April 17, 2025 • 10 mins
In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through how the media's lackluster approach to critiquing the powerful led to the needless, unsustainable AI bubble - and how things could change for the better.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Media. Hello, and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue.
I am your host ed Zeitron, of course, So if
you're listening to this as the episode's are, you're in
the middle of a two part episode about the systemic
risk caused by Open Ai, a company that's always been
(00:23):
unsustainable and is ultimately rigged for collapse. But today I
wanted to turn to a question I've been asked a
few times, what are the ways the media can avoid
doing this in the future, and what are the things
that they could have done differently? Well, it starts pretty simple.
I don't believe the media, and this partly falls upon
the people running media outlets actually knows enough about the
subject matter, be it the technical side of the financial
(00:44):
side of these companies. If you've ever read an article
about tech that just didn't seem to make sense, like
say about an AI company, like an obtuse series of
sentences that sounds rational, but when you really think about
it doesn't explain what it does. It's because the writer
doesn't actually understand what this saying. And that's because they're
really given the time or incentivized in any way for
knowing what it is they're talking about they're just there
(01:06):
to kind of get it out the door, and well
that an unalarming amount of tech writers are edited by
editors that don't know a fucking thing. When chat GPT launched,
the press absolutely lost their shit, despite nobody being able
to describe what it actually did and why it was
the future other than they could create an image or
a block of text based on a prompt, and this
was about the level of nuance that we'd see applied
(01:27):
to open AI for pretty much the rest of history.
Egregious to extrapolations were made in part because the media
was far too willing to just copypaste or quote whatever
Sam Altman said. When interviewed on stage at the Wall
Street Journals Tech Live event in October twenty twenty three,
a reporter allowed Sam Moltman to say that chat GPT
and I quote has this laval reasoning capacity that's going
to get better and better, and this was a great
(01:49):
moment to say, I'm sorry, Sam, what the fuck are
you talking about? And to be clear, this was October
twenty twenty three. It would be just under a year
later that they would release an actual reasoning product. No
one's bothered to return to that of course, I realize
I sound like I'm being nasty or facetious. But here, right,
here was an opportunity to push back on the narrative,
in part because the narrative was a guy will say
(02:11):
fucking anything and anybody will print him. The question, of course,
would have been can you explain what this means? And
once he mumbles out some nonsense, say I'm still not
sure I understand. I genuinely believe that there are some
reporters who don't want to push against the grain, but
I think that there are plenty more that are scared
of being wrong. Well, you're still wrong if you allow
a man to lie. Sam Mortman became a billionaire because
(02:34):
he was able to blather on nonsensically about whatever he wanted,
knowing that the crowd of Gordoner's business types would rather say, Wow,
he's so smart, I asked the future, than admit that
they have no idea what he fucking meant. Really, fixing
these problems starts with making people like Sam Mortman of
Open AI and Dario Amadeo of Anthropic actually explain themselves
and holding their feet to the fire even lightly on
(02:55):
their promises, and the economics underlying their companies. You can
beat this shit, you can do it. And early on
Sam Mortman actually been pushed back on. He would not
have been able to do this. And indeed, had everyone
not just copypasted, anytime Sam Mortman said anything about, oh,
I don't know this chat GPT will eventually be an
intelligent friend and knows everything about you, I believe he
said that, or he just said AI will be These
(03:18):
are the times to say I don't know print it
in say Sam Mortman lies. Sam Morman made something up.
I realized the media writ large is very bad at this,
but it's so much easier in tech. The fact that
both Open AI and Anthropic burned over five billion dollars
in twenty twenty four is abominable and any and all
interviews should have brought this up and doggedly demanded a
timeline for profitability and not accepted vagueness or dodging. And
(03:41):
I just want to be clear, I know that this
if you remember the media listening to so like, I
won't get Sam Mormon again, I won't get I won't
get dariy Amaday, who fucking cares? These interviews suck every
I think I've listened to or watched every Sam Mortman
interview that's online, and they're boring. They're like eating cardboard.
