I've got a yearly subscription to Ed and from time to time I still like to read it; but this constant ALL IS BAD! SCAM! SCAM! I AM VERY SMART! OHHHH I TOLD YOU SOOO!!!!! is so annoying to read, and he's mostly verbatim re-hashing his previous posts in every next article.
I completely believe him on it being a bubble, that this is not-a-Uber-situation, and that it's worse than whatever-you-might-call-it — but get a grip, dude. Yes, bubble. People and their investments are going to get hurt. But there is also some really nice things we'll get out of this (that, of course, might not make up for the damage that it'll do) It's also pretty clear his ever-longer articles are just him testing out his upcoming book. But the tone is starting to overshadow the substance, which is a shame, because the underlying argument is solid enough to stand on its own without the theatrics.
It reminds me of the people who have been saying real estate was going to crash since like 2018. And I like Ed Zitron a lot and think he's right about a lot, but ultimate markets can be irrational for so long that that what he's saying may not actually play out to the extent he says so.
yeah if you look at past bubbles, such as railroads, they were all genuinely useful developments. They were simply overvalued, largely because the timeline is longer than people are betting on or suggesting.
This Zitron guy keeps saying AI isn't actually useful, doesn't he? That's patently false.
AI has a corrosive effect on everything it touches. I go to work and notice that everyone else is on a path to mentally checking out. Nobody values anyone's time anymore, nobody seems to weigh the cost of maintenance or conceptual work given creation is seemingly free. People get used to taking shortcuts, both for their work and also in their thinking.
I feel like the only sane person left in my team, like everyone else has stopped giving a shit, pretending to get work done at insane velocity on borrowed time.
It's no longer "can AI be useful" to me, it's "how do we avoid people frying their fucking brains".
I start to think most people in Software don’t care at all.
Before LLMs they were forced to at least pretend and they had been guarded by more and more style guiding, architecture, frameworks and agile ceremony.
I care alot about software and code. I write without AI, code and prose. Yet I would say it is useful for context sensitive search and autocomplete on steroids. I wonder why it should be more? It’s the intellisense I always wanted - just not worth a trillion I'd say.
And another point: if your coworkers do their job exclusively by vibing, then where’s the point of producing software? Your competitors can recreate it easily.
There’s no value in AI generated artifacts and so there’s no value in operating the AI.
i consider it intrinsic to the technology. i don't think most people can resist the temptation of feeling a lot more productive than they reasonably can be at the cost of understanding what they're doing (and the fundamental skill of caring about their own work; turbo alienation).
and those that don't fall into this trap will be dragged in sooner or later by peer pressure and bullshit KPIs.
I'm not convinced the result will not be "good enough". It looks like one might get away with shipping half-baked shit, just like before, but the speed difference incentivizes it a lot more now. Output quality is not really the issue I'm looking at. More what this has done to my own an my coworkers capability to care and mental health.
access to knowledge isn't the problem. if you use models to learn, good for you.
people around me use models to replace their critical thinking though, and i consider this a structural issue - with how incentives are laid out at my workplace but also as a cognitive trap where you think you get more done, but you're actually unlearning fundamental skills instead of supplementing your existing ones.
I read him regularly. My appraisal is that he never goes so far as to say, “LLMs are not useful.”
He constantly says LLMs do not and will not measure up to the hyperbolic capabilities the CEOs of their companies, their boosters, and a compliant tech media say they will do.
That is not what history of those was. They were waste, fallout was painful for a lot of innocents and recovery long. And they were not just an issue of not guessing the timeline.
I've got a yearly subscription to Ed and from time to time I still like to read it; but this constant ALL IS BAD! SCAM! SCAM! I AM VERY SMART! OHHHH I TOLD YOU SOOO!!!!! is so annoying to read, and he's mostly verbatim re-hashing his previous posts in every next article.
