April 30, 2025 • 30 mins
In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through why it’s so harmful that the media keeps taking OpenAI at its word - and responds to the most common critiques from AI boosters.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi, I'm at Zitron and you're listening to Better Offline.
As a reminder, you can now buy glorious Better Offline merchandise.
There's a link to it in the episode notes. The
t shirts, the tumblers, the toe bags, all that shit.
(00:28):
It's lovely. You're gonna love it, buy it today. But
if I'm honest today, I'm actually a little bit pissed off.
And that's why we've got a two part episode this
week about how fucking stupid the AI boom has become.
I wrote fascicle in the script, and I'm gonna be honest.
They need to be a little more pointed because I've
written tens of thousands of words about this. Now, I
recorded hours upon hours of podcast and still to this day,
(00:50):
people are babbling about the AI revolution. Is the sky
rains blood and crevices open in the fucking earth, dragging
houses and cars and dovestigated animals into them ores. Things
are astronomically fucked outside, Yet the tech media continues to
tell me to get my swimming trunks on and take
a long, nice dip in the fucking pool. As you
can tell, this is going to be a little less
reserved than usual. I've just I'm a little bit frustrated.
(01:12):
I don't know why I'm the one saying this, and
I frequently feel with the I a part time blogger
and podcaster. I'm writing the things that I'm writing. Since
I've put out the newsletter open ai as the systemic
risk of the tech industry, and actually it's a couple
of weeks back, I did the two parter about it too.
I've heard nothing in response, As was the case with
how does open ai survive and how open ai is
bad business. There just seems to be little concern or
(01:36):
belief that there's any kind of risk at the heart
of AI and open ai in particular. And there are
companies that spent nine billion dollars in twenty twenty four
to lose five billion dollars. Well, I'd love to add
a because here, if not, because it's important to be
intellectually honest and represent views that directly can trast my own,
even if I do in somewhat sarcastic and sardonic fashion.
Nobody seems to actually have a cogent response to how
(01:58):
they write this ship hard fork are case in Newton
throwing a full scale Psycho Tante on a podcast and
saying I'm wrong because inference costs are coming down. Inference,
by the way, is when an AI takes an input
and produces an output. It's the calculations that take place
right before Google's generativai assistant attributes the Voltaire quote to
Michael Jackson or says that black tar heroin, when enjoyed
(02:20):
in moderation, can help you lose weight. Newton is a
nakedly captured booster that ran an infographic from Anthropic a
few weeks ago, likes of which I haven't seen since
twenty thirteen. It was telling you all the ways that
people use Genera ivai. It looks like some shit from
I don't know, early day Mashable. No offense Christina, and
they essentially treat this company propaganda as gospel. But he's
(02:40):
really far from the only one with a flimsy attachment
to reality. The information a publication that genuinely does some
great stuff, which makes it even more heartbreaking to say this.
Ran a piece in early April that made me even
more furious than usual, claiming that open ai was forecasting
revenue topping one hundred and twenty five billion dollars in
twenty twenty nine, based on selling agents and monetizing free
(03:01):
users as a driver to higher revenue agents. I should
add AI systems that can interact with other systems and
do stuff. So an AI that can order pizza from
door dash for you is that's an example of an agent.
And when I say it can order piece of you,
I am talking entirely theoretically. Is they cannot do this
right now and may never be able to do so. Indeed,
(03:22):
the whole agent thing is just what we wish AI
was and it actually doesn't work. And the piece reported
based on things and I quote told to some potential
and current investors, takes great pains to accept literally everything
that open ai says is perfectly reasonable, if not gospel,
even if said things make absolutely no goddamn sense. So,
(03:42):
according to the information's reporting, open ai expects agents and
new products, and both of those are quotes to contribute
tens of billions of dollars of revenue, both in the
near term somehow contributing three billion dollars in revenue this year,
which I will get to in a little bit, and
in the long term with an egregious twenty five billion
dollars in revenue in twenty twenty nine, even projected to
(04:04):
come from just new products. If you're wondering what those
new products might be, I am two because the information
doesn't seem to know and instead of saying open ai
has no idea what the fuck they're talking about and
is just saying stuff, the outlet continues to publish things
with the kind of empty optimism that's indistinguishable from GPT
generated LinkedIn posts. Must be clear, the information isn't generating
(04:26):
their articles they're writing and fresh. I want to be really,
really clear about something we aren't in nearly in May
twenty five, and indeed one of these will come out
actually in May. The second part, I see no evidence
that open ai even has a marketable agent product they
can sell, let alone one will it will make three
billion goddamn dollars off of and they definitely are not
(04:49):
going to do so in the next six or seven months.
Oh my, for context, let's triple the revenue of open
ai that they made reportedly at least from selling access
to their models via at APIs essentially allowing third party
companies to use GPT in their apps in the entirety
of twenty twenty four, and those APIs and models actually
exist in a meaningful sense, as opposed to whatever the
(05:09):
far copenai is half baked last agents stuff is. In fact, no, no, no,
no no. I'm not going to be mean, not would
be calm, be normal. I'm going to explain exactly what
the information is reporting in an objective way, because writing
it out really shows how silly it all sounds. I
am going to rate they believe a lot, because I
must be clear how stupid this is. Now, according to
(05:30):
the Information's reporting, they believe the open AI will make
three billion dollars in twenty twenty five from selling access
to its agents. This appears to come from soft Bank,
which has said it will buy three billion dollars worth
of open ai products annually. Earlier this year, we got
a bit of extra information about how soft Bank will
use these products. It plans to create a system called
Crystal Intelligence that CRISTL and it's one of the most
(05:52):
generic names I've ever seen, and it will be a
kind of general purpose AI agent platform for big enterprises.
The exact specifics of that will shock you, and that
there are none, but SoftBank intends to use the technology
internally across its various portfolio companies, as well as market
it to other large enterprise companies in Japan. I still
do not know what the fuck this is Crystal Intelligence
(06:14):
billions of dollars, billions of dollars, and they just don't.
They can't even describe what it is, just saying yeah,
it'll be an agent platform that does stuff with your business,
Like does that sound good? Can I have? I need
forty billion dollars? I need forty billion dollars, give me okay.
I also want to add that the Information can't seem
(06:35):
to keep its story straight on this issue. Back in February,
they reported that open AI would make three billion dollars
in revenue only from agents, with a big beautiful chart
that said three billion dollars would come from it, only
to add that it would be soft Bank using open
AIS products across its companies. Based on these numbers, it
seems like SoftBank will be the only customer for open
AIS agents. Well, this most likely won't be the case,
(06:58):
and it isn't because it excludes anyone willing to pay
a few bucks to test it out. It nonetheless doesn't
signal good things for agents as a mass market product,
not that there were any good signals beforehand. Though agents
do not exist as a product that can be sold
at scale. Yes, open ai teasted Operator it's first agent
at the start of the year, but it doesn't seem
to be able to do anything. The Information's own reporting
(07:18):
from mid April highlighted how OpenAIS operate a agent struggled
with comparison shopping on financial products and that's a quote.
