Claims that can’t be checked by Ed Zitron, page 9 of 14
Deadlines are judged as of 2026-10-29. About Ed Zitron and the sources covered.
Claims that can’t be checked by Ed Zitron (1315)
Public evidence cannot settle these claims, so they are recorded and attributed, not scored. Most were screened out: both AI providers read the claim on its own and found it a value judgment, rhetoric, hedged, too vague to test, or about something no public evidence could show. The rest were found to be recommendations or too open to test in a full review.
Page 9 of 14: claims 801 to 900 of 1315, ordered by the date first said, newest first. To find a claim by its words, use search.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“It's reasonable to believe that OpenAI will raise more debt this year, and I'd estimate it does so to the tune of around $5 billion or $6 billion.”
Our reading: OpenAI will likely raise around $5-6 billion more in debt in 2025.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“It's unclear how many of the Blackwell GPUs that Oracle has had to purchase in advance, but in the event of any kind of financial collapse at OpenAI, Oracle would likely take a loss of at least a billion dollars, if not several billion dollars.”
Our reading: If OpenAI collapses financially, Oracle will likely lose at least $1 billion, possibly several billion.
No horizon
Only if: if OpenAI suffers a financial collapse
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“Though downtime might be an obvious choice, capacity issues at OpenAI will likely manifest in hard limits on what free users can do, some of which I've documented above.”
Our reading: OpenAI's capacity issues will likely show up as hard limits on what free users can do.
No horizon
Qualifier: due to capacity issues
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“It isn't comfortable to continually have to explain to people who are all saying "AI is the future" that the majority of what they are discussing is fictional”
Our reading: Most of what people saying 'AI is the future' discuss is fictional.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“Be optimistic if you'd like, but engage with the truth when you do so.”
Our reading: AI optimists should engage with the facts.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“once that narrative fully takes hold, I fear a cascade of events that gores a hole in the side of the stock market and leads to tens of thousands of people losing their jobs.”
Our reading: Once the narrative that only NVIDIA profits from generative AI takes hold, a cascade could badly hit the stock market and cost tens of thousands of jobs.
No horizon
Only if: once the no-profit narrative fully takes hold
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“To choose to believe that this will "all just work out" at this point is willful ignorance and actively refusing to engage with reality.”
Our reading: At this point, choosing to believe that the AI industry's situation will all just work out is willful ignorance and an active refusal to engage with reality.
No horizon
Qualifier: at this point
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“and that generative AI has created a kind of capitalist death cult where nobody wants to admit that they're not making any money”
Our reading: Generative AI has created a kind of capitalist death cult in which nobody wants to admit that they are not making any money.
No horizon
Qualifier: a kind of
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Cautious optimism allows Roose to learn as little as necessary to write his column, knowing that the market wants AI to work, even as facts scream that it doesn't.”
Our reading: The facts show that AI doesn't work, even though the market wants it to.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“I, personally, believe that there should be.”
Our reading: There should be repercussions for journalists being too optimistic about technologies like AI.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“What we are witnessing is a systemic failure, not the beginnings of a revolution.”
Our reading: The generative AI boom is a systemic failure, not the start of a revolution.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“I fear that we've built our economy on top of NVIDIA, which is dependent on the continued investment in GPUs from companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google, one of which has materially pulled back from data center expansion.”
Our reading: Zitron fears that we have built our economy on top of NVIDIA, which depends on continued GPU investment from companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Google, one of which has materially pulled back from data center expansion.
No horizon
Qualifier: I fear
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“In reality, this company is a dog, and will show the markets exactly how little money or growth is left in generative AI.”
Our reading: CoreWeave is a dog and will show the markets exactly how little money or growth is left in generative AI.
No horizon
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Which makes sense, because the chances of Microsoft or Meta becoming insolvent in the immediate future are slim, whereas OpenAI’s entire existence depends on its ability to raise more money than any startup in history, indefinitely, while also never making a profit.”
Our reading: OpenAI's entire existence depends on its ability to raise more money than any startup in history, indefinitely, while never making a profit, whereas Microsoft or Meta are unlikely to become insolvent in the immediate future.
No horizon
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“And, as readers of this newsletter will know, I don’t rate its chances.”
Our reading: OpenAI is unlikely to sustain its ability to keep raising money indefinitely and survive.
No horizon
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“For the sake of both your and my sanity, I'm going to focus on just these loans, as I believe they are, on their own, enough to potentially destroy CoreWeave.”
Our reading: CoreWeave's two DDTL loans alone could potentially destroy the company.
No horizon
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“It doesn’t. And I think we’re about to see what happens when the world’s biggest startup becomes desperate.”
Our reading: The author thinks we are about to see what happens when OpenAI, the world's biggest startup, becomes desperate.