I completely believe him on it being a bubble, that this is not-a-Uber-situation, and that it's worse than whatever-you-might-call-it — but get a grip, dude. Yes, bubble. People and their investments are going to get hurt. But there is also some really nice things we'll get out of this (that, of course, might not make up for the damage that it'll do) It's also pretty clear his ever-longer articles are just him testing out his upcoming book. But the tone is starting to overshadow the substance, which is a shame, because the underlying argument is solid enough to stand on its own without the theatrics.
It reminds me of the people who have been saying real estate was going to crash since like 2018. And I like Ed Zitron a lot and think he's right about a lot, but ultimate markets can be irrational for so long that that what he's saying may not actually play out to the extent he says so.
"not enough people are emotionally prepared for if it's not a bubble"
yeah if you look at past bubbles, such as railroads, they were all genuinely useful developments. They were simply overvalued, largely because the timeline is longer than people are betting on or suggesting.
This Zitron guy keeps saying AI isn't actually useful, doesn't he? That's patently false.
AI has a corrosive effect on everything it touches. I go to work and notice that everyone else is on a path to mentally checking out. Nobody values anyone's time anymore, nobody seems to weigh the cost of maintenance or conceptual work given creation is seemingly free. People get used to taking shortcuts, both for their work and also in their thinking.
I feel like the only sane person left in my team, like everyone else has stopped giving a shit, pretending to get work done at insane velocity on borrowed time.
It's no longer "can AI be useful" to me, it's "how do we avoid people frying their fucking brains".
I start to think most people in Software don’t care at all. Before LLMs they were forced to at least pretend and they had been guarded by more and more style guiding, architecture, frameworks and agile ceremony.
I care alot about software and code. I write without AI, code and prose. Yet I would say it is useful for context sensitive search and autocomplete on steroids. I wonder why it should be more? It’s the intellisense I always wanted - just not worth a trillion I'd say.
And another point: if your coworkers do their job exclusively by vibing, then where’s the point of producing software? Your competitors can recreate it easily. There’s no value in AI generated artifacts and so there’s no value in operating the AI.
Just write the damn code
That’s not a problem with the tool, it’s a problem with the team / the people.
i consider it intrinsic to the technology. i don't think most people can resist the temptation of feeling a lot more productive than they reasonably can be at the cost of understanding what they're doing (and the fundamental skill of caring about their own work; turbo alienation).
and those that don't fall into this trap will be dragged in sooner or later by peer pressure and bullshit KPIs.
Management wont change anything until THEY have issue at hands. Fighting and explaining does nothing.
The less your colleagues care, the faster the company gets there. Unfortunately.
I'm not convinced the result will not be "good enough". It looks like one might get away with shipping half-baked shit, just like before, but the speed difference incentivizes it a lot more now. Output quality is not really the issue I'm looking at. More what this has done to my own an my coworkers capability to care and mental health.
It is just such an absurd statement to believe Claude is "frying my brain".
It is hard to describe how utterly stupid that comment is from my perspective.
I was just walking earlier today listening to an AI converted audio book of Knowledge and the Flow of Information by Fred Dretske.
It is exactly the kind of thing that I would have never found just a few years ago.
Or it must be you just such a genius that already knows everything unlike us mere mortals that get incredible value from the models.
In reality you are just the standard IT dipshit that vastly overestimates their own intelligence.
access to knowledge isn't the problem. if you use models to learn, good for you.
people around me use models to replace their critical thinking though, and i consider this a structural issue - with how incentives are laid out at my workplace but also as a cognitive trap where you think you get more done, but you're actually unlearning fundamental skills instead of supplementing your existing ones.
this is a good summary: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00146-025-02686-z
I read him regularly. My appraisal is that he never goes so far as to say, “LLMs are not useful.”
He constantly says LLMs do not and will not measure up to the hyperbolic capabilities the CEOs of their companies, their boosters, and a compliant tech media say they will do.
That is not what history of those was. They were waste, fallout was painful for a lot of innocents and recovery long. And they were not just an issue of not guessing the timeline.
I really hate that Ed is character assassinated here. His objective arguments are much worse than his personality.
It’s interesting to see how independent analyses reach more or less the same conclusion.