He's not an endearing speaker. Warrio Ama days even worse
(04:03):
that bloviating fuck where wah blah Blind twenty twenty seven.
The computer is going to be my best friend and
my girlfriend. Well he's married. I'm not saying Dario's anyway.
Daria's not going to fuck the computer. You've got me
on the record. The boint is you're afraid of losing access,
but you're also afraid of having a hostile interview. First
of all, skill issue. Second of all, why are you afraid?
(04:25):
Why would you possibly be afraid? These men are far
from invincible. Sam Wrtman is a solid conn artist, stand
a carnival barker, but when faced with blunt questions and
even the slightest hint of memory about what he just said,
he'd crumble. All of them would honestly Imdia train people
for a living, these people a week. They're poorly trained
and speciously informed and have no idea what to do.
(04:45):
If you just refuse to black like you just sit
on a question, if you're just like no, I'm not
happy with your answer, I don't understand that doesn't make sense,
or even hey, why won't you give me a straight answer?
Crazy crazy question? You could just ask any of them there,
You could do it today now. The other problem is
(05:06):
the journalists too regularly find ways to ask these obtuse,
muddied questions, in part because they want to find a
way to sound like they're being aggressive to their readers
without ever really showing any real aggression. And let me
give you one of my favorite examples. In May twenty
twenty four, Neelai Patel of The Verge, a man who
has never met an executive outside of into it that
he didn't want to let ramble, interviewed sund up As Shy,
the CEO of Google, and gave one of the single
(05:28):
worst interviews I've seen in my life. Neili Patel, as
a lawyer, as the editor in chief of The Virgin,
a reporter with over a decade of experience possibly more,
asked multiple questions of over a hundred words objection compound
question which may seem like he's being thoughtful, but is
actually what I like to call the buffet, an attempt
to give the illusion of nuanced analysis and conversation where
(05:50):
you're actually giving the person you're interviewing the opportunity to
answer the question they'd like to. Sometimes these points are
more like rambling statements, which again may seem harmless, like
Neelai is trying to have a conversation, but this is
the CEO of fucking Google. You're interviewing him, not up.
At one point, Nelai spends one hundred and fifty nine
words asking Sun dar Pashai whether he expected publishers to
(06:11):
act negatively to AI powered search results, but he did
so in such a cludgy way that Sun Dapashai is
able to wave it off, at which point Neeli commits
the ultimate sin one very common in the tech media,
where he doesn't listen to Peshai's answer and immediately asks
another question based on some theory he has called Google zero,
whether traffic from Google it ends, which was already happening. Neelike,
(06:32):
you talk to one of the many talented people you're
fucking outlet. This, by the way, is the real fundamental
flaw of American journalism, where an interviewer asks the question,
doesn't listen to the answer, then asks another I cannot
express enough how many times this happens with tech CEOs,
how much advantage they take of it and how quickly
they collapse. If you listen to their answer, and I
don't know, ask the follow up question relevant to it.
(06:54):
Nelai's interview could have been far more direct. Hey, why
does Google search suck? Now? I've got eight different examples
of it sucking? Why are they so bad? Neeli does
have an example searching for best chromebook, and he has
this clumsy, mumbling, meandering bullshit thing about how in the query, well,
the query in there. I didn't say what is the
best chromebook? I did this and that, and he just
(07:14):
like fumbles around with it and then allows allows some
doctor to just kind of ramble him. Neli, you could
just ask a simple fucking question. You're a lawyer, man,
I don't know. I don't know, man. Maybe you're more
concerned being fucking famous. The reason I'm so angry is
that the AI bubble was inflated on interviews like these.
I realized Neeli Patel wants to continue getting access to
(07:35):
the executives, But how do he directly said search is bad,
here's the proof it's bad, and AI results are worse,
and refuse to back off of it. That would have
had a meaningful effect on Google's willingness to push this shit.
It would have shown other journalist's solidarity that they too
could step up and spit in the face of these people.