No horizon
Qualifier: I think
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“Regardless, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where its debt repayments surpass its entire 2024 revenue.”
Our reading: CoreWeave's debt repayments could surpass its entire 2024 revenue.
No horizon
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“Put simply, this dependence on a handful of hyperscalers represents a fundamental — and potentially fatal — vulnerability.”
Our reading: CoreWeave's dependence on a few hyperscalers is a fundamental and potentially fatal vulnerability.
No horizon
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“Furthermore, CoreWeave's underlying financials are so dramatically unstable that it's unclear how this company will last the next six months.”
Our reading: CoreWeave's financials are so unstable that it is unclear whether it will survive the next six months.
No horizon
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“And given that the company recently exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, it’s unlikely to receive capital on favorable terms.”
Our reading: Core Scientific is unlikely to raise capital on favorable terms after its recent bankruptcy.
No horizon
Qualifier: having recently exited Chapter 11
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“These mob-like terms suggest Blackstone and Magnetar don't necessarily trust CoreWeave to survive, and intend to rip out whatever guts are left if it doesn't.”
Our reading: The DDTL 2.0 loan terms suggest Blackstone and Magnetar don't necessarily trust CoreWeave to survive and intend to rip out whatever guts are left if it doesn't.
No horizon
Qualifier: terms 'suggest'
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“While I can only hypothesize, I believe that this move is Microsoft's attempt to disconnect from OpenAI, dumping its exclusive relationship and canceling its own capacity expansion along with contracts with CoreWeave”
Our reading: The author hypothesizes that Microsoft dropping its exclusive relationship with OpenAI and canceling its own capacity expansion and CoreWeave contracts is an attempt to disconnect from OpenAI.
No horizon
Qualifier: I can only hypothesize, I believe
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“CoreWeave's financial health and revenue status suggest that there either isn't demand or profit in providing services for generative AI.”
Our reading: CoreWeave's financials suggest there is either no demand or no profit in providing generative AI services.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: This assessment does not establish whether the sector lacked demand or profit.
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“As I hypothesized a few weeks ago, I believe that outside of OpenAI, the generative AI industry is terribly small, a point that CoreWeave only underlines.”
Our reading: The author believes, as he hypothesized a few weeks earlier, that outside of OpenAI the generative AI industry is terribly small, a point CoreWeave underlines.
No horizon
Scope: outside of OpenAI
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“If generative AI had this incredible demand — both from companies looking to integrate it and users looking to use it — CoreWeave would be making far, far more money, have a far more diverse customer base, and, if I'm honest, not have to take out more than five times its revenue in burdensome loans with loan shark-level interest rates.”
Our reading: If generative AI had incredible demand from both companies and users, CoreWeave would be making far, far more money, have a far more diverse customer base, and not need to take out more than five times its revenue in burdensome loans at loan shark-level interest rates.
No horizon
Only if: if generative AI had this incredible demand from companies and users
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“NVIDIA's remarkable GPU sales have been conflated with the success of generative AI, rather than seen as a sign of desperation, and a signal of how willing big tech is to spend billions of dollars on something if they think their competition is doing so.”
Our reading: NVIDIA's GPU sales reflect big tech's competitive desperation rather than generative AI's success.
No horizon
Source: CoreWeave Is A Time Bomb
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Microsoft walking away from over a Gigawatt of data center plans — equivalent to as much as 14% of its current data center capacity — is a direct sign that it does not believe the growth is there in generative AI”
Our reading: Microsoft's walking away from over a gigawatt of plans directly signals it doesn't believe in generative AI growth and may have overbuilt.
No horizon
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“And, again, the total figure is likely far higher than a gigawatt.”
Our reading: The total data center capacity Microsoft walked away from is likely far higher than a gigawatt.
No horizon
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“These moves also suggest that Microsoft is walking away from building and training further large frontier models, and from supporting doing so for others.”
Our reading: Microsoft's moves suggest it is walking away from building and training further large frontier models and supporting others doing so.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: This does not endorse the inference.
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“This, combined with Microsoft's data center pullback, heavily suggests that Microsoft is no longer interested in being OpenAI's infrastructure partner long-term”
Our reading: Microsoft is likely no longer interested in being OpenAI's long-term infrastructure partner.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: This does not endorse the inference.
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Nevertheless, I have real concerns about whether OpenAI is even capable of expanding further, starting with a fairly obvious one: its only source of money, SoftBank.”
Our reading: OpenAI may not be capable of expanding further, given its only money source is SoftBank.
No horizon
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Given that $3bn is equivalent to OpenAI’s entire revenue from selling premium access to ChatGPT in 2024 — which included some major deals with the likes of PriceWaterhouseCoopers — I’m inclined to believe the latter.”
