doom. It gets clicks and sells subscriptions, which is probably why they do it. But from that point on their predictions weren't very good. If you constantly predict doom then every now and then you'll look like you were a genius, but it's just survivorship bias. People discount all the other times you were wrong.

I don't know a whole lot about Zitron himself. Didn't he get big calling BS on cryptocurrency stuff that actually was BS?

The problem is that AI isn't cryptocurrency. This is very real.

I do suspect there's some bubbly stuff around it. I think data center construction looks very bubbly, especially the totally ludicrous amount of permitted planned data center construction. I bet no more than 20% of that ever comes online. I'm sure there's some AI companies that won't make it, and a bunch that are overvalued. But AI as a whole is real, not just hot air.

I don't know anything about this guy, but based on the discourse every time he comes up, Ed Zitron is a more polarizing figure for HNers than even Trump. Everyone here loves trying to dunk on the guy, yet he's apparently living rent free in everyone's social media feeds.

I think it's a mistake to make concrete predictions about something like a stock market crash on a given timeline. As they say, the market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent. However, Zitron is directionally correct about a lot.

I will say, the first part Mr. Luu says about big tech not being out of ideas is pure horse shit. Anyone who has worked in big tech knows that leadership at those companies can have no idea what they are doing and still be successful in earnings or the stock market. They are sometimes successful despite themselves.

I knew him personally years ago and can't take a word he says seriously, speaking from my own experience, he is not a trustworthy person. He wants to be popular not accurate. He writes to make bank, not to be a diligent reporter that cares about the subject matter.

Zitron is an AI doomer and a clear fact-distorter. I follow him because even a broken clock is right twice a day and I do think he's a pretty smart guy. I don't read his newsletter (it's basically word vomit these days), but his interviews are marginally interesting. One of the quotes in the linked article is totally correct:

> He found a niche in anti-tech grift, and is now exploiting the niche for all he can.

Ed gets hard because of the love the anti-ai people give him and seeing him as the voice of anti-ai... If you listen to his arguments though he lacks knowledge of what these companies even do. He's been on so many shows discussing the negatives but he admitted to not even using the models for anything

I cannot shake the feeling that his two failed marriages suffuse his extreme negative outlook on everything that is not Ed Zitron, especially AI. His comments about photo shoots and men resenting his emotional honesty speak of narcissism and perhaps why those marriages didn't work out. Good luck convincing a narcissist to change their mind about anything, I speak from unfortunate experience.

But I get that he speaks to an audience that needs to hear his take and that's their call. I don't have time and I won't make the time for podcasts and sitting through the worldview of anyone for hours at a time, 2 to 5 times weekly. No one is that interesting IMO.

both ed zitron and dan luu are professional bloggers who earn their living from selling ai sensationalism, zitron using paywalls and luu using patreon. whether the sensationalism is positive or negative, either way it is a very clear conflict of interest.

just give it time, anyone (even those with 115k subscribers) who predicts a crash every day will eventually always be right. might take a decade or two… :)

The first correct, detailed prediction (in print) about the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as a result of the subprime crisis was made by Max Keiser, of Karmabanque, in (Zac Goldsmith's) The Ecologist magazine.

In 2004.

And he'd been talking about it before then.

People thought Max Keiser was a crank; instead he made detailed predictions based on his intuitions, limited insider feedback and cold hard facts. He couldn't say exactly when it would happen; he laid out some horsemen you could expect for the apocalypse and this was one.

The thing about a bubble is everything is fine until it isn't. And it's worth observing that key parts of what Zitron is discussing has been covered in the WSJ and FT.

It's all very well posting numbers to "disprove" him when what he is pointing out is that the AI hype train is delusional and the costs are buried.

But Zitron is directionally correct, I think, particularly with regards to Oracle, where things he has said have literally come true.

Frankly as a Brit I remain amused at how much Zitron winds Americans up just by being himself — sweary, vulgar, rude, catty. And since non-Brits can't read Brits, Luu has to engage in pretty immature character assassination about it.

I've always been suprised with the amount people take him seriously. I think he's someone who makes people who dislike AI "feel good". I don't blame someone who doesn't understand AI or have read what he's written.

But for the bloombergs and other podcasts I would have expected them to do a bit of research. I honestly think with the amount of doubling down he's been doing that he's a grifter.

Obviously Ed is a special case, but let's be honest, pretty much anybody telling you they can predict the future is selling you BS. And that includes all the people confidently predicting he was wrong. The actual situation is, there are genuine unknowns driving things with significant influence, and nobody actually knows what is going to happen. At best, people can talk about risks and likelihoods of outcomes.

Mo Bitar over on YouTube does the grumpy AI skeptic routine in a much more entertaining fashion.

a thorough Fisking, nicely done danluu

the analogy to Ehrlich was strikingly apt

Not about Zitron specifically -- I don't read his study, but I don't know that making some statements in interviews or blog posts is the same as making a "prediction" (into which one would put much more though)

also statements can be interpreted many ways:

"Meta is dying" was countered by "Meta's revenue has increased since Zitron said that". OK, but 1) revenue/profit is only one measure of "not dying"; 2) what's the time scale? Nokia and Xerox were highly profitable companies that dominated their industries, and any prediction that they would go out of business at their height would have been laughed at, and yet, it wasn't too much later that they pretty much did.

He's dead wrong about the usefulness of the technology, but he's dead right about the uncontrolled corrupt circular financing that is driving this crazy over-expansion and market distortion. He fulfils a very useful function as a counterweight to the big tech horse-shit hosepipe that sprays us every day.