And I know some of you are going to say, heed,
you can't spit in the face of them. I only
(07:56):
feel like that because they want to run away so bad,
because they don't want to have a real interview, because
they don't have anything to say, they don't want to
say it. And the same goes for Samultman or Warrio
Dario ama Day or any other AI executive. They've garnered
thousands of headlines and billions of dollars of funding by
making shit up, or using lives of emission, or just
being very vague and allowing people to fill in the
(08:17):
gaps for them, which then gets published in the media,
which then gets pushed to investors who then line up
to invest in shit that doesn't work, or does not
exist or can never exist. I even believe that access
journalism can continue. We just need to show that there's
a deep intolerance across the industry for marketing bullshit. A
brick wall in front of anyone who would bullshit and
an interest in having actual conversations versus regurgitated talking points
(08:40):
and nodding to an audience of half conscious patagonia gargoyles.
And I want to bring something up. I run a
PR firm, immedia trained people. This is actually how fucking
startups are talked to by journalists. You're a seed startup
or a series A. You get asked these fucking questions
all the time. You get grilled, you get absolutely beaten
to shit. But once you reach a certain scale, once
(09:00):
you're worth i don't know, some three hundred billion theoretical
dollars that you fit into a narrative, suddenly the gloves
are off and that's when the jerkins starts. I realized
that was quite gross. But look, if you're listening to
this as a member of the media and think I'm
being mean to these executives, there's absolutely nothing stopping you
from having fun, interesting conversations about the shit you love.
(09:22):
There's nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing wrong with knowing subjects deeply
and finding reasons to be excited. But please, fuck actually
learn what you're talking about and be excited about something
that's actually happening. But I think that that might be
the problem deep down. That's the art and more problem
with the tech media. I don't think enough people writing
about technology actually know or give a shit about technology,
(09:44):
or at least know enough to do their jobs. They
see these executives as their sports teams factions to ally behind,
only learning enough about the take to be able to
write embargoed articles about whatever the next thing that open
aiye does, even if they don't really understand or care readers.
Listners deserved better, and when all of this shit collapses,
I believe they'll start treating some of the members of
the tech media with well deserved scorn.
Media. Hello, and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue.
I am your host ed Zeitron, of course, So if
you're listening to this as the episode's are, you're in
the middle of a two part episode about the systemic
risk caused by Open Ai, a company that's always been
(00:23):
unsustainable and is ultimately rigged for collapse. But today I
wanted to turn to a question I've been asked a
few times, what are the ways the media can avoid
doing this in the future, and what are the things
that they could have done differently? Well, it starts pretty simple.
I don't believe the media, and this partly falls upon
the people running media outlets actually knows enough about the
subject matter, be it the technical side of the financial
(00:44):
side of these companies. If you've ever read an article
about tech that just didn't seem to make sense, like
say about an AI company, like an obtuse series of
sentences that sounds rational, but when you really think about
it doesn't explain what it does. It's because the writer
doesn't actually understand what this saying. And that's because they're
really given the time or incentivized in any way for
knowing what it is they're talking about they're just there
(01:06):
to kind of get it out the door, and well
that an unalarming amount of tech writers are edited by
editors that don't know a fucking thing. When chat GPT launched,
the press absolutely lost their shit, despite nobody being able
to describe what it actually did and why it was
the future other than they could create an image or
a block of text based on a prompt, and this
was about the level of nuance that we'd see applied
(01:27):
to open AI for pretty much the rest of history.
