If you don’t read Ed Zitron’s newsletter, chances are someone else has forwarded along one of his graphomaniacal (but also very entertaining) rants about how the AI industry is a shell game run by psychopaths. He’s carved out a healthy niche as an unrepentant technopessimist—albeit one who’s still a publicist for mostly tech clients, including some in the AI space. Tommy Cragg wades headlong into this seeming contradiction for an arch, candid, thoroughly enjoyable profile of Zitron (which also happens to feature, courtesy of tech journalist Casey Newton, one of most vitriolic quotes about the subject I’ve ever read in a profile).
Maybe more importantly, for his readers and listeners, Zitron holds out the seductive promise of some great comeuppance for the industry. Justice, of some kind, for an audience that isn’t seeing much of it in evidence anywhere. “I do not think this is a real industry,” he has written, “and I believe that if we pulled the plug on the venture capital aspect tomorrow it would evaporate.” When On the Media asked how he could be so certain that a collapse was coming, he replied, “I feel it in my soul.” So his analysis may wobble here and there on the abstruse particulars of, say, inference costs. He will not be deterred from his overall message: Judgment Day is just over the horizon. Somewhat lost in all the frog-raining opprobrium is the obvious contradiction of his work, which Zitron doesn’t hide but which he rarely discusses: that he makes a living, in part, from trying to gin up attention for AI companies. Can a flack be a prophet on the side?
You Could Be Next
“Laid-off lawyers, history PhDs, and scientists are now part of a miserable gig economy in which they’re teaching AI how to do their old jobs.”
Teacher v Chatbot: My Journey Into the Classroom in the Age Of AI
“Throwing AI into the mix felt like downing a coffee in the middle of a panic attack.”
Recursive Resemblance
“On the feedback loops of mimesis, from the ancients to AI.”
What Is Claude? Anthropic Doesn’t Know, Either
“Researchers at the company are trying to understand their A.I. system’s mind—examining its neurons, running it through psychology experiments, and putting it on the therapy couch.”
Wildlife Attacks and Strange Animal Behavior—Fake Images Spark Conservation Concerns
“AI-generated images pose a direct threat to conservation efforts by distorting public perceptions of wildlife.”
Deepfaking Orson Welles’s Mangled Masterpiece
“Will an A.I. restoration of ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ right a historic wrong or desecrate a classic?”
