Speaker 1: A Zone Media, Hello and welcome to this week's Better
Speaker 1: Offline Monologue. I'm your host ed Zetron, and goddamn am
Speaker 1: I tired? I'm so tired of watching this routine, this
Speaker 1: goddamn routine. Every single earnings, a big tech company talks
Speaker 1: about the wonder of AI. They post growth of revenue,
Speaker 1: and the finance media writes that that growth came from
Speaker 1: selling AI, despite the fact that none of these companies
Speaker 1: actually say how much they've earned from selling either AI
Speaker 1: software or renting out GPUs. Isn't that weird? Isn't that
Speaker 1: really weird? We're two years in, three years in, honestly,
Speaker 1: and not a single one of them mentions how much
Speaker 1: they make from AI. Microsoft did it two quarters running,
Speaker 1: then they stopped. Not a problem, No need to check
Speaker 1: in on the company that has now spent over two
Speaker 1: hundred billion dollars since twenty twenty to building data centers
Speaker 1: full of GPUs that they could make an amount of
Speaker 1: revenue that they are deciding not to share, Like, just
Speaker 1: are they shy? Are they shy? Are they? Is the
Speaker 1: revenue too good? Oh? I couldn't possibly, I'm too shy.
Speaker 1: I couldn't share me AI revenue perhaps somebody should report
Speaker 1: this out sometime. In any case, everybody is aggressively intensely
Speaker 1: ignoring the elephant in the room. Open ai, the billion
Speaker 1: dollar baby that loves burning billions of dollars. Who both
Speaker 1: the California and Delaware attorneys general decided to let convert
Speaker 1: to a for profit entity, and guess one, open aiy
Speaker 1: is already gearing up to go public in twenty twenty seven.
Speaker 1: You know what, fuck him? Let them, Let them file
Speaker 1: a goddamn S one. Show me the innards of this company.
Speaker 1: I bet open Aiy's books are going to look like
Speaker 1: a dog's dinner coming out of its asshole on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: The Register reported earlier this week that has disclosed as
Speaker 1: part of Microsoft's earnings, open ai lost over eleven billion
Speaker 1: dollars in the last quarter. Why any of us pretending
Speaker 1: this makes sense? Why why are we doing this? Why
Speaker 1: are we pretending that open ai makes sense as a company?
Speaker 1: What does this company do, what have they done previously
Speaker 1: and what will they do in the future that justifies
Speaker 1: any of this. I don't know if I have AI
Speaker 1: booster listeners. I don't know if any of you are
Speaker 1: really big AI fans. I don't know. If you are,
Speaker 1: please contact me and tell me why you believe it's
Speaker 1: worth it. And if your answer is well, companies burned
Speaker 1: a lot of money to get to where they were
Speaker 1: in the future, what has to come out of this
Speaker 1: entity that will justify this expense? Because that's really the
Speaker 1: thing that I'm rolling around in my mind. What justifies
Speaker 1: all of this? What justifies the capex? What justifies the
Speaker 1: open AI wants to raise sixty billion dollars at the
Speaker 1: IPO in twenty twenty seven. It will never happen, but nevertheless, like,
Speaker 1: what is it that justifies all that? Is it the
Speaker 1: data centers? What will the data centers do? Nothing? It's
Speaker 1: going to be more of the same. And that's before
Speaker 1: you get to the fact that the demand isn't there.
Speaker 1: It's just exhausting. I know, I'm repeating myself, I'm not
Speaker 1: really gonna stop, though I might have no intention of stopping.