Egregious to extrapolations were made in part because the media
was far too willing to just copypaste or quote whatever
Sam Altman said. When interviewed on stage at the Wall
Street Journals Tech Live event in October twenty twenty three,
a reporter allowed Sam Moltman to say that chat GPT
and I quote has this laval reasoning capacity that's going
to get better and better, and this was a great
(01:49):
moment to say, I'm sorry, Sam, what the fuck are
you talking about? And to be clear, this was October
twenty twenty three. It would be just under a year
later that they would release an actual reasoning product. No
one's bothered to return to that of course, I realize
I sound like I'm being nasty or facetious. But here, right,
here was an opportunity to push back on the narrative,
in part because the narrative was a guy will say
(02:11):
fucking anything and anybody will print him. The question, of course,
would have been can you explain what this means? And
once he mumbles out some nonsense, say I'm still not
sure I understand. I genuinely believe that there are some
reporters who don't want to push against the grain, but
I think that there are plenty more that are scared
of being wrong. Well, you're still wrong if you allow
a man to lie. Sam Mortman became a billionaire because
(02:34):
he was able to blather on nonsensically about whatever he wanted,
knowing that the crowd of Gordoner's business types would rather say, Wow,
he's so smart, I asked the future, than admit that
they have no idea what he fucking meant. Really, fixing
these problems starts with making people like Sam Mortman of
Open AI and Dario Amadeo of Anthropic actually explain themselves
and holding their feet to the fire even lightly on
(02:55):
their promises, and the economics underlying their companies. You can
beat this shit, you can do it. And early on
Sam Mortman actually been pushed back on. He would not
have been able to do this. And indeed, had everyone
not just copypasted, anytime Sam Mortman said anything about, oh,
I don't know this chat GPT will eventually be an
intelligent friend and knows everything about you, I believe he
said that, or he just said AI will be These
(03:18):
are the times to say I don't know print it
in say Sam Mortman lies. Sam Morman made something up.
I realized the media writ large is very bad at this,
but it's so much easier in tech. The fact that
both Open AI and Anthropic burned over five billion dollars
in twenty twenty four is abominable and any and all
interviews should have brought this up and doggedly demanded a
timeline for profitability and not accepted vagueness or dodging. And
(03:41):
I just want to be clear, I know that this
if you remember the media listening to so like, I
won't get Sam Mormon again, I won't get I won't
get dariy Amaday, who fucking cares? These interviews suck every
I think I've listened to or watched every Sam Mortman
interview that's online, and they're boring. They're like eating cardboard.
He's not an endearing speaker. Warrio Ama days even worse
(04:03):
that bloviating fuck where wah blah Blind twenty twenty seven.
The computer is going to be my best friend and
my girlfriend. Well he's married. I'm not saying Dario's anyway.
Daria's not going to fuck the computer. You've got me
on the record. The boint is you're afraid of losing access,
but you're also afraid of having a hostile interview. First
of all, skill issue. Second of all, why are you afraid?
(04:25):
Why would you possibly be afraid? These men are far
from invincible. Sam Wrtman is a solid conn artist, stand
a carnival barker, but when faced with blunt questions and
even the slightest hint of memory about what he just said,
he'd crumble. All of them would honestly Imdia train people
for a living, these people a week. They're poorly trained
and speciously informed and have no idea what to do.
(04:45):
If you just refuse to black like you just sit
on a question, if you're just like no, I'm not
happy with your answer, I don't understand that doesn't make sense,
or even hey, why won't you give me a straight answer?
Crazy crazy question? You could just ask any of them there,
You could do it today now. The other problem is
(05:06):
the journalists too regularly find ways to ask these obtuse,
muddied questions, in part because they want to find a
way to sound like they're being aggressive to their readers
without ever really showing any real aggression. And let me
give you one of my favorite examples. In May twenty
twenty four, Neelai Patel of The Verge, a man who
has never met an executive outside of into it that
he didn't want to let ramble, interviewed sund up As Shy,
the CEO of Google, and gave one of the single
(05:28):
worst interviews I've seen in my life. Neili Patel, as
a lawyer, as the editor in chief of The Virgin,
a reporter with over a decade of experience possibly more,
asked multiple questions of over a hundred words objection compound
question which may seem like he's being thoughtful, but is
actually what I like to call the buffet, an attempt
to give the illusion of nuanced analysis and conversation where
(05:50):
you're actually giving the person you're interviewing the opportunity to
answer the question they'd like to. Sometimes these points are
more like rambling statements, which again may seem harmless, like
Neelai is trying to have a conversation, but this is
the CEO of fucking Google. You're interviewing him, not up.
