Ed Zitron loses his mind annotating an AI doomer macro memo

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/1p1n0y1ip48ianok9dvbp/Annotation-The-Global-Intelligence-Crisis.pdf?dl=0&e=1&noscript=1&rlkey=qaar8ea6l5hh6jqls4x6g8q4b

by ossa-ma • 5 months ago

59 123 5 months ago

dropbox.com

returnInfinity• 5 months ago

Offtopic - The success of coding agents must be Ed Zitron's nightmare.

He has been a perpetual bear

vv_3• 5 months ago

Have they been successful?

simianwords17• 5 months ago

Some one should compile concrete predictions that he made vs how they turned out.

Kye6• 5 months ago

He hedges so much that it's probably impossible to catch him in a contradiction or missed prediction. It must be all that practice running a PR firm for AI companies.

Lariscus3• 5 months ago

Which success? I still see those things churning out laughably wrong code at every turn.

delaminator• 5 months ago

I guess everyone stopped using Claude Code already then, if it doesn't work.

ubercore3• 5 months ago

It's not a point and click code machine, but it's laughably wrong to say they just churn out laughably wrong code.

cleaning• 5 months ago

You're telling on yourself here

jbreckmckye4• 5 months ago

I don't think so.

His argument is not "this tech doesn't work", but rather "these businesses aren't economically viable"

And that the smoke and mirrors accounting and perpetual thirst for more billions indicates just how unviable it is

Whilst he does dunk on LLM capabilities, the framing is the business angle - can Anysphere etc. actually form a moat and make a profit?

simianwords17• 5 months ago

His argument has never been "this tech doesn't work", but rather "these businesses aren't economically viable"

Why? because of cost?

simianwords17• 5 months ago

I don't think Ed doesn't comment about the actual tech. Here are some things he has said before and please tell me if these still hold in the spirit?

You cannot "fix" hallucinations (the times when a model authoritatively tells you something that isn't true, or creates a picture of something that isn't right), because these models are predicting things based off of tags in a dataset, which it might be able to do well but can never do so flawlessly or reliably.

ChatGPT is fairly reliable.

Deep Research has the same problem as every other generative AI product. These models don't know anything, and thus everything they do — even "reading" and "browsing" the web — is limited by their training data and probabilistic models that can say "this is an article about a subject" and posit their relevance, but not truly understand their contents. Deep Research repeatedly citing SEO-bait as a primary source proves that these models, even when grinding their gears as hard as humanely possible, are exceedingly mediocre, deeply untrustworthy, and ultimately useless.

This is untrue in spirit.

You can fight with me on semantics, on claiming valuations are high and how many users ChatGPT has, but look at the products and tell me any of this is really the future.

Imagine if they’d done something else.

Imagine if they’d done anything else.

Imagine if they’d have decided to unite around something other than the idea that they needed to continue growing.

Imagine, because right now that’s the closest you’re going to fucking get.

This is what he said in 2024. He really thought ChatGPT is not in the future.

There are so many examples and its clear that he's not good faith and has consistently gotten the spirit wrong.

luke-stanley• 5 months ago

This is not off-topic at all!

jaredcwhite• 5 months ago

"Success" is a very relative statement in this context.

decimalenough• 5 months ago

The original memo: https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47114579

Thanemate• 5 months ago

I'm somewhat halfway through the original memo, and I hate the fact that kernels of truth lie here and there. For example, I used to work as a full-stack developer for about 2 years, and now I got forced into what the memo calls "gig economy" just to pay the rent, because companies slowed down hiring junior developers thanks to... Honestly, I don't really care at this point what I have to thank for.

All I know is, whenever I read testimonies from people whose companies suddenly decided to force LLM usage for productivity to be "AI first", having colleagues opening PR's who are only machine reviewed with implementations they cannot justify themselves outside of "Claude wrote it", makes me burnout just reading them. And it's only going to get worse until it becomes better, but not for the developers.

Honestly, the one thing that I could see justify all the investment companies make for LLM-assisted coding is the full automation of software production. I can only see the current state of things as the "end game" for them, only if they suddenly decide to jack up pricing to tap directly on the corporate budget and not the individual developer's budget.

notachatbot123• 5 months ago

Where does the title come from?

What is this document?

What is the context?

nielsbot• 5 months ago

Good questions. Here is the author's BlueSky post about it:

https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com/post/3mfkc63h6222l

"Here is an annotated version of the Citrini Memo with my own intro. It is analyslop - scare-fiction written to ingratiate AI boosters and analysts/traders with tales of ultra-automation and socialist data center policies. Shameful that the markets reacted at all."

Lariscus3• 5 months ago

I do enjoy a good Ed Zitron sneer. The fact that the original article moved markets says a lot about the critical thinking skills of stock market traders.

davorb• 5 months ago

You should look into how he destroyed the small indie MMO Darkfall and gave the game 2/10 without ever playing it, in a Eurogamer review a few years ago. The developers had receipts and could prove that he hadn't played it.