Our reading: SoftBank's $3 billion-a-year purchase of OpenAI technology is likely a backdoor subsidy rather than a reflection of value.
No horizon
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“These numbers heavily suggest that Microsoft — the biggest purchaser of NVIDIA's GPUs and, according to TD Cowen, "the most active [data center] lessee of capacity in 2023 and 1H24" — does not believe there is future growth in generative AI, nor does it have faith in (nor does it want responsibility for) the future of OpenAI.”
Our reading: Microsoft's data center cuts strongly suggest it does not believe in future generative AI growth or have faith in OpenAI's future.
No horizon
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“In the event that Microsoft believed there was meaningful growth in generative AI, it wouldn't be canceling anything, or at the very least wouldn't be canceling so much.”
Our reading: If Microsoft believed in meaningful generative AI growth, it would not be canceling data center capacity, or not so much.
No horizon
Qualifier: if Microsoft believed in meaningful generative AI growth
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“I believe the reason Microsoft is cutting back is that it does not have the appetite to provide further data center expansion for OpenAI, and it’s having doubts about the future of generative AI as a whole.”
Our reading: The author believes Microsoft is cutting back because it does not have the appetite to provide further data center expansion for OpenAI and is having doubts about the future of generative AI as a whole.
No horizon
Qualifier: I believe
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“OpenAI burned $5 billion in 2024, a number it’ll likely double in 2025 (remember, the Information reported that OpenAI was projected to spend $13 billion on compute alone with Microsoft in 2025), and it has no path to profitability.”
Our reading: OpenAI will likely double its $5 billion 2024 cash burn in 2025.
No horizon
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Microsoft making such a material pullback on data center expansion suggests that the growth in generative AI products, both those run on Microsoft’s servers and those sold as part of Microsoft’s products, do not have the revolutionary growth-trajectory that both CFO Amy Hood and CEO Satya Nadella have been claiming”
Our reading: Microsoft's material pullback on data center expansion suggests that generative AI products, both those run on Microsoft's servers and those sold in Microsoft's products, lack the revolutionary growth trajectory Amy Hood and Satya Nadella claim, and it calls into question generative AI's viability as a growth vehicle for any hyperscaler.
No horizon
Qualifier: suggests
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“OpenAI burned $5 billion in 2024, will likely burn $11 billion in 2025, and will continue burning money in perpetuity”
Our reading: OpenAI will likely burn $11 billion in 2025.
No horizon
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“If I’m right, tech’s only growth story is dead.”
Our reading: If the author's analysis is right, generative AI, tech's only growth story, is dead.
No horizon
Qualifier: if I'm right
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“At worst, this situation could suggest that Microsoft is actively dumping OpenAI, and is having questions about the fundamentals of the generative AI industry.”
Our reading: At worst, Microsoft could be actively dumping OpenAI and questioning generative AI's fundamentals.
No horizon
Qualifier: at worst
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“It is time for investors and the general public to begin demanding tangible and direct numbers on the revenue and profits related to generative AI, as it is becoming increasingly obvious that the revenues are small and the profits are non-existent.”
Our reading: Investors and the public should demand direct generative AI revenue and profit figures.
No horizon
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“Canceling cities-worth of capacity at a time when artificial intelligence is supposedly revolutionizing everything suggests that artificial intelligence isn't really revolutionizing anything.”
Our reading: Microsoft's capacity cancellations suggest AI is not really revolutionizing anything.
No horizon
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Worse still, there doesn’t appear to be meaningful revenue.”
Our reading: Generative AI does not appear to generate meaningful revenue.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: Microsoft's disclosure does not establish sector-wide generative-AI revenue or investment returns [e1].
Source: Power Cut
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“While it's quite common for Silicon Valley companies to play fast and loose with metrics, this particular one is deeply concerning, and I hypothesize that OpenAI choosing to go with Weekly versus Monthly Active Users is an intentional attempt to avoid people calculating the conversion rate of its subscription products.”
Our reading: Zitron hypothesizes OpenAI reports weekly rather than monthly active users intentionally to obscure its subscription conversion rate.
No horizon
Qualifier: hypothesis
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“The fact of the matter is that if Google and Microsoft can't make generative AI apps with meaningful consumer penetration, this entire industry is screwed.”
Our reading: If Google and Microsoft cannot make generative AI apps with meaningful consumer penetration, the whole industry is screwed.
No horizon
Only if: Google and Microsoft fail to achieve meaningful consumer penetration
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“What you are watching is not a revolution, but a repetitious public relations campaign for one company that accidentally timed the launch of ChatGPT with a period of deep desperation in big tech, one so profound that it will likely drag half a trillion dollars’ worth of capital expenditures along with it.”
