At the center of everything I’ve written for the last few months (if not the last few years), sits a cancerous problem with the fabric of how capital is deployed in modern business. Public and private investors, along with the markets themselves, have become entirely decoupled from the concept of what “good” business truly is, focusing on one metric — one| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
OpenAI, a non-profit AI company that will lose anywhere from $4 billion to $5 billion this year, will at some point in the next six or so months convert into a for-profit AI company, at which point it will continue to lose money in exactly the same way. Shortly after| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
None of what I write in this newsletter is about sowing doubt or "hating," but a sober evaluation of where we are today and where we may end up on the current path. I believe that the artificial intelligence boom — which would be better described as a generative AI boom| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Soundtrack: Masters of Reality - High Noon Amsterdam I have said almost everything in this piece in every one of these articles for months. I am not upset, but just stating an obvious truth. The current state of affairs effectively pushes against the boundaries of good sense, logic and reason,| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
I feel like the tech industry is currently in the midst of the most bizarre cognitive dissonance I've ever seen — more so than the metaverse, even — as company after company simply lies about their intentions and the power of AI. I get it. Everybody wants something to be excited about.| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Hi there. Do you like this post? Did you know that I also do a podcast called Better Offline? If not, please immediately download it on your podcast app. Follow the show. Download every episode. Share with your friends, and demand they do the same. I did an entire episode| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Like this newsletter? Subscribe to my podcast Better Offline - this week we've got a two parter digging into Sam Altman, with a deeper dive featuring Tom Dotan of the Wall Street Journal (Part 1) and Ellen Huet (Part 2, airing Friday.) I think you'll love the back-catalog too! The| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
If you enjoy this post, why not subscribe to my podcast Better Offline? This week's a two part deep dive into the Rot-Com Bubble. The noxious growth-at-all-costs mindset of the Rot Economy sits at the core of every issue that I've ever written about. It’s the force that drives| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Enjoy this post? Why not try the podcast version? Please download it, and also all the other episodes. Over the last decade, few platforms have declined quite as rapidly and visibly as Facebook and Instagram. What used to be apps for catching up with your friends and family are now| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Wanna listen to this story instead? Check out this week's Better Offline podcast, "The Man That Destroyed Google Search," available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. UPDATE: Prabhakar has now been deposed as head of search, read here for more details. This is the story| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Last week, the Wall Street Journal published a 10-minute-long interview with OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, with journalist Joanna Stern asking a series of thoughtful yet straightforward questions that Murati failed to satisfactorily answer. When asked about what data was used to train Sora, OpenAI's app for generating video with AI,| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Please scroll to the bottom for news on my next big project, Better Offline, coming this Wednesday! Last week, Sam Altman debuted OpenAI's "Sora," a text-to-video AI model that turns strings of text into full-blown videos, much like how OpenAI's DALL-E turns text into images. These videos — which are usually| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At