And how Operator or other agents are and I quote
again tripped by pop ups or logins as well as
prompts asking for email addresses and phone numbers for marketing
purpose purposes, which I think accurately describes most websites. And
(07:40):
just to summarize from everything I've said, the Information is
saying that the above product will make open ai three
billion dollars by the end of twenty twenty five. Sounds
very real to me, sounds extremely real. I love that
the business media just prints this. I love this. I
love this so much. I'm having so much fun. Jesus Christ.
(08:01):
According to The Information's reporting, they believe that open ai
will basically double revenue every single year for the next
four years and make thirteen billion dollars in revenue twenty
twenty five, more than doubling that to twenty nine billion
dollars in twenty twenty six, nearly doubling that to fifty
four billion dollars in twenty twenty seven, and nearly doubling
that again to eighty six billion dollars in twenty twenty eight,
and eventually leveling out a ridiculous one hundred and twenty
(08:22):
five billion dollars of revenue in twenty twenty nine. Said
revenue estimates as of twenty twenty six includes billions of
dollars of new products that include free monetization free user
monetization either and if you're wondering what that means, I
also am. The information does not explain JESSICLLESSI must have
been busy being horrible to people that work for her.
(08:42):
They do, however, say that open ai will start, and
I'm quoting this won't start generating much revenue from free
users and other products until next year. That's twenty twenty six.
In twenty nine, and I'm still quoting. However, it projects
revenue from free users and other products will reach twenty
five billion dollars, a one fifth of all revenue, and
then adds that shopping is another potential avenue. You still
(09:05):
probably don't know what they're doing, and neither do iron
I have driven myself insane reading about this. I really
cannot express my disgust about how willing publications are to
blindly published projections like these, especially when they're all so stupid.
Let me just read this to you, all right, and
I quote. Open ai has already begun experimenting with launching
(09:26):
software features for shopping. Starting in January, some users can
access web browsing agent Operator as part of their Prochat
GBT subscription to here to order groceries from Instacart and
make restaurant reservations on open table. Just want to be clear.
This is a few episodes ago I mentioned Casey Newton
not even being able to say this worked. I just
(09:47):
want to be really clear as well what the information
is saying. So they're saying that this experimental software launched
to an indeterminate amount of people that barely works, is
going to make open Ai three billion dollars in twenty
twenty five, and then somehow this is going to lead
to open ai making twenty nine billion dollars in twenty
twenty six, and then they're can eventually be up to
one hunch and twenty five billion dollars. What the fuck? How? How?
(10:08):
What fucking universe are we all living in? There's no
proof that open ai can do this other than the
fact it has a lot of users and a lot
of venture capital. In fact, I think we have real
reason to worry about whether open ai even makes its
(10:30):
current projections. In my last multi part episode and then
the newsletter open ai as a systemic risk for those
of you who are like to read while listening to
my fucking podcast, I wrote the Bloomberg had estimated that
open ai would triple revenue to twelve point seven billion
dollars in twenty twenty five, and based on its current
subscriber base, open ai would effectively have to double its
current subscription revenue and massively increase its API revenue to
(10:51):
hit these targets. These projections rely on one entity, SoftBank,
spending three billion dollars specifically on open AI's services really
shouldn't said specifically, because they keep changing what it means,
meaning that they'd have to make enough on API course,
so people plug in the models into their products to
generate more revenue. In the open Ai made in subscriptions
in the entirety of twenty twenty four and something else
(11:13):
that I can only describe as an act of God,
and that I admit. It seems that soft bank spending
commitment is based on usage and not like a flat
fee where Softpak just hands them three billion dollars and
gets infinite levels of access. Assuming it's the former, I'd
be stunned if soft Bank's consumption hits three billion dollars
in twenty twenty five, even with the massive cost of
(11:33):
the reasoning models that Crystal Intelligence will maybe be based
off of. Again, we don't know, and soft Bank announced
this deal with open Ai in February. Crystal Intelligence, if
it works, and that is possibly the most load bearing
IF of all time, will be a massive, complicated and
ambitious product. Details are vague, but from what I understand,
soft Bank wants to create an AI that handles a
(11:53):
bunch of varied tasks that knowledge workers do. I mean,
it's just the same marketing bullshit. It's the same thing.
It's the thing they've been lying about before. And to
be clear, open AI's agents cannot consistently do well anything
right now, what I believe is happening is that reporters
are taking open AI's rapid growth in revenue from twenty
twenty three to twenty twenty four, when they went from
like tens of millions of dollars a month in the
(12:15):
beginning of the twenty twenty three to three hundred million
in August twenty twenty four, genuinely a big leap. They've
taken this to mean that the company will always effectively
double or triple revenue every single year forever, with their
evidence being open ai has said that this will happen
in projections. It's bullshit. I'm sorry, it's bullshit. It's bullshit.
As I wrote before in a newsletter, it's called there's
(12:36):
No Ai Revolution and the accompanying episodes. At the time,
open Ai effectively is the generative AI industry, and nothing
about the rest of the generative AI industry suggests that
the revenue exists to sustain these ridiculous obscenes and frankly
fucking stupid valuations and projections. What do I mean by that?
By the way, okay, let me get into it. Chat
GPT is the only real generative AI product with any
(12:58):
significant usage, or rather their nearest rivals or a fraction
of said user base, or maybe I need to be
a little bit blunter. If anyone held at Google Gemini
user conference, all the attendees could probably share a cab.
Believing the open AI growth myth and yes, reporting it
objectively is both endorsing and believing these numbers is engaging
in childlike logic where you take one event, which is
(13:20):
open AI's revenue grew seventeen hundred percent from twenty twenty
three to twenty twenty four. Wow, to mean another will
take place, which is the open a I will continue
to double revenue literally every other year. Another insane thing
to believe, and you're consciously ignoring difficult questions such as
how will they do this? And what's the total addressable
market of large language models and their associated subscriptions exactly?
(13:42):
And how does this company even survive when it expects
the costs of inference the triple this year to six
billion dollars alone. Wait wait, wait, sorry, sorry, I really
need to be clear with that last one, because it's
a direct quote from the information hm M. The company
also expects growth and inference costs the costs of running
A products such as chat GPT in their underlying models
to moderate over the next half decade. These costs will
(14:05):
triple this year referring to twenty twenty five to six
billion dollars, and rise to nearly forty seven billion dollars
in twenty thirty. Still, the annual growth rate will fall
to about thirty percent. Then, okay, thanks Also, are you
fucking kidding me? Six billion fucking dollars for fucking influence? Hey,
ca C Newton, I thought those costs were coming down.
KC case, KC. Wow, he's not here. He's not here anyway.
(14:32):
That's not really great at all. That's actually really bad.
The Information reports that open ai will make about eight
billion dollars some subscriptions to chat GPT in twenty twenty five,
meaning that seventy five percent of open AI's largest revenue
source is eaten up by the price of providing it.
