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