I don't understand the people who have the patience to listen to Zitron. It's all one-tone takes with no place for nuance, you kind of know what he's going to say and the fact the mixes genuine criticism with bad faith arguments doesn't help.
I find more nuance in his arguments than on the typical AI hyper in yhe HN comment session. I can sort of predict the talking points I find here.
Anyway, I think Zitron is wrong on the usefulness of AI, but I don't need to agree with him on everything. That is the weaker part of his arguments anyway (and, unsurprisingly, where critics here choose to engage with).
He has a very solid point on the viability and economics of AI, and I am still to see facts that contradict his analysis there.
In fact, what spooks me about AI is not that it can replace me. It can't, that much is clear. I am spooked about the probable economic downturn that it will spawn. All the reckless spending is fun until the bill has to be paid.
I find his way of talking funny and entertaining. I can't say why, but it's a nice way to waste a few minutes. It's very boring if you're only there for the information.
> It's all one-tone takes with no place for nuance, you kind of know what he's going to say and the fact the mixes genuine criticism with bad faith arguments doesn't help.
I logged into my account today to look at my balance and saw a notice that they're changing pricing to charge more at peak times. I haven't looked into to it more yet but I'm guessing it will still be significantly cheaper than the American models.
When you say "just", which innovation are you referring to? Did they literally just announce something or are you referring to something like v4 flash?
I think it’s nice to have a voice criticizing the fundraising aspect of these companies. I do think we’ll see at least one of them blow up. The technology is obviously useful though. Hundreds of thousands of developers have already changed the way they were working for decades. Some of the criticisms that the technology doesn’t work at all go a bit too far.
> Hundreds of thousands of developers have already changed the way they were working for decades
I agree on this, but it doesn't mean that there is an automatic benefit on business side ... and business is what is paying our wages & tokens!
We are still in the discovery phase, but we don't know yet if there will be enough return to repay those hundreds of billions already invested and other few trillions that will be invested in the near future.
Some of the criticisms that the technology doesn’t work at all go a bit too far.
It's not enough for it to "work". It has to work in a way that is affordable and cost effective for widespread use.
Otherwise, people/companies will use it sparingly or not at all. Anything less than widespread, "universal" use is a big problem for those investing $ trillions in AI.
It actually does work for a whole range of things.
Is it a panacea? Of course not, but it is potentially a sustainable business.
Except - open models are barely months away from the same performance and there is no moat, so we will see commodity pricing, and the billions being heaped on the fire currently will probably not see a return, unless someone comes up with a genius trading bot perhaps.
The TAM figure they arrive at is ~$36 billion by 2030. And for 2026 they claim a TAM of $10.6B
OpenAI alone is rumored to be on track for $30B of revenue in 2026. Add in Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Chinese providers, and the revenue being generated from LLM's in 2026 is plausibly in the range of $50-100B already.
Whatever your thoughts are on the cash burn to get there are irrelevant. There's at least $50B of LLM usage being paid for in 2026. 5x higher than the figure these research report companies are providing.
Because of the comments here that turned into an ideological battle, and that Zitron is a talking head who makes hyperbolic statements within his sometimes valid points. He's playing for a particular crowd, not doing good journalism and reporting. See how his statements created ideologically based comments here? We'd prefer better discourse on HN.
For the record I can’t wait for the “ideologically based” comments after this trillion dollar Jenga tower comes crashing down. This place will be censored to shit of course. But that won’t stop people like me from rubbing it in.
You know being a Ycombinator proxy, you would think you guys could take a little bit of shit. You certainly don’t hesitate to shove ai down the throat of everyone, without consent obtained.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 42.9 ms ] threadAnyway, I think Zitron is wrong on the usefulness of AI, but I don't need to agree with him on everything. That is the weaker part of his arguments anyway (and, unsurprisingly, where critics here choose to engage with).
He has a very solid point on the viability and economics of AI, and I am still to see facts that contradict his analysis there.
In fact, what spooks me about AI is not that it can replace me. It can't, that much is clear. I am spooked about the probable economic downturn that it will spawn. All the reckless spending is fun until the bill has to be paid.
This is hillariously self referential.
He gets things others are missing.
He also misses things others are getting.
I think it’s nice to have a voice criticizing the fundraising aspect of these companies. I do think we’ll see at least one of them blow up. The technology is obviously useful though. Hundreds of thousands of developers have already changed the way they were working for decades. Some of the criticisms that the technology doesn’t work at all go a bit too far.
https://isaiprofitable.com/
I agree on this, but it doesn't mean that there is an automatic benefit on business side ... and business is what is paying our wages & tokens!
We are still in the discovery phase, but we don't know yet if there will be enough return to repay those hundreds of billions already invested and other few trillions that will be invested in the near future.
It's not enough for it to "work". It has to work in a way that is affordable and cost effective for widespread use.
Otherwise, people/companies will use it sparingly or not at all. Anything less than widespread, "universal" use is a big problem for those investing $ trillions in AI.
[1] Actually I think it's right on the overinvestments and ROI claims
Ed Zitron is a journalist. Do you say that about every journalist?
Is it a panacea? Of course not, but it is potentially a sustainable business.
Except - open models are barely months away from the same performance and there is no moat, so we will see commodity pricing, and the billions being heaped on the fire currently will probably not see a return, unless someone comes up with a genius trading bot perhaps.
https://www.precedenceresearch.com/large-language-model-mark...
The TAM figure they arrive at is ~$36 billion by 2030. And for 2026 they claim a TAM of $10.6B
OpenAI alone is rumored to be on track for $30B of revenue in 2026. Add in Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Chinese providers, and the revenue being generated from LLM's in 2026 is plausibly in the range of $50-100B already.
Whatever your thoughts are on the cash burn to get there are irrelevant. There's at least $50B of LLM usage being paid for in 2026. 5x higher than the figure these research report companies are providing.
LLMs are big, Codex app is huge. You can control the browser from within codex app with just natural language.
Tell codex to perform a few actions, you go get coffee and come back to work done. This is real boost in productivity.
You know being a Ycombinator proxy, you would think you guys could take a little bit of shit. You certainly don’t hesitate to shove ai down the throat of everyone, without consent obtained.
when the comments under a post become ideological, as they have here, there is high probability we will flag the post, regardless of the OP content
Guaranteed defensive replies, usually personal attacks, HN commenters cannot seem to ignore him
He must be on to something
Big Tech is a slave to the dynamics of attention and popularity
But what happens if a Big Tech critic gets attention and becomes popular
It becomes entertainment