> So, unsourced vibes from a shady guy whose entire empire is built on being against AI?

Actually he provides sources when he analyses stuff and imho much better than the usual corporate "Sam Altman says we should ask ChatGPT how to raise babies" crap. Also, I don't know many 'shady' guys who have built entire "empires", nor does he seem to actually have an empire. Usually being shady means you are kind of unknown and all. I am not glorifying Ed, don't even know him personally. I am not even impressed with his writing style much to be honest. But he brings important facts and information to light, which otherwise would have been lost in the cacophony of corporate media light treatment of these con-men. Holy Grail? Blowing up in our faces? WTF are you talking about?

>Actually he provides sources when he analyses stuff and imho much better than the usual corporate

You said it was likely an internal leak to the WSJ "according to Ed Zitron". Did Ed have a source for that, or was it just vibes?

The source was the article in the WSJ itself, which then referred to their source at the Anthropic. Which kind of is a textbook definition of "leak". Because otherwise Anthropic would have their lawyers hunting both the employee breaking their stringent NDA and the WSJ as well...

Fair enough, but I have to admit I'm puzzled about why you felt the need to then attribute it to Zitron?

Why puzzled ? I literally said "According to Ed Zitron", implying that's where I stumbled upon the article. I've no time to read corporate media, at least not regularly.

>more like their own leak to WSJ and according to Ed Zitron

^ Apologies, the above read to me like you were saying that Ed himself was claiming that Anthropic leaked to the WSJ.

Ed actually provides sources and goes into an incredible amount of detail as to how he came to his conclusions. The average AI booster just goes "I totally built ten businesses off vibe coding but I can't tell you anything because it's a SECRET!". And the mainstream tech media is so in the pocket of big tech and AI corporations that they might as well just publish their PR emails at this point. Yeah, I'll listen to Ed thank you very much.

I think it's telling that most critics don't address his actual points, but instead his credibility because he's a "hater".

Ed actually seems to make some really serious errors in his work. Tim Lee called out a particularly egregious one here, though it's one of many: https://x.com/binarybits/status/2050562429709377986

That said, I really mean it when I say that I don't actually think Ed is a good choice for the anti-AI movement. I think an actual opposition is useful, but he ain't it.

I really recommend you read the Wired profile if you haven't yet and form your own opinion: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-pr-ed-zitron-profile/

I read the profile and didn't see anything really wrong. Why would PR companies have to believe in their clients? Why does he have to be held to higher moral standards than Sam Altman who’s a total lying snake?

The error you call out is hardly “serious”, as the whole argument is uninteresting. It is a stupid indefensible error but the argument about revenue being 20% or 30% lower than reported isn’t that central to his overall thesis. Stuff that matters is inference cost, profitability, actual training costs.

It's an interesting profile, but I don't see why it would change my opinion of him. I already knew he works in PR, it's not like a thing he hides. I don't think one error in a spreadsheet really proves anything (plus he's pretty honest about being an amateur at financial analysis -- but most of what he's looking at is pretty basic math and it's baffling that nobody has an answer to his pretty straightforward questions of how-will-this-ever-make-money)

I guess like, I don't know about an anti-ai "movement", personally I like AI-the-product but I think AI-the-industry is extremely sketchy and has motivations that I think are awful. As with all technology revolutions, my issue is more with the people than the technology itself.

I don't really like how this whole thing has become "pro ai" vs "anti ai" though. For me, I'm just really irritated when I use AI every day, I'm a professional software developer, and all my experiences with it do not match the (very annoying) hype. I kind of wish we could just go back to talking about software engineering and if people like vibe coding, great, go do that and stop all the annoying think pieces that just give CEO's even worse AI psychosis.