Speaker 1: In fact, I think I'm gonna go harder. And I
Speaker 1: know it's really easy at times like this, when the
Speaker 1: world feels suffocating and illogical and unforgiving and dishonest and
Speaker 1: frustrating and confusing, to turn our guns inward, to tear
Speaker 1: down into disarm and disparage to fight back through isolating
Speaker 1: ourselves further. But these are the motives and moves of
Speaker 1: those who do not see a future, who crave an
Speaker 1: eternal status quo where history must repeat the enrichment cycles,
Speaker 1: the same mistakes that left us in a growth driven
Speaker 1: near apocalypse for three straight years, that have empowered Charlatan's
Speaker 1: like Altman and Amerday because they resembled stories of the
Speaker 1: past heroes of the tech industry like Uber and Aws
Speaker 1: enough to keep you warm and fuzzy every night without
Speaker 1: worrying about whether gravity exists. Good sense and mathematics don't
Speaker 1: need to matter when you're smoking enough copium that you're
Speaker 1: already imagining your next trip to visit the remains of
Speaker 1: the Titanic. So I'm gonna tell you something. I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you to do something dramatic, and yes, we
Speaker 1: all know where this is from, but I want you
Speaker 1: to say this out loud, as quietly as you want,
Speaker 1: or as loudly as you want. Fuck these people. Doesn't
Speaker 1: that feel good? Fuck these people? Fuck them? God, I'm
Speaker 1: told I can't swear that you can't address this financial
Speaker 1: insanity without anything other than the calm pois of a
Speaker 1: fucking monk. But how else am I meant to react
Speaker 1: to Sam Orman promising superintelligence for the umpteenth time, or
Speaker 1: claiming in twenty twenty seven or twenty twenty eight will
Speaker 1: have automated AI science, or signing deals for a trillion
Speaker 1: dollars of stuff that this company can never afford. Am
Speaker 1: I meant to applaud? Am I meant to be excited?
Speaker 1: Look at the rest of the tech industry. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can look at chat, GPT, but even outside of it,
Speaker 1: our social networks look terrible. Facebook is a minefield of
Speaker 1: scams and AI slop. Instagram is fifty percent ads or more.
Speaker 1: Our email accounts are full of spam. I get five
Speaker 1: spam calls a day. Everything needs a fucking account. Fuck
Speaker 1: the future for a second. Can we just get the
Speaker 1: things that we use every data fucking work again? Or
Speaker 1: is that too much to ask in an era where
Speaker 1: everything must grow eternally? I swear to God, the most
Speaker 1: impressive technology anybody could launch this year is something that
Speaker 1: actually does what it's fucking meant to. Pardon me for
Speaker 1: being a little salty, but God, every day in the
Speaker 1: news somebody talks about how are in the midst of
Speaker 1: a glorious era of artificial intelligence, Yet the products we
Speaker 1: use have never felt dumber. It's trite, I know, but
Speaker 1: three years into a hype cycle specifically oriented around intelligence
Speaker 1: software that changes our life, it feels like I should
Speaker 1: have something anything that feels like it's measurably improved. Every
Speaker 1: product feels worse everything. But aside how you may feel
Speaker 1: about AI, and be real, is there something out there
Speaker 1: that's actually improved for you? Is there a single thing
Speaker 1: that's gotten better? And God, if you say, well, the
Speaker 1: models have improved a bit, who fucking cares? What does
Speaker 1: that do for you? In a practical sense? What exactly
Speaker 1: has been done between twenty twenty two and twenty twenty
Speaker 1: five that actually matters? What they fucking do? Chat GPT's
Speaker 1: got a lot of free users. Well, some people use
Speaker 1: it for codes, some people use it and feel deeply
Speaker 1: buried mental health symptoms activate it. Some people use it
Speaker 1: for search. This is where we're at, and this is
Speaker 1: where we've been, and honestly, this is where we're always
Speaker 1: going to be. Why exactly the big tech spender eighty
Speaker 1: billion dollars in capital expenditures in the last quarter. What's
Speaker 1: the point, why not sink some of that capex into
Speaker 1: making your products better or your users happier. Why not
Speaker 1: make your products work properly? And again, perhaps that's just
Speaker 1: impossible for generative AI. Perhaps that's what co Pilot and
Speaker 1: Gemini do. Maybe they just fuck stuff up. Maybe they're
Speaker 1: meant to only half work great, they get to lose money,
Speaker 1: their customers hate it. It's a real win win scenario.
Speaker 1: And look, while open ai may claim to be building
Speaker 1: the future, it's clear what they want to do is
Speaker 1: continue the existence of the state quo, of those that
Speaker 1: finance the status quo making money off of it, of
Speaker 1: those that herald the status quot's latest ideas getting the clicks,
Speaker 1: that continue the valley's rotten cycle of allowing companies to
Speaker 1: consume as much venture capital as they want until they
Speaker 1: can cash out. I think they've kind of given up
Speaker 1: on the thing where it's like, oh, we make something
Speaker 1: useful and sell it because it's good. Open aiy is
Speaker 1: not interested in innovation. They want to be a social network,
Speaker 1: a consumer tech startup, as software as a service company,
Speaker 1: a business productivity company, or whatever form will make the
Speaker 1: company grow as because they want even if said growth
Speaker 1: is deeply unprofitable. All that matters is that it grows.