This is meant to be the cheap part. This is
the one fucking thing people say to me is meant
to come down in price. I've had assholes saying to
(14:54):
me for the last year. Custom influence is coming down?
Is it? Are we living in different dimensions? Are there
large as parts of the tech media that have fucking
gas leaks? What am I missing? Tell me what I
am missing near ed. You haven't take to people to
Billy Sea. You don't need it it. Shut the fuck up.
If you are one of these people who says I
need to in Casey, you're included, man. Fuck like, I'm
so sick of this, Oh you don't talk to people
(15:16):
running these things. I am sick of people like Casey,
you and and others too saying, Oh, you don't talk
to enough AI people. You haven't listened to them. You mean,
I haven't listened to the problem of the people that
make money off of lying about this dog shit? Are
you really thinking you think that's what's missing from my analysis,
interviewing people who work at these companies and understanding how
(15:36):
the technologies work. I know other technologies work. I don't
need to talk to these fucking people. There are people
out there like Simon Wilson and Max Wolf who know
how these things work that I talk to fairly regularly,
and both of them push back on me because they
know how large language models work. Those people matter. What
doesn't matter to me, what will never matter to me
is what Dario, Emma, Dave, Jack Clark and all the
(15:56):
other fucking people anthropic thing and I think it's the
tech and actively honestly malpractice in journalism to pretend that
there's something ethical about speaking to these people and listening
and taking in their marketing spiel. It's actually a little
bit disgusting that this is even a critique leveled at anyone.
(16:20):
But you can have to forgive me. I'm gonna be
a little rude, and I know that seemed like it,
but I'm not even getting excited. In fact, you know what,
I think it's time, Okay, everyone, I think it's time
that I go through the most common critiques in AI.
It's time for me to really sit down. And I'm
going to do my Kevin Rooth's voice. And I know
a lot of you like my Kevin Ruth's voice, and
(16:41):
some of you, not a lot of you. I'm going
to say I'm being rude to these people, and it
weakens my analysis, to which I say, kiss my ass,
I will I will turn you, I will cube you
like a car in a garbage dump. But let's start,
shall we. The cost of inference coming down? That's one argument. Okay,
source sauce, where is your source? If you are someone
(17:02):
saying to me that the costs of inference are coming down.
I want your source. I want you to show me
the costs. I want you to show me the costs
at scale, because it sure seems like they're increasing for
open ai, and they're effectively the entire user base of
the entire generative AI industry. But Edward about deep U,
sweet idiot child. Deep Seek is not open Ai, and
open AI's latest models only seem to be getting more
(17:23):
expensive as time drags on. GPT four point five costs
seventy five dollars per million input tokens and one hundred
and fifty dollars per million output tokens, and that the
risk of repeating myself. Open ai is effectively the entire
generitive AI industry, at least for the world outside of China.
On top of that, we actually don't know whether deep
seak is even profitable to run at scale. It is
(17:44):
definitely cheaper to run, but we don't know if it's
actually profitable. Indeed, I don't know, even though how you
calculate this, because running a deep seek model is just
one person is one thing. The question is whether you
could scale it up like open ai. We don't know.
But let's get up back to the other critiques. This
is a company, it's growth stage. They can just hit
(18:04):
the button, it all be profitable. You have the mind
of a child. If this was the case, why would
both anthropic and open AI be losing so much money?
Why are none of the hyper scalers making profit on AI?
Why does nobody want to talk about the underlying economics
if they're at the growth stage? And also a little
side point as well, why have we been at the
growth stage for years? And why are hyper scalers at
(18:24):
the growth stage? They're not startups anyway, on to another one, though,
these are the early days of AI. It's just that
the early days wrong. Wrong. We have all the king's
horses and all the king's men, the entire tech industry,
and more money that has ever been invested into anything
piled into generative AI, and the result has been utterly mediocre.
Nobody's making on money on AI other than Nvidia and
(18:47):
maybe during a consultancy, but ed they're already showing signs
that the AI is going to be powerful. No it's not. No,
it's not like I'm If anyone brings these critiques, you
just say no, no, they're not. Show me, show me,
show me, why is it the only people I'm giving
Simon Wilson credit here. He's one of the only people
who'll show you anything cool. And it's cloud compute stuff.
(19:09):
It's like relatively boring enterprise stuff. It's exciting for the
niche cases, like software generally is, but it's really not
showing any power. We talk about this powerful AI thing,
is it in the room? Like? Where is this? Where
is this powerful AI? But then I have actually had
a few emails saying, ed ed look at Open Eyes
three model, and I just want to be clear that
(19:31):
this new and extremely expensive reasoning model also hallucinates more.
Is that AGI? By the way, is this AGI? Is
the AGI in the room with us? Did the AGI
tell you it loved you? Did it tell you to
leave your wife? Did it offer you sex? I hope you're.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Okay, But ed Edie really is the early days though
it's just like this in the early days of the Internet.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
No, it was not, and you're a buffoon for suggesting otherwise.
Jim Cavello of Goldman Sachs wrote in a note from
last year and the episode pop Culture, you can listen
to it, which the early days of the Internet were
nothing like this. Nothing at all. Nothing. There were these
sixty two thousand and sixty four thousand dollars some microsystems, servers, yes,
but there were so so many few of them. But
(20:32):
ed smartphones, I've got you. I finally have me and
my sex. People doubted those two, they didn't. I will
drown you in an icy lake if another person comes
to me and says, hey, ed smartphones. People doubted smartphones.
Nobody darted smartphones. Why do people get I've read this
point so many times, but no one seems to have
a fucking hyperlink because they're lying. They goddamn lying. Cavello
(20:55):
of Goldman Sachs also noted and including an entire thing
about how smartphones were fully telegram after analysts and Advance
with hundreds of presentations that accurately fit house smartphones rolled out,
and that said that no roadmap exists for AI. It's
just we're years into this and I'm still repeating the
same points, and I still don't have much in return
(21:16):
other than the cost of inference that going down. But
here's another point of people like it. They go out ed,
you're so bone and check out this article, and some
of you love to emailed me this fucking thing. Not
many of you, I must be clear. The listeners. You're wonderful.
I love you so much, but there's one or two
of you out there. Really you're very attached to your
generative ais and I'm never gonna like it. But some
of you like to send me this article from Newsweek
(21:37):
in nineteen ninety five from a guy who said that
the web would not be a big business Clifford style.
He said, why the Web won't be Nirvana? And this piece,
by the way, is quite detailed. You should read it.
I'm going to have it in the episode notes. But
they think that sending me this that one guy one
guy was wrong. Once one guy he said that the
(22:00):
Internet wonn't be big, And this proves that I add
ze Tron what's that ninety nine us like twenty years
later because one guy said that the Internet won't be big,
that I am wrong? Summer motherfucker? Have you read the piece?