At one point, Nelai spends one hundred and fifty nine
words asking Sun dar Pashai whether he expected publishers to
(06:11):
act negatively to AI powered search results, but he did
so in such a cludgy way that Sun Dapashai is
able to wave it off, at which point Neeli commits
the ultimate sin one very common in the tech media,
where he doesn't listen to Peshai's answer and immediately asks
another question based on some theory he has called Google zero,
whether traffic from Google it ends, which was already happening. Neelike,
(06:32):
you talk to one of the many talented people you're
fucking outlet. This, by the way, is the real fundamental
flaw of American journalism, where an interviewer asks the question,
doesn't listen to the answer, then asks another I cannot
express enough how many times this happens with tech CEOs,
how much advantage they take of it and how quickly
they collapse. If you listen to their answer, and I
don't know, ask the follow up question relevant to it.
(06:54):
Nelai's interview could have been far more direct. Hey, why
does Google search suck? Now? I've got eight different examples
of it sucking? Why are they so bad? Neeli does
have an example searching for best chromebook, and he has
this clumsy, mumbling, meandering bullshit thing about how in the query, well,
the query in there. I didn't say what is the
best chromebook? I did this and that, and he just
(07:14):
like fumbles around with it and then allows allows some
doctor to just kind of ramble him. Neli, you could
just ask a simple fucking question. You're a lawyer, man,
I don't know. I don't know, man. Maybe you're more
concerned being fucking famous. The reason I'm so angry is
that the AI bubble was inflated on interviews like these.
I realized Neeli Patel wants to continue getting access to
(07:35):
the executives, But how do he directly said search is bad,
here's the proof it's bad, and AI results are worse,
and refuse to back off of it. That would have
had a meaningful effect on Google's willingness to push this shit.
It would have shown other journalist's solidarity that they too
could step up and spit in the face of these people.
And I know some of you are going to say, heed,
you can't spit in the face of them. I only
(07:56):
feel like that because they want to run away so bad,
because they don't want to have a real interview, because
they don't have anything to say, they don't want to
say it. And the same goes for Samultman or Warrio
Dario ama Day or any other AI executive. They've garnered
thousands of headlines and billions of dollars of funding by
making shit up, or using lives of emission, or just
being very vague and allowing people to fill in the
(08:17):
gaps for them, which then gets published in the media,
which then gets pushed to investors who then line up
to invest in shit that doesn't work, or does not
exist or can never exist. I even believe that access
journalism can continue. We just need to show that there's
a deep intolerance across the industry for marketing bullshit. A
brick wall in front of anyone who would bullshit and
an interest in having actual conversations versus regurgitated talking points
(08:40):
and nodding to an audience of half conscious patagonia gargoyles.
And I want to bring something up. I run a
PR firm, immedia trained people. This is actually how fucking
startups are talked to by journalists. You're a seed startup
or a series A. You get asked these fucking questions
all the time. You get grilled, you get absolutely beaten
to shit. But once you reach a certain scale, once
(09:00):
you're worth i don't know, some three hundred billion theoretical
dollars that you fit into a narrative, suddenly the gloves
are off and that's when the jerkins starts. I realized
that was quite gross. But look, if you're listening to
this as a member of the media and think I'm
being mean to these executives, there's absolutely nothing stopping you
from having fun, interesting conversations about the shit you love.
(09:22):
There's nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing wrong with knowing subjects deeply
and finding reasons to be excited. But please, fuck actually
learn what you're talking about and be excited about something
that's actually happening. But I think that that might be
the problem deep down. That's the art and more problem
with the tech media. I don't think enough people writing
about technology actually know or give a shit about technology,
(09:44):
or at least know enough to do their jobs. They
see these executives as their sports teams factions to ally behind,
only learning enough about the take to be able to
write embargoed articles about whatever the next thing that open
aiye does, even if they don't really understand or care readers.
Listners deserved better, and when all of this shit collapses,
I believe they'll start treating some of the members of
the tech media with well deserved scorn.
Host
Ed Zitron
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