It doesn't have any material effect on this article, but it says something about his ethics.

Lariscus3• 5 months ago

Its word against word in this situation. The logs prove nothing as they are easily modifiable and the devs had a good reason to do so.

surgical_fire7• 5 months ago

From Wikipedia:

Darkfall lead developer Tasos Flambouras claims that game server logs show that the Eurogamer reviewer played the game for under three hours, a claim denied by the writer.

Even if we take the lead developer's word for it, what you are describing is simply false.

GaryBluto2• 5 months ago

Ed Zitron, from what little I have heard of him, seems incredibly irrational. I don't think I've ever seen anybody stick their head deeper in the sand more than I've seen him do.

It's one thing to dislike or even detest something, but to constantly claim it is worthless and without use when people are already benefitting from it everyday is nothing short of delusion.

000ooo000• 5 months ago

from what little I have heard of him

That's an interesting way to start criticism about ignorance

BrenBarn• 5 months ago

Commented [1]: what if pee pee was poo poo

Rarely do I read something that starts off with such promise!

pityJuke2• 5 months ago

Don’t encourage his diaper fetish! [0]

[0] https://bsky.app/search?q=from%3Aedzitron.com+diaper

danlitt2• 5 months ago

"Search is currently unavailable when logged out"

GaryBluto2• 5 months ago

I thought there would be one or two results, perhaps a result of poor reoccurring phrasing. Nope.

i'm going to change your diaper and burp you
Carlito is a very good boy Go piss in your diaper you big baby
He doesn't care. He is a big baby who filled up his diaper with pee pee and poo poo
you are a big baby and i am going to change your diaper and burp you <
To be clear I call executives of multi trillion dollar companies scumbags and if you can't deal with that I'm not sure what to do. Burp you? Change your diaper?
I am going to change your diaper and burp you
Yeah man it's real authoritarian to say your second name is doodoo. Go change your diaper you big baby
Yeah because you're a big baby with a big full diaper
Hello sir this is your uber outside. I have your order from the diaper store

shimonabi• 5 months ago

I've also heard Cory Doctorow recently offer a similarly dismissive view, describing AI as "just statistics".

palmotea3• 5 months ago

I've also heard Cory Doctorow recently offer a similarly dismissive view, describing AI as "just statistics".

Well, AI partisans have applied grandiose terms like "thinking," "intelligence," and "soul" to these machines. It's not wrong to push back and remind people what they really are.

keeda3• 5 months ago

Well, if you look into the current scientific consensus on human cognition, our intelligence is also "just statistics."

So I guess we all agree, except that some people think "just statistics" is derogatory phrasing!

hresvelgr• 5 months ago

"What if our AI bullishness continues to be right...and what if that’s actually bearish" - what if pee pee was poo poo

Despite the vulgarity, it is exceptionally illuminating to how much some of these slop pieces are just a mere pretension of rhetoric. I see this pretty consistently with a lot of the material I come across on the job that's gone through the LLM meat-grinder.

Also, the comment made me giggle like a little kid.

Jordan-117• 5 months ago

What's pretend-rhetoric about it? They're positing agents will prove to be very capable, but that this would ultimately be a bad thing by automating away too much of the economy. You can argue whether that's plausible or not, but it isn't an incoherent or vapid argument.

piker• 5 months ago

I suggest you read the annotation if that question isn't just rhetorical. I'm not familiar with Ed, but he has a pretty good take down in here if you can get past his somewhat juvenile writing style.

It is a problem when your doomsday timeline for obsolescence is behind the minute you publish. The memo itself was fantasy doomer porn on day 1.

hiddencost2• 5 months ago

I've started to feel like Ed Zitron is actively hurting people I care about.

I'm lucky to have worked in the field for a long time, and be able to spend a lot of tokens. In the last month it's become clear to me that the tech works. The science is done, and what's left is engineering.

There are a lot of risks and mitigations and theory to build, but it's all solvable. The tech isn't mature, but neither was the Internet 30 years ago. And we built transatlantic cables and ran new wires to everyone's house.

People I care about, engineers with 20 years of experience, are having mental health breakdowns, caused by Zitron's work. They insist the tech will never work, and avoid learning about it, becoming progressively more paranoid and isolated. I'm trying to be supportive and help them start to recover, but it's slow going.

If someone is having a crisis about this, I hope they start talking to a therapist. I don't need them to agree with me, but I do need them to not harm themselves.

v3xro• 5 months ago

There's nothing to recover from, what are you even talking about? I'm not a token user (and I can't make predictions about the future and whether it will force me to use token but still). That the industry is collectively having a delusion about what constitutes good software (in all senses of the word - functionality and consequences for society) is clear to see, something I too fear we might never recover from, but I stand quite clearly on the side of people not of corporations hoping to extract more more more.

vv_3• 5 months ago

They insist the tech will never work, and avoid learning about it, becoming progressively more paranoid and isolated.