That's actually the thing. All of these are things that
you can box up and use. Some people who use
this half fast bullshit Clifford Stole basically says that the
(22:22):
Internet at the time was pretty limited, and yes, he
conflated that with the idea that he won't be big
in the future. However, Stole's piece, also, as Michael Hiltzier
wrote for The La Times, was alarmingly accurate about misinformation
and sleazy companies selling computerized replacements for education. In any case,
one guy saying that the Internet won't be big doesn't
make the fucking thing about Jennity, I v ai and
you were a simpleton if you think it does. One
(22:43):
guy being wrong in some way is not a response
to a criticism. I will crush you like a bug.
If this is your logic, I will eat you. I
will put you in my mouth like Kirby, and I'll
shit you out, and I will have the powers of
a dunce. Stole's analysis also isn't based on hundreds of
hours of research and endless reporting. Mine is I will
grab you from the ceiling like the war Master from Zelda,
(23:04):
and you will never be heard from again. Anyway. Another argument,
another argument that people are to give me is the
open ai and anthropic of research entities not business, and
that they are not focused on profit. Okay, so just
so we're clear that if that's the case, they're just
going to burn money forever. Is that the case or
are they going to hit like the be profitable button sometime. Also,
(23:26):
if open ai was a research entity, why does it
need forty billion dollars some soft bank or to change
its weird corporate structure to become a full profit Actually wait,
wait a second, that just occurred to me. Open ai
is as many as eight hundred million weekly active users.
That's proof of adoption, right, That's going to be an
argument that people have. There's some bloke on Blue Sky
(23:47):
who has just been responding to me every few days
with this kind of argument, saying, look, look at all
the users, and look, I get the look. You might
be a bit horny about this number, but something don't
make no sense about this number. Or March the first
twenty twenty five, open ai said that it had five
hundred million people who used chat GPT every week. Two
weeks later, Sam Mortman claimed that something like ten percent
(24:08):
of the world uses their systems a lot. They're referring
to chat GPTs, and the media took this to mean
that chat GPT is eight hundred million weekly active users.
I just want to be clear about something as well.
Sam Moltman didn't say that, he said the weird vague
thing about something like ten percent of the world, like
that's what he said, and everyone just went, oh shit,
we gotta help help Sam Moorman out got to push
(24:29):
this bad boy over the edge. And there are three
ways to interpret what he said, and you tell me
which one sounds real. Number One, open AI's user base
increased by three hundred million weekly active users in two weeks.
Number two. Open ai understated it's user base in the
announcement of their funding announcement on OpenAI dot com by
three hundred million users or three. Number three, How about this,
(24:52):
Sam Moltman fucking lied. I get that some members of
the media of a weird attachment to this damp little man,
But have any of you ever considered that he's just
fucking saying things knowing that you'll print them with the
kindest possible interpretation. Sam Oltman is a liar. He's lied before,
and he'll lie again. I wrote an entire newsletter called
sam Oltman is Full of Shit. You should read it.
I'm gonna link to it, but way ed Google says
(25:14):
it as three hundred and fifty million monthly active uses
on Gemini eat shit Zichron No, you eat shit? Yes,
Google Gemini has three hundred and fifty million monthly active users,
and that's because they started replacing Google Assistant with Google
Gemini in early March. You are being had, You are
being swindled. If Google replaced Google Search with Google Gemini,
it would have billions of monthly active users. Jesus Christ,
(25:38):
Jesus Christ on a goddamn cracker. Even reading this script out,
I get like some of you have suggested that this
is at all manufactured. No. Reading this stuff makes me
very angry because I didn't grow up popular or intelligent
in any way. I've had to pick this shit up
as I go, and I don't think what I'm saying
is crazy, but I am sometimes treated that way, and
(26:00):
this episode I realize I'm doing myself no favors. But anyway,
back to the critics, really quickly open AI having hundreds
of millions of free years as each losing it money
is proof that the free version of chat GPT is popular,
largely because the entirety of the media has written about
AI NonStop for two straight years and mentioned chat GPT
every single fucking time. Yes, yes, there is a degree
(26:20):
here of marketing at partnerships of word of mouth of
some degree of utility. But when you remove the non
stop free media campaign chat GPT would have petered out
by now along with this stupid fucking bubble, but edits
pouf sambody's doing something. Yeah, it's proved that something is
broken in society. Generative AI has never ever had the
kind of meaningful business returns or utility that actually underpins
(26:43):
something meaningful, but it has had enough to make people
give it a try. Do you not? Actually? No, I
know you listening. You're gonna get this. In some ways
this episode has been I mean, in all ways it's
been pretty rant. In the second one going to be
even more so. What I'm trying to do here is
show you how fascicle all this crap is, how ridiculous
it is, how silly these posits are. These projections are
(27:07):
the suggestion that what we have today will become something else,
when all we've had is proof that it won't. Do
you see the obvious cracks in the wall here, No
matter how strenuously people like professional credulous dipshits that the
other big publications tried to pave over them, does any
of this make sense to you? Because I, even when
I try and steal man. My own arguments. Can't wrap
(27:29):
my head around how any of this survives, let alone
becomes an industry where the biggest player has annual revenue
is greater than some major industrialized countries. And I know
some of you the emotions a lot, and I know
the aggressions a lot. I'm frustrated because I truly believe
this stuff's falling apart. I truly believe that this was
never really anything well. I'm saying this. Kevin Rose is
(27:51):
in the New York Times going, I believe that Agi
is my friend. I believe AGI will rise out of
the ground and hug me in the way no one
ever has. I think that's disgusting on levels. But I
also think it's genuinely irresponsible. I think all of this
is I think when this collapses, we're going to have
to look back and take inventory of how we got here.
(28:15):
And I need you to in the next episode listen
to it through the kind of len listen to it
through the lens. That's how lenses work. I need you
to just stick with it and realize that all of
the what this is is trying to show you and
hopefully other people that you talk to how silly this is,
how ridiculous this is, and that we have a major
problem in tech and business media. We have a problem
(28:36):
where people can come out and just say whatever the
Charlie Brown had hose of the tech media. And it's
disgusting to me because there are startups that could use
this money. There are better things to be done with
this money. Perhaps they're not hypergrowth markets, but there are
things that actually exist that could be piled into instead.
We've done this to make companies look like they can grow,
(28:57):
to make Sam Altman able to buy another five million
dollar koncig car. Is that the one he has? Either way,
I'm not gonna lower the temperature on the next episode.
I'm gonna be honest. It's gonna be just the spicy.
But I want you to know all of this frustration
comes from a place of knowing that we can do better,
and knowing that the tech industry could do better. Perhaps
it won't be as big as it is today in
(29:19):
the future, I don't know, but for it to get better,
this shit needs to end. Stick around for the next part,
where I'll talk about how we actually got here, how
this bubble got inflated, and how nasty the result could
be At the end, thank you for listening to Better Offline.
(29:42):
The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music
and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T
T O. S O w Ski dot com. You can
email me at easy at Better offline dot com or
visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast links
and of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you
(30:03):
go to chat dot Where's youoead dot at to visit
the discord, and go to our slash Better Offline to
check out our reddit. Thank you so much for listening.
Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hi, I'm at Zitron and you're listening to Better Offline.
As a reminder, you can now buy glorious Better Offline merchandise.
There's a link to it in the episode notes. The
t shirts, the tumblers, the toe bags, all that shit.
(00:28):
It's lovely. You're gonna love it, buy it today. But
if I'm honest today, I'm actually a little bit pissed off.
And that's why we've got a two part episode this
week about how fucking stupid the AI boom has become.
I wrote fascicle in the script, and I'm gonna be honest.
They need to be a little more pointed because I've
written tens of thousands of words about this. Now, I
recorded hours upon hours of podcast and still to this day,
(00:50):
people are babbling about the AI revolution. Is the sky
rains blood and crevices open in the fucking earth, dragging
houses and cars and dovestigated animals into them ores. Things
are astronomically fucked outside, Yet the tech media continues to
tell me to get my swimming trunks on and take
a long, nice dip in the fucking pool. As you
can tell, this is going to be a little less
reserved than usual. I've just I'm a little bit frustrated.
(01:12):
I don't know why I'm the one saying this, and
I frequently feel with the I a part time blogger
and podcaster. I'm writing the things that I'm writing. Since
I've put out the newsletter open ai as the systemic
risk of the tech industry, and actually it's a couple
of weeks back, I did the two parter about it too.
I've heard nothing in response, As was the case with
how does open ai survive and how open ai is
bad business. There just seems to be little concern or
(01:36):
belief that there's any kind of risk at the heart
of AI and open ai in particular. And there are
companies that spent nine billion dollars in twenty twenty four
to lose five billion dollars. Well, I'd love to add
a because here, if not, because it's important to be
intellectually honest and represent views that directly can trast my own,
even if I do in somewhat sarcastic and sardonic fashion.
Nobody seems to actually have a cogent response to how
(01:58):
they write this ship hard fork are case in Newton
throwing a full scale Psycho Tante on a podcast and
saying I'm wrong because inference costs are coming down. Inference,
by the way, is when an AI takes an input
and produces an output. It's the calculations that take place
right before Google's generativai assistant attributes the Voltaire quote to
Michael Jackson or says that black tar heroin, when enjoyed
(02:20):
in moderation, can help you lose weight. Newton is a
nakedly captured booster that ran an infographic from Anthropic a
few weeks ago, likes of which I haven't seen since
twenty thirteen. It was telling you all the ways that
people use Genera ivai. It looks like some shit from
I don't know, early day Mashable. No offense Christina, and
they essentially treat this company propaganda as gospel. But he's
(02:40):
really far from the only one with a flimsy attachment
to reality. The information a publication that genuinely does some
great stuff, which makes it even more heartbreaking to say this.
Ran a piece in early April that made me even
more furious than usual, claiming that open ai was forecasting
revenue topping one hundred and twenty five billion dollars in
twenty twenty nine, based on selling agents and monetizing free
(03:01):
users as a driver to higher revenue agents. I should
add AI systems that can interact with other systems and
do stuff. So an AI that can order pizza from
door dash for you is that's an example of an agent.
And when I say it can order piece of you,
I am talking entirely theoretically. Is they cannot do this
right now and may never be able to do so. Indeed,
(03:22):
the whole agent thing is just what we wish AI
was and it actually doesn't work. And the piece reported
based on things and I quote told to some potential
and current investors, takes great pains to accept literally everything
that open ai says is perfectly reasonable, if not gospel,
even if said things make absolutely no goddamn sense. So,
(03:42):
according to the information's reporting, open ai expects agents and
new products, and both of those are quotes to contribute
tens of billions of dollars of revenue, both in the
near term somehow contributing three billion dollars in revenue this year,
which I will get to in a little bit, and
in the long term with an egregious twenty five billion
dollars in revenue in twenty twenty nine, even projected to
(04:04):
come from just new products. If you're wondering what those
new products might be, I am two because the information
doesn't seem to know and instead of saying open ai
has no idea what the fuck they're talking about and
is just saying stuff, the outlet continues to publish things
with the kind of empty optimism that's indistinguishable from GPT
generated LinkedIn posts. Must be clear, the information isn't generating
(04:26):
their articles they're writing and fresh. I want to be really,
really clear about something we aren't in nearly in May
twenty five, and indeed one of these will come out
actually in May. The second part, I see no evidence
that open ai even has a marketable agent product they
can sell, let alone one will it will make three
billion goddamn dollars off of and they definitely are not
(04:49):
going to do so in the next six or seven months.
Oh my, for context, let's triple the revenue of open
ai that they made reportedly at least from selling access
to their models via at APIs essentially allowing third party
companies to use GPT in their apps in the entirety
of twenty twenty four, and those APIs and models actually
exist in a meaningful sense, as opposed to whatever the
(05:09):
far copenai is half baked last agents stuff is. In fact, no, no, no,
no no. I'm not going to be mean, not would
be calm, be normal. I'm going to explain exactly what
the information is reporting in an objective way, because writing
it out really shows how silly it all sounds. I
am going to rate they believe a lot, because I
must be clear how stupid this is. Now, according to
(05:30):
the Information's reporting, they believe the open AI will make
three billion dollars in twenty twenty five from selling access
to its agents. This appears to come from soft Bank,
which has said it will buy three billion dollars worth
of open ai products annually. Earlier this year, we got
a bit of extra information about how soft Bank will
use these products. It plans to create a system called
Crystal Intelligence that CRISTL and it's one of the most
(05:52):
generic names I've ever seen, and it will be a
kind of general purpose AI agent platform for big enterprises.
The exact specifics of that will shock you, and that
there are none, but SoftBank intends to use the technology
internally across its various portfolio companies, as well as market
it to other large enterprise companies in Japan. I still
do not know what the fuck this is Crystal Intelligence
(06:14):
billions of dollars, billions of dollars, and they just don't.
They can't even describe what it is, just saying yeah,
it'll be an agent platform that does stuff with your business,
Like does that sound good? Can I have? I need
forty billion dollars? I need forty billion dollars, give me okay.
I also want to add that the Information can't seem
(06:35):
to keep its story straight on this issue. Back in February,
they reported that open AI would make three billion dollars
in revenue only from agents, with a big beautiful chart
that said three billion dollars would come from it, only
to add that it would be soft Bank using open
AIS products across its companies. Based on these numbers, it
seems like SoftBank will be the only customer for open
AIS agents. Well, this most likely won't be the case,
(06:58):
and it isn't because it excludes anyone willing to pay
a few bucks to test it out. It nonetheless doesn't
signal good things for agents as a mass market product,
not that there were any good signals beforehand. Though agents
do not exist as a product that can be sold
at scale. Yes, open ai teasted Operator it's first agent
at the start of the year, but it doesn't seem
to be able to do anything. The Information's own reporting
(07:18):
from mid April highlighted how OpenAIS operate a agent struggled
with comparison shopping on financial products and that's a quote.