Off topic:

> For example, with a style that could be described as the opposite of clickbait, Simon Willison has written what I suspect is the most widely read blog among programmers for the past 3-4 years (in the same way that, at various times in the past, Joel Spolsky or Jeff Atwood or Steve Yegge seemed to be the most widely read programmer among programmers). Among programmers and other serious users of AI, I would guess that Willison has a larger audience than Zitron.

I have no idea Simon Willison is the most widely read blog among programmers. I truly have no idea, and I've been programming for just a decade.

A lot of Simon's blogs posted here are when new LLM models are released, on how good are these LLM models create pelican riding a bike using SVGs. Nothing particularly interesting to me.

I truly have no idea why would people be interested in blogs about LLM creating pelican riding a bike svgs every single time a new model is released. Maybe its a proof of AGI/ASI for some?

I guess to me, Simon Willison will always be the "create-a-pelican-riding-a-bike-using-svg-dude".

Zitron in general is representative of the conspiratorial thinking that has infected all spectra of the political space. Zitron obviously occupies more of the left space.

Good critique of LLMs & the companies behind them is hard to find, and it is harder when people gravitate towards this sort of thinking.

Zitron has staked his bear position and isn't budging, so regardless if he's been wrong and wrong again, he'll be remembered for calling the bubble if/when it pops, if only because so few in the media have done so without equivocation.

Zitron is the opposite of Jim Cramer. No Hype, no sales push, very cynical and conservative.

The simplest argument against AI is the fact no public company appears to be making money on it, minus revenue that contributes to AI infrastructure.

Would love to see broken down counter example of public company.

So far Chegg and Duolingo have been devastated. Surely they could cut costs drastically with AI?

He's been right on the money. People here are mad that he is because they are profiting off of the grift of the bubble.

I just remembered that before AI, I knew Zitron from ranting about IoT and consumer tech. He just appeared one day in my Twitter Timeline, claiming to be the "man on the ground" at CES (or so my memory at least)

So from that standpoint, I guess it would make sense that a personality like that would now have ended up at the AI topic.

I would like to see a comparison with predictions of the pro-AI bubble and their hit rates though. This writing feels as selective as it tries to paint Zitron as.

zitron is a jester. He knows his audience and plays it well. It is incredibly tiring to listen to his lies, but so are the AI boosters. I think it is net zero

Thanks for this post. Zitron is a prime example of how someone with little background, expertise, or domain experience can establish a grift in the outrage economy. Unfortunately, emotion and illusion when properly marketed can still go a long way in this world.

Only recently came across this guy and if u ignore the standard social media hyper hype hype he has, I dont think he is wrong even his 2024 predictions.

US has 1.5x the money supply since Covid. This means everything has to go up 1.5x to reach the same parity from before. eg inflation. All corporate earnings are going to inflate as 1b yesterday is 1.5b today.

There is no whete for these mega corps to go. They dont know how to grow. meta becoming well meta with the vr crap is case and point. meta blowing billions on a few hyped AI people is the nail.

Other than cloud, microsft/google aimt doing anything. xbox? nope, hardware? nah. It is all attention economy or selling the pick axes for it.

the only mega corp that still seems to be moving the needle is apple which i think speaks volumes.

Eds point is that AI tam or expectations are insane full stop and he admits coding has a use just not as big of a tam. Gen ai in art, music, etc did not take off at all esp compared to code. this makes sense, no one pays an artist 500k/year. their time is worth little compared to coding.

Where he is wrong tho is that this is not new. there is always a hype cycle of nonsense that screws the little people. what is new is the level of polarization. it feels like ai psychosis right now in ways that remind me of crypto but worse because ai is actually useful so people are even more insufferable.

Easy to claim things as wrong without prodiving any facts.

Can I try?

> But when people bring him up, they're of course not generally citing his anger

Wrong.

> Google has been increasing the relative priority of revenue over the user experience over time

Wrong.

> I'm curious what people do after being on the wrong side

Wrong.

Some of the claims categorized as "wrong" are also completely true, such as training hitting diminishing returns. New models are barely an improvement and most people I know stuck on Opus 4.6 over any newer one for example.

Exact same thing for the claim "the fact we're running out of high quality training data and we're hitting the walls of scaling laws, in the training paradigm, these models aren't getting better. What we're seeing today is pretty much what they're always gonna be like".

If anything, model performance has regressed in actual use (i.e. not benchmarks) for the past half a year.

i relate to zitron cuz of how much he seems to genuinely hate the people in charge of this AI bubble. he, like me, seems to wish that when this all falls apart they get proportionate harm to go.

that'll obviously never happen. it's wishful thinking and venting tbh. that's why i like listening to his stuff.

it's better than reading the wholly AI slop docs my CEO keeps sending out

Everything everyone is predicting has almost zero value. Nobody owns a crystal ball. Right now there could be someone working in a garage somewhere that could shake the entire LLM world to the core with a unique insight and innovation.

Think about the world before the 2017 "Attention Is All You Need" paper.

Did anyone predict that paper, what preceded and followed it?

Nope.

Same case now.

Maybe the word "prediction" is the problem; "guessing" would be better.

OK, what the heck. I'll make a prediction too:

You better buy SpaceX stock now. The way things are going in the US, the only way we build AI data centers at scale will be in space. Politicians have turned data centers into punching bags to be used to gain votes. We can't build power plants and people are being led to believe all kinds of things. Regardless of which, if any, are true or not, the rate of construction of AI data centers in the US is and will be seriously constrained by realities on the ground.

Hence my prediction: It's all going to space.