Speaker 1: It's cancerous, it's depressing. It's frustrating when you meet people
Speaker 1: who they can't help but go to bat for this
Speaker 1: stuff that they claim it's amazing, but their justifications are flimsy,
Speaker 1: and they get mad at you. They get so mad
Speaker 1: at you for trying to burst that bubble, for trying
Speaker 1: to make them talk in practical terms, because AI does
Speaker 1: something to everyone that loves it. Sure that there are
Speaker 1: some people, there are definitely some people that can use
Speaker 1: it healthily. Fine, but I believe something about this product
Speaker 1: because it makes you to make it do anything useful,
Speaker 1: put in so much effort to gaslight yourself into believing
Speaker 1: it's good that you simply must defend it, because if
Speaker 1: you don't defend it, you have to admit that the
Speaker 1: software is training you, not the other way around. And
Speaker 1: the most vociferous boosters are so deeply deeply in the hole,
Speaker 1: dig up stupid that they can't help but defend it.
Speaker 1: They can't help but attack those who not defend AI
Speaker 1: that they can't help but claim that the mediocre is
Speaker 1: amazing and that the future will come from stuff that sucks. Shit,
Speaker 1: and that's where we are right now. And in times
Speaker 1: like this, it's easy to feel defeated and even easier
Speaker 1: to feel depleted, but I encourage you to focus on
Speaker 1: one thing, solidarity the news. May you think that darkness
Speaker 1: is a monolith, that there are few people that feel
Speaker 1: like you do, but they do, and they are everywhere.
Speaker 1: They are your friends, your family, and even the members
Speaker 1: of the Better Offline subredding. If you feel dark or lonely,
Speaker 1: or lost or ground down by everything, know that many
Speaker 1: of us do too. You may feel terribly lonely, but
Speaker 1: even in our mangled, broken into it, there is community everywhere,
Speaker 1: and even if you may not believe it, people love
Speaker 1: you and feel the way you do too. Reach out
Speaker 1: to me easy at better offline dot com if you
Speaker 1: have want to chat. I can't promise I can read
Speaker 1: and respond to every single one, but I try to,
Speaker 1: and the subreddit is there for you too, and I'm
Speaker 1: on there too. It may feel like the forces against
Speaker 1: us are all powerful, but they are not. They're committed
Speaker 1: to burning billions of dollars only because they know that
Speaker 1: the second that they stop, the bubble will pop and
Speaker 1: they will be revealed as the directionless Charlatans they've always been.
Speaker 1: I believe now that every dollar spent on GPUs will
Speaker 1: ultimately be a waste, as I can find no compelling
Speaker 1: evidence that it's possible to make margin on them before
Speaker 1: they die in what the four to six years that
Speaker 1: they actually have any value, And I believe all of
Speaker 1: you will feel vindicated in time. It will be much
Speaker 1: easier to weather the difficult times we're in with friends
Speaker 1: and allies, and even more fun to celebrate victory with company.
Speaker 1: It's easy to give up. It's easy to feel discouraged
Speaker 1: in the face of adversity, to feel separated from others,
Speaker 1: to believe that isolation and turning inward is the only response.
Speaker 1: But I want you to feel emboldened by sorrow, to
Speaker 1: seek the comfort and energy of others, to make friends,
Speaker 1: to break bread, to build solidarity, and realize that you're
Speaker 1: never alone and will never be alone. You may feel
Speaker 1: like backing down, that the pressure against you by powerful
Speaker 1: forces is too much, and I tell you that it isn't,
Speaker 1: and that the only reason that pressure exists is because
Speaker 1: they fear and may even know that you are right.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to this show, for giving me
Speaker 1: your time, for giving me your patience and attention, I
Speaker 1: deeply appreciate your kindness and support. Tomorrow I'm going to
Speaker 1: put out a really important premium newsletter about how GPUs
Speaker 1: may never be profitable, and the next week, believe it
Speaker 1: or not, I may have something even better ago. In
Speaker 1: any case, I could not ask a better listeners. Thank
Speaker 1: you again,