And how Operator or other agents are and I quote
again tripped by pop ups or logins as well as
prompts asking for email addresses and phone numbers for marketing
purpose purposes, which I think accurately describes most websites. And
(07:40):
just to summarize from everything I've said, the Information is
saying that the above product will make open ai three
billion dollars by the end of twenty twenty five. Sounds
very real to me, sounds extremely real. I love that
the business media just prints this. I love this. I
love this so much. I'm having so much fun. Jesus Christ.
(08:01):
According to The Information's reporting, they believe that open ai
will basically double revenue every single year for the next
four years and make thirteen billion dollars in revenue twenty
twenty five, more than doubling that to twenty nine billion
dollars in twenty twenty six, nearly doubling that to fifty
four billion dollars in twenty twenty seven, and nearly doubling
that again to eighty six billion dollars in twenty twenty eight,
and eventually leveling out a ridiculous one hundred and twenty
(08:22):
five billion dollars of revenue in twenty twenty nine. Said
revenue estimates as of twenty twenty six includes billions of
dollars of new products that include free monetization free user
monetization either and if you're wondering what that means, I
also am. The information does not explain JESSICLLESSI must have
been busy being horrible to people that work for her.
(08:42):
They do, however, say that open ai will start, and
I'm quoting this won't start generating much revenue from free
users and other products until next year. That's twenty twenty six.
In twenty nine, and I'm still quoting. However, it projects
revenue from free users and other products will reach twenty
five billion dollars, a one fifth of all revenue, and
then adds that shopping is another potential avenue. You still
(09:05):
probably don't know what they're doing, and neither do iron
I have driven myself insane reading about this. I really
cannot express my disgust about how willing publications are to
blindly published projections like these, especially when they're all so stupid.
Let me just read this to you, all right, and
I quote. Open ai has already begun experimenting with launching
(09:26):
software features for shopping. Starting in January, some users can
access web browsing agent Operator as part of their Prochat
GBT subscription to here to order groceries from Instacart and
make restaurant reservations on open table. Just want to be clear.
This is a few episodes ago I mentioned Casey Newton
not even being able to say this worked. I just
(09:47):
want to be really clear as well what the information
is saying. So they're saying that this experimental software launched
to an indeterminate amount of people that barely works, is
going to make open Ai three billion dollars in twenty
twenty five, and then somehow this is going to lead
to open ai making twenty nine billion dollars in twenty
twenty six, and then they're can eventually be up to
one hunch and twenty five billion dollars. What the fuck? How? How?
(10:08):
What fucking universe are we all living in? There's no
proof that open ai can do this other than the
fact it has a lot of users and a lot
of venture capital. In fact, I think we have real
reason to worry about whether open ai even makes its
(10:30):
current projections. In my last multi part episode and then
the newsletter open ai as a systemic risk for those
of you who are like to read while listening to
my fucking podcast, I wrote the Bloomberg had estimated that
open ai would triple revenue to twelve point seven billion
dollars in twenty twenty five, and based on its current
subscriber base, open ai would effectively have to double its
current subscription revenue and massively increase its API revenue to
(10:51):
hit these targets. These projections rely on one entity, SoftBank,
spending three billion dollars specifically on open AI's services really
shouldn't said specifically, because they keep changing what it means,
meaning that they'd have to make enough on API course,
so people plug in the models into their products to
generate more revenue. In the open Ai made in subscriptions
in the entirety of twenty twenty four and something else
(11:13):
that I can only describe as an act of God,
and that I admit. It seems that soft bank spending
commitment is based on usage and not like a flat
fee where Softpak just hands them three billion dollars and
gets infinite levels of access. Assuming it's the former, I'd
be stunned if soft Bank's consumption hits three billion dollars
in twenty twenty five, even with the massive cost of
(11:33):
the reasoning models that Crystal Intelligence will maybe be based
off of. Again, we don't know, and soft Bank announced
this deal with open Ai in February. Crystal Intelligence, if
it works, and that is possibly the most load bearing
IF of all time, will be a massive, complicated and
ambitious product. Details are vague, but from what I understand,
soft Bank wants to create an AI that handles a
(11:53):
bunch of varied tasks that knowledge workers do. I mean,
it's just the same marketing bullshit. It's the same thing.
It's the thing they've been lying about before. And to
be clear, open AI's agents cannot consistently do well anything
right now, what I believe is happening is that reporters
are taking open AI's rapid growth in revenue from twenty
twenty three to twenty twenty four, when they went from
like tens of millions of dollars a month in the
(12:15):
beginning of the twenty twenty three to three hundred million
in August twenty twenty four, genuinely a big leap. They've
taken this to mean that the company will always effectively
double or triple revenue every single year forever, with their
evidence being open ai has said that this will happen
in projections. It's bullshit. I'm sorry, it's bullshit. It's bullshit.
As I wrote before in a newsletter, it's called there's
(12:36):
No Ai Revolution and the accompanying episodes. At the time,
open Ai effectively is the generative AI industry, and nothing
about the rest of the generative AI industry suggests that
the revenue exists to sustain these ridiculous obscenes and frankly
fucking stupid valuations and projections. What do I mean by that?
By the way, okay, let me get into it. Chat
GPT is the only real generative AI product with any
(12:58):
significant usage, or rather their nearest rivals or a fraction
of said user base, or maybe I need to be
a little bit blunter. If anyone held at Google Gemini
user conference, all the attendees could probably share a cab.
Believing the open AI growth myth and yes, reporting it
objectively is both endorsing and believing these numbers is engaging
in childlike logic where you take one event, which is
(13:20):
open AI's revenue grew seventeen hundred percent from twenty twenty
three to twenty twenty four. Wow, to mean another will
take place, which is the open a I will continue
to double revenue literally every other year. Another insane thing
to believe, and you're consciously ignoring difficult questions such as
how will they do this? And what's the total addressable
market of large language models and their associated subscriptions exactly?
(13:42):
And how does this company even survive when it expects
the costs of inference the triple this year to six
billion dollars alone. Wait wait, wait, sorry, sorry, I really
need to be clear with that last one, because it's
a direct quote from the information hm M. The company
also expects growth and inference costs the costs of running
A products such as chat GPT in their underlying models
to moderate over the next half decade. These costs will
(14:05):
triple this year referring to twenty twenty five to six
billion dollars, and rise to nearly forty seven billion dollars
in twenty thirty. Still, the annual growth rate will fall
to about thirty percent. Then, okay, thanks Also, are you
fucking kidding me? Six billion fucking dollars for fucking influence? Hey,
ca C Newton, I thought those costs were coming down.
KC case, KC. Wow, he's not here. He's not here anyway.
(14:32):
That's not really great at all. That's actually really bad.
The Information reports that open ai will make about eight
billion dollars some subscriptions to chat GPT in twenty twenty five,
meaning that seventy five percent of open AI's largest revenue
source is eaten up by the price of providing it.
This is meant to be the cheap part. This is
the one fucking thing people say to me is meant
to come down in price. I've had assholes saying to
(14:54):
me for the last year. Custom influence is coming down?
