Next year is going to be big. Well, I personally don't think it'll be big, but if you ask the AI industry, here's the things that will happen by the end of 2026: * According to the Financial Times, OpenAI's Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas will be "fully operational," and| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Fair warning: this is the longest thing I've written on this newsletter. I do apologize. Soundtrack: EL-P - $4 Vic Listen to my podcast Better Offline. We have merch. Last week, Bloomberg profiled Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, revealing that he's either a liar or a specific kind of idiot. The| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Like this newsletter? Why not listen to the podcast version on Better Offline? Part 1 is out now (here're other links), and Part 2 comes out Friday May 2nd! I'm sick and god-damn tired of this! I have written tens of thousands of words about this and still, to this| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Before we go any further: I hate to ask you to do this, but I need your help — I'm up for this year's Webbys for the best business podcast award. I know it's a pain in the ass, but can you sign up and vote for Better Offline? I have| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Soundtrack: EL-P (ft. Aesop Rock) - Run The Numbers In my years writing this newsletter I have come across few companies as rotten as CoreWeave — an "AI cloud provider" that sells GPU compute to AI companies looking to run or train their models. CoreWeave had intended to go public last| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
A few months ago, Casey Newton of Platformer ran a piece called "The phony comforts of AI skepticism," framing those who would criticize generative AI as "having fun," damning them as "hyper-fixated on the things [AI] can't do." I am not going to focus too hard on this blog, in| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
A week ago, analyst TD Cowen revealed that Microsoft had canceled leases "totalling a couple hundred MWs," with "at least two private data center operators across multiple US markets." The report also details how Microsoft "pulled back on converting negotiated and signed Statement[s] of Qualifications (SQQs)," which it added| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Soundtrack: Mack Glocky - Chasing Cars Last week, I spent a great deal of time and words framing the generative AI industry as a cynical con where OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei have used a compliant media and braindead investors to frame unprofitable, unsustainable, environmentally-damaging and mediocre cloud| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
It's been just over two years and two months since ChatGPT launched, and in that time we've seen Large Language Models (LLMs) blossom from a novel concept into one of the most craven cons of the 21st century — a cynical bubble inflated by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman built to sell| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Soundtrack: Bad Religion — The Resist Stance A great deal of what I write feels like narrating the end of the world — watching as the growth-at-all-costs, hyper-financialized Rot Economy seemingly tarnishes every corner of our digital lives. My core frustration isn't just how shitty things have gotten, but how said shittiness| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
Soundtrack: The Hives — Hate To Say I Told You So In the last week or so, but especially over the weekend, the entire generative AI industry has been thrown into chaos. This won’t be a lengthy, technical write-up — although there will be some inevitable technical complexities, just because the| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
In the last week we've seen the emergence of the true Meta — and the true Mark Zuckerberg — as the company ended its fact-checking program, claiming that (and I quote) "fact checkers have been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created" on both Instagram and Facebook, the| Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