They can always learn the technology later, when and if it proves itself to be useful :) I personally don't understand the hype, even after using Claude and other AI tools - but perhaps that will change in the future.

orwin3• 5 months ago

If your company offer 'training' with 'AI expert' and 'prompt engineers', I urge you to attend. It's very gratifying, it cure imposter syndrome, and you will understand who is behind the hype and their technical level.

(And it is already useful, just not as much as some people sell it)

jubalfh• 5 months ago

nice darvo, mate.

lelanthran• 5 months ago

They insist the tech will never work, and avoid learning about it, becoming progressively more paranoid and isolated. I'm trying to be supportive and help them start to recover, but it's slow going.

If you are right, and the tech works, both you and them will be continuing this conversation in a soup kitchen.

butterbomb• 5 months ago

More likely a mass grave

relaxing• 5 months ago

The internet 30 years ago worked great, what are you talking about.

palmaltd• 5 months ago

Not sure how this comment got upvoted; calling skepticism of an emerging industry a "mental breakdown" and suggesting those "suffering" from it to talk to a therapist doesn't really clear the bar for discussion here. This reads more like a manager being salty that their team isn't using up all the Grok budget this quarter or whatever.

And let it be clear that nobody is being "actively hurt" by legitimate economic/business grievances. This is victim-blaming and disgusting rhetoric.

DrewADesign4• 5 months ago

It got upvoted because this hype is essentially running on faith at this point, and the only way to fight someone questioning your faith is calling them crazy, confused, or evil.

AlexeyBelov• 5 months ago

Wait, isn't it the other way around? I.e. people infatuated with AI having breakdowns? Multiple such cases were on the front page of HN.

namcheapisdumb2• 5 months ago

I've started to feel like Ed Zitron is actively hurting people I care about.

lmfao

DrewADesign4• 5 months ago

What looks isolated to you merely looks separated from the SV hype pool to the rest of the world. Most people aren’t in on this.

arowthway• 5 months ago

The financial market things are over my head and I don't have a dog in the game, but I think "Nobody is replacing salesforce with their internally vibe coded software" is just false? Both taken literally [0] [1] and as denying the general trend. Just in my company we already replaced WMS software subscription with own solution, and I wouldn't be able to write it fast enough and maintain it by myself without the use of Claude Code. I'd say "Not perfectly or with every edge case handled, but well enough that the CIO reviewing a $500k annual renewal started asking the question “what if we just built this ourselves”" is an accurate description.

[0] https://lovable.dev/blog/how-a-startup-replaced-a-salesforce...

[1] https://seekingalpha.com/news/4144652-klarna-shuts-down-sale...

Ozzie_osman• 5 months ago

Agreed. If anything, it puts downward pressure on pricing. Even if the CIO still buys Salesforce or whatever other tool, they won't be willing to pay as much.

MadxX794• 5 months ago

If you don't give me a discount on my salesforce subscription I'll shoot myself in the face with this AI enabled gun?

rwmj2• 5 months ago

I didn't think something could be worse than everyone using Salesforce, but everyone using a different, constantly broken, incompatible SF clone that no one understands may be that.

grebc• 5 months ago

Lol give it 12 months.

DrewADesign4• 5 months ago

What percentage of companies that use salesforce employ software developers? Many don’t even have IT workers.

It’s easy to assume the conditions in software companies are generalizable to everyone else but they’re really not. For the majority of companies, which have no software development expertise, it would be a catastrophe. Hiring someone to do it, and managing the initiative, would cost more than salesforce.

simianwords17• 5 months ago

Ed's main thesis is that cost is unsustainable for AI companies but this is clearly wrong.

The unit cost is going down and has gone down by more than 20-30x over the years. Sure, the fixed cost of training is going up but that's because of the implied returns. Once the returns to training don't happen, it would simply reduce modulo cutoff date updates. The companies have a choice to just stop training and focus on inference cost reduction.

What am I missing here? Unless the consumers decide that they are no longer willing to pay the same amount as before and their expectations are rising with prices falling, what else?

MadxX794• 5 months ago

Is that the cost per token or the actual cost of the user having a conversation, reasoning and all?

simianwords17• 5 months ago

Cost per defined capability. Meaning you fix the task and then find how much it cost to achieve it including reasoning, tokens etc.

chvid• 5 months ago

He is funny and entertaining but does he provide constructive investment advice? I am not so sure.

frozenseven3• 5 months ago

Good to see people are finally turning against this grifter.