Is it? Are we living in different dimensions? Are there
large as parts of the tech media that have fucking
gas leaks? What am I missing? Tell me what I
am missing near ed. You haven't take to people to
Billy Sea. You don't need it it. Shut the fuck up.
If you are one of these people who says I
need to in Casey, you're included, man. Fuck like, I'm
so sick of this, Oh you don't talk to people
(15:16):
running these things. I am sick of people like Casey,
you and and others too saying, Oh, you don't talk
to enough AI people. You haven't listened to them. You mean,
I haven't listened to the problem of the people that
make money off of lying about this dog shit? Are
you really thinking you think that's what's missing from my analysis,
interviewing people who work at these companies and understanding how
(15:36):
the technologies work. I know other technologies work. I don't
need to talk to these fucking people. There are people
out there like Simon Wilson and Max Wolf who know
how these things work that I talk to fairly regularly,
and both of them push back on me because they
know how large language models work. Those people matter. What
doesn't matter to me, what will never matter to me
is what Dario, Emma, Dave, Jack Clark and all the
(15:56):
other fucking people anthropic thing and I think it's the
tech and actively honestly malpractice in journalism to pretend that
there's something ethical about speaking to these people and listening
and taking in their marketing spiel. It's actually a little
bit disgusting that this is even a critique leveled at anyone.
(16:20):
But you can have to forgive me. I'm gonna be
a little rude, and I know that seemed like it,
but I'm not even getting excited. In fact, you know what,
I think it's time, Okay, everyone, I think it's time
that I go through the most common critiques in AI.
It's time for me to really sit down. And I'm
going to do my Kevin Rooth's voice. And I know
a lot of you like my Kevin Ruth's voice, and
(16:41):
some of you, not a lot of you. I'm going
to say I'm being rude to these people, and it
weakens my analysis, to which I say, kiss my ass,
I will I will turn you, I will cube you
like a car in a garbage dump. But let's start,
shall we. The cost of inference coming down? That's one argument. Okay,
source sauce, where is your source? If you are someone
(17:02):
saying to me that the costs of inference are coming down.
I want your source. I want you to show me
the costs. I want you to show me the costs
at scale, because it sure seems like they're increasing for
open ai, and they're effectively the entire user base of
the entire generative AI industry. But Edward about deep U,
sweet idiot child. Deep Seek is not open Ai, and
open AI's latest models only seem to be getting more
(17:23):
expensive as time drags on. GPT four point five costs
seventy five dollars per million input tokens and one hundred
and fifty dollars per million output tokens, and that the
risk of repeating myself. Open ai is effectively the entire
generitive AI industry, at least for the world outside of China.
On top of that, we actually don't know whether deep
seak is even profitable to run at scale. It is
(17:44):
definitely cheaper to run, but we don't know if it's
actually profitable. Indeed, I don't know, even though how you
calculate this, because running a deep seek model is just
one person is one thing. The question is whether you
could scale it up like open ai. We don't know.
But let's get up back to the other critiques. This
is a company, it's growth stage. They can just hit
(18:04):
the button, it all be profitable. You have the mind
of a child. If this was the case, why would
both anthropic and open AI be losing so much money?
Why are none of the hyper scalers making profit on AI?
Why does nobody want to talk about the underlying economics
if they're at the growth stage? And also a little
side point as well, why have we been at the
growth stage for years? And why are hyper scalers at
(18:24):
the growth stage? They're not startups anyway, on to another one, though,
these are the early days of AI. It's just that
the early days wrong. Wrong. We have all the king's
horses and all the king's men, the entire tech industry,
and more money that has ever been invested into anything
piled into generative AI, and the result has been utterly mediocre.
Nobody's making on money on AI other than Nvidia and
(18:47):
maybe during a consultancy, but ed they're already showing signs
that the AI is going to be powerful. No it's not. No,
it's not like I'm If anyone brings these critiques, you
just say no, no, they're not. Show me, show me,
show me, why is it the only people I'm giving
Simon Wilson credit here. He's one of the only people
who'll show you anything cool. And it's cloud compute stuff.
(19:09):
It's like relatively boring enterprise stuff. It's exciting for the
niche cases, like software generally is, but it's really not
showing any power. We talk about this powerful AI thing,
is it in the room? Like? Where is this? Where
is this powerful AI? But then I have actually had
a few emails saying, ed ed look at Open Eyes
three model, and I just want to be clear that
(19:31):
this new and extremely expensive reasoning model also hallucinates more.
Is that AGI? By the way, is this AGI? Is
the AGI in the room with us? Did the AGI
tell you it loved you? Did it tell you to
leave your wife? Did it offer you sex? I hope you're.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Okay, But ed Edie really is the early days though
it's just like this in the early days of the Internet.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
No, it was not, and you're a buffoon for suggesting otherwise.
Jim Cavello of Goldman Sachs wrote in a note from
last year and the episode pop Culture, you can listen
to it, which the early days of the Internet were
nothing like this. Nothing at all. Nothing. There were these
sixty two thousand and sixty four thousand dollars some microsystems, servers, yes,
but there were so so many few of them. But
(20:32):
ed smartphones, I've got you. I finally have me and
my sex. People doubted those two, they didn't. I will
drown you in an icy lake if another person comes
to me and says, hey, ed smartphones. People doubted smartphones.
Nobody darted smartphones. Why do people get I've read this
point so many times, but no one seems to have
a fucking hyperlink because they're lying. They goddamn lying. Cavello
(20:55):
of Goldman Sachs also noted and including an entire thing
about how smartphones were fully telegram after analysts and Advance
with hundreds of presentations that accurately fit house smartphones rolled out,
and that said that no roadmap exists for AI. It's
just we're years into this and I'm still repeating the
same points, and I still don't have much in return
(21:16):
other than the cost of inference that going down. But
here's another point of people like it. They go out ed,
you're so bone and check out this article, and some
of you love to emailed me this fucking thing. Not
many of you, I must be clear. The listeners. You're wonderful.
I love you so much, but there's one or two
of you out there. Really you're very attached to your
generative ais and I'm never gonna like it. But some
of you like to send me this article from Newsweek
(21:37):
in nineteen ninety five from a guy who said that
the web would not be a big business Clifford style.
He said, why the Web won't be Nirvana? And this piece,
by the way, is quite detailed. You should read it.
I'm going to have it in the episode notes. But
they think that sending me this that one guy one
guy was wrong. Once one guy he said that the
(22:00):
Internet wonn't be big, And this proves that I add
ze Tron what's that ninety nine us like twenty years
later because one guy said that the Internet won't be big,
that I am wrong? Summer motherfucker? Have you read the piece?
That's actually the thing. All of these are things that
you can box up and use. Some people who use
this half fast bullshit Clifford Stole basically says that the
(22:22):
Internet at the time was pretty limited, and yes, he
conflated that with the idea that he won't be big
in the future. However, Stole's piece, also, as Michael Hiltzier
wrote for The La Times, was alarmingly accurate about misinformation
and sleazy companies selling computerized replacements for education. In any case,
one guy saying that the Internet won't be big doesn't
make the fucking thing about Jennity, I v ai and
you were a simpleton if you think it does. One
(22:43):
guy being wrong in some way is not a response
to a criticism. I will crush you like a bug.
If this is your logic, I will eat you. I
will put you in my mouth like Kirby, and I'll
shit you out, and I will have the powers of
a dunce. Stole's analysis also isn't based on hundreds of
hours of research and endless reporting. Mine is I will
grab you from the ceiling like the war Master from Zelda,
(23:04):
and you will never be heard from again. Anyway. Another argument,
another argument that people are to give me is the
open ai and anthropic of research entities not business, and
that they are not focused on profit. Okay, so just
so we're clear that if that's the case, they're just
going to burn money forever. Is that the case or
are they going to hit like the be profitable button sometime. Also,
(23:26):
if open ai was a research entity, why does it
need forty billion dollars some soft bank or to change
its weird corporate structure to become a full profit Actually wait,
wait a second, that just occurred to me. Open ai
is as many as eight hundred million weekly active users.
That's proof of adoption, right, That's going to be an
argument that people have. There's some bloke on Blue Sky
(23:47):
who has just been responding to me every few days
with this kind of argument, saying, look, look at all
the users, and look, I get the look. You might
be a bit horny about this number, but something don't
make no sense about this number. Or March the first
twenty twenty five, open ai said that it had five
hundred million people who used chat GPT every week. Two
weeks later, Sam Mortman claimed that something like ten percent
(24:08):
of the world uses their systems a lot. They're referring
to chat GPTs, and the media took this to mean
that chat GPT is eight hundred million weekly active users.
I just want to be clear about something as well.
Sam Moltman didn't say that, he said the weird vague
thing about something like ten percent of the world, like
that's what he said, and everyone just went, oh shit,
we gotta help help Sam Moorman out got to push
(24:29):
this bad boy over the edge. And there are three
ways to interpret what he said, and you tell me
which one sounds real. Number One, open AI's user base
increased by three hundred million weekly active users in two weeks.
Number two. Open ai understated it's user base in the
announcement of their funding announcement on OpenAI dot com by
three hundred million users or three. Number three, How about this,
(24:52):
Sam Moltman fucking lied. I get that some members of
the media of a weird attachment to this damp little man,
But have any of you ever considered that he's just
fucking saying things knowing that you'll print them with the
kindest possible interpretation. Sam Oltman is a liar. He's lied before,
and he'll lie again. I wrote an entire newsletter called
sam Oltman is Full of Shit. You should read it.
I'm gonna link to it, but way ed Google says
(25:14):
it as three hundred and fifty million monthly active uses
on Gemini eat shit Zichron No, you eat shit? Yes,
Google Gemini has three hundred and fifty million monthly active users,
and that's because they started replacing Google Assistant with Google
Gemini in early March. You are being had, You are
being swindled. If Google replaced Google Search with Google Gemini,
it would have billions of monthly active users. Jesus Christ,
(25:38):
Jesus Christ on a goddamn cracker. Even reading this script out,
I get like some of you have suggested that this
is at all manufactured. No. Reading this stuff makes me
very angry because I didn't grow up popular or intelligent
in any way. I've had to pick this shit up
as I go, and I don't think what I'm saying
is crazy, but I am sometimes treated that way, and
(26:00):
this episode I realize I'm doing myself no favors. But anyway,
back to the critics, really quickly open AI having hundreds
of millions of free years as each losing it money
is proof that the free version of chat GPT is popular,
largely because the entirety of the media has written about
AI NonStop for two straight years and mentioned chat GPT
every single fucking time. Yes, yes, there is a degree
(26:20):
here of marketing at partnerships of word of mouth of
some degree of utility. But when you remove the non
stop free media campaign chat GPT would have petered out
by now along with this stupid fucking bubble, but edits
pouf sambody's doing something. Yeah, it's proved that something is
broken in society. Generative AI has never ever had the
kind of meaningful business returns or utility that actually underpins
(26:43):
something meaningful, but it has had enough to make people
give it a try. Do you not? Actually? No, I
know you listening. You're gonna get this. In some ways
this episode has been I mean, in all ways it's
been pretty rant. In the second one going to be
even more so. What I'm trying to do here is
show you how fascicle all this crap is, how ridiculous
it is, how silly these posits are. These projections are
(27:07):
the suggestion that what we have today will become something else,
when all we've had is proof that it won't. Do
you see the obvious cracks in the wall here, No
matter how strenuously people like professional credulous dipshits that the
other big publications tried to pave over them, does any
of this make sense to you? Because I, even when
I try and steal man. My own arguments. Can't wrap
(27:29):
my head around how any of this survives, let alone
becomes an industry where the biggest player has annual revenue
is greater than some major industrialized countries. And I know
some of you the emotions a lot, and I know
the aggressions a lot. I'm frustrated because I truly believe
this stuff's falling apart. I truly believe that this was
never really anything well. I'm saying this. Kevin Rose is
(27:51):
in the New York Times going, I believe that Agi
is my friend. I believe AGI will rise out of
the ground and hug me in the way no one
ever has. I think that's disgusting on levels. But I
also think it's genuinely irresponsible. I think all of this
is I think when this collapses, we're going to have
to look back and take inventory of how we got here.
(28:15):
And I need you to in the next episode listen
to it through the kind of len listen to it
through the lens. That's how lenses work. I need you
to just stick with it and realize that all of
the what this is is trying to show you and
hopefully other people that you talk to how silly this is,
how ridiculous this is, and that we have a major
problem in tech and business media. We have a problem
(28:36):
where people can come out and just say whatever the
Charlie Brown had hose of the tech media. And it's
disgusting to me because there are startups that could use
this money. There are better things to be done with
this money. Perhaps they're not hypergrowth markets, but there are
things that actually exist that could be piled into instead.
We've done this to make companies look like they can grow,
(28:57):
to make Sam Altman able to buy another five million
dollar koncig car. Is that the one he has? Either way,
I'm not gonna lower the temperature on the next episode.
I'm gonna be honest. It's gonna be just the spicy.
But I want you to know all of this frustration
comes from a place of knowing that we can do better,
and knowing that the tech industry could do better. Perhaps
it won't be as big as it is today in
(29:19):
the future, I don't know, but for it to get better,
this shit needs to end. Stick around for the next part,
where I'll talk about how we actually got here, how
this bubble got inflated, and how nasty the result could
be At the end, thank you for listening to Better Offline.
(29:42):
The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song
is Matasowski. You can check out more of his music
and audio projects at Matasowski dot com, M A T
T O. S O w Ski dot com. You can
email me at easy at Better offline dot com or
visit Better Offline dot com to find more podcast links
and of course, my newsletter. I also really recommend you
(30:03):
go to chat dot Where's youoead dot at to visit
the discord, and go to our slash Better Offline to
check out our reddit. Thank you so much for listening.
Better Offline is a production of cool Zone Media. For
more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Ed Zitron
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