"AI fake, AI poo poo, AI going away!" is the only argument he ever had. Nothing more.

Moomoomoo3092• 5 months ago

Did you actually read the articles he made going through the finances of these companies? He definitely has a bone to pick, but his numbers don't lie. The amount of return these AIs need to give due to the amount of spend is so ridiculous that unless they really do automate most jobs, they're screwed. There's a reason these companies only post AI revenue now, not profit.

Kye6• 5 months ago

Bubble doomerism is nothing novel. As is always the case, he's right vertically and wrong horizontally. Serious people in serious publications still speculated that the internet was a fad and would be over soon as late as 2008.

OpenAI will collapse, almost certainly. Anthropic might get by if they can make it to IPO before it all comes tumbling down. Google will buy up all the datacenters in a fire sale like they did with dark fiber after the .com bubble popped and continue building out stuff like NotebookLM.

Amazon and Microsoft will still be there selling server time to model providers and doing custom enterprise solutions like always. They already host the major proprietary models and sell API access.[0]

The top open models are already good enough. At this point prompting and coordination are the big bottlenecks. It would be nice if the bubble lasts long enough for open models to match at least the latest Opus.

His problem is the focus on the bubble and not on what usually happens after. People will bandy his pieces about insisting it's all short lived and they can just wait it out. Kimi K2.5, GLM 5, and MiniMax 2.5 aren't going away.

[0] For example: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/claude-opus-4-6-anthr...

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2026/2/claude-opu...

seanhunter• 5 months ago

It’s sort of disappointing to me how on both sides it seems hard to have any sort of rational perspective. I find both the Citrini memo (and the subsequent market reaction) and Ed Zitron’s critique of it to be wildly off-base.

I wish everyone would just calm down a bit.

ChrisArchitect• 5 months ago

An AI doomsday report shook US markets

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47138860

gneuron• 5 months ago

Okay, I'm tired of reading the debate about costs going down and therefore Ed is wrong. The cost of running the inference is not the problem. The cost of the input CHIPS is the problem. Let's return to Dario Amodei's interview [0] with Dwarkesh, shall we, for AI Economics 101?

Here goes:

The Epoch data everyone keeps citing measures the price per token charged to API customers. That's the sticker price. It tells you nothing about whether the business is viable, because the existential risk for AI companies isn't the marginal cost of running a query. It's the upfront capital expenditure on chips and datacenters, committed years before you know what demand looks like.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei spelled this out in his Dwarkesh interview. Here's the short version: 1. Data centers take 1-2 years to build out. 2. Each gigawatt costs roughly $10-15B per year. 3. The industry is currently at ~10-15 GW, scaling roughly 3x annually. 4. By 2028, ~100 GW. By 2029, ~300 GW. 5. We're talking multiple trillions per year in committed infrastructure spend across the industry.

Now NVIDIA's Q4 earnings [1], which printed today: 1. $68.1B in quarterly revenue, $62.3B from data center alone. 2. Full-year: $215.9B, up 65% YoY. Guiding $78B next quarter. 3. Someone is writing those checks. Those checks are not refundable.

Dario, who believes we're 1-3 years from a "country of geniuses in a data center," described his own demand prediction as a "hellish" problem.

His exact framing: If this revenue comes in at $800B instead of $1T, "there's no force on earth, there's no hedge on earth" that could stop him from going bankrupt if he'd bought compute at the higher projection.

He's at ~$10B annualized revenue today, and he won't commit to buying at the scale his own thesis demands, because being off by a single year is fatal.

This is the actual argument (I'm not saying this is Ed's argument, but this is the argument against these companies). Not "inference tokens are expensive."

The argument is structural: these companies must pre-commit billions in non-recoverable CAPEX based on demand projections that are, by the CEO's own admission, a coin flip.

The gross margins on serving tokens might be great. But the training spend for next-gen models grows exponentially, and it has to be funded before that model earns a dollar.

The Epoch chart measures what customers pay per token. It doesn't measure the $215.9B NVIDIA invoice those customers collectively funded this year, or that these chip purchases are one-way bets against future demand that may or may not materialize.

Inference costs going down 20x is wonderful for consumers. It tells you almost nothing about whether the companies making those chips, or the companies buying them, will survive the demand prediction gauntlet.

And if we're being honest, the Epoch data showing 9x to 900x price drops per year should make you more nervous, not less, because it means the asset you bought last year is depreciating at a rate that makes used cars look like gold bars.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1E9IZfvGMA&t=2298s [1] https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-announces-financia...

LaSombra• 5 months ago

Only those with no understanding of how multi-nationals compliance work think that replacing Salesforce or Monday with internal development systems, even with AI assistance tooling, is a reasonable use of their engineering's time.

Salesforce, SAP, etc exist for a reason.

Ed Zitron loses his mind annotating an AI doomer macro memo

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