Our reading: What is happening is not a revolution but a repetitive PR campaign for one company that accidentally timed ChatGPT's launch with a period of deep desperation in big tech, so profound that it will likely drag half a trillion dollars of capital expenditures along with it.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Microsoft's Copilot app isn't just unpopular, it's irrelevant.”
Our reading: Microsoft's Copilot app is unpopular and irrelevant.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“These are also — and I do not believe there are any use cases that justify this — not a counterbalance for the ruinous financial and environmental costs of generative AI.”
Our reading: No generative AI use cases justify its ruinous financial and environmental costs.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“They are probability machines, which in turn makes them only as reliable as probability can be, and as conscious — no matter how intricate a system may be or how much infrastructure is built — as a pair of dice.”
Our reading: LLMs are probability machines, only as reliable as probability allows and no more conscious than dice regardless of scale.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“And even then, Google, Amazon and (to an extent Microsoft), the companies making the most investments in AI, do not want to state what that revenue is. I hypothesize the reason that they do not want to disclose it is that it’s pretty god damn small.”
Our reading: Zitron hypothesizes that Google, Amazon and, to an extent, Microsoft do not want to disclose their AI revenue because it is very small.
No horizon
Qualifier: I hypothesize
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“Anthropic's business, again like OpenAI, is entirely propped up by venture capital and hyperscaler (Google, Amazon) money, and without it would die almost immediately, because it has only ever lost money.”
Our reading: Without venture capital and hyperscaler funding, Anthropic would die almost immediately because it has only ever lost money.
No horizon
Only if: without venture capital and hyperscaler money
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“It is time to stop humouring OpenAI, and time to start directly stating that it is a bad business without a meaningful product.”
Our reading: People should stop humouring OpenAI and state it is a bad business without a meaningful product.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Generative AI lacks the basic unit economics, product-market fit, or market penetration associated with any meaningful software boom, and outside of OpenAI, the industry may be pathetically, hopelessly small, all while providing few meaningful business returns and constantly losing money.”
Our reading: Generative AI lacks the basic unit economics, product-market fit, or market penetration associated with any meaningful software boom, and outside of OpenAI the industry may be pathetically, hopelessly small while providing few meaningful business returns and constantly losing money.
No horizon
Scope: outside of OpenAI
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“As a result of doing away with the model picker, I hypothesize that OpenAI will now attempt to moderate costs by picking what model will work best for a prompt — a process it will automate to questionable results.”
Our reading: Zitron hypothesizes that, as a result of doing away with the model picker, OpenAI will try to moderate costs by choosing which model works best for each prompt, an automated process he expects to give questionable results.
No horizon
Qualifier: I hypothesize
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“I do not think this is a real industry, and I believe that if we pulled the plug on the venture capital aspect tomorrow it would evaporate.”
Our reading: Zitron does not think generative AI is a real industry and believes that if the venture capital were pulled tomorrow, it would evaporate.
No horizon
Only if: if we pulled the plug on venture capital tomorrow
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“It isn’t working. The users aren’t there. The revenue isn’t there. The best time to stop this was two years ago, and the next best time is as soon as humanly possible.”
Our reading: Generative AI lacks users and revenue, and the buildout should be stopped as soon as possible.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“The financials are truly damning, the user numbers so small as to be insignificant, the costs so ruinous that they will likely cost tens of thousands of people their jobs and one of the hyperscalers CEOs their job (although, admittedly, I’m less upset about that), and inflict damage on tech valuations that may rival the dot com boom.”
Our reading: Generative AI costs will likely cost tens of thousands of jobs and one hyperscaler CEO's job, and may damage tech valuations on a dot-com scale.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“While synthetic data might bridge some of the gap, at least in situations where there’s a definitive right and wrong answer (like a mathematical problem), there are likely diminishing returns due to the sheer amount of data necessary to make a large language model even larger — data amounting to more than four times the size of the internet.”
Our reading: While synthetic data might bridge some of the gap, at least where there is a definitive right or wrong answer, there are likely diminishing returns because of the sheer amount of data needed to make an LLM even larger, which he puts at more than four times the size of the internet.
No horizon
Qualifier: synthetic data might bridge some of the gap
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“This company is not worth $60 billion.”
Our reading: Anthropic is not worth its $60 billion valuation.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“No amount of beating off about test-time compute and connecting Large Language Models to other Large Language Models is going to create a new use case for this technology, and even if it did, it’s unlikely that it ever makes enough money to make it profitable.”
Our reading: Test-time compute and chaining LLMs will not create new use cases, and even if they did, the technology is unlikely ever to be profitable.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Even the most successful company in the business appears to have no way to stop burning money — and as I'll explain, there's only one real company in this industry, OpenAI, and it is most decidedly not a real business.”
Our reading: OpenAI, the only real company in generative AI, appears unable to stop burning money and is not a real business.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“I have said that generative AI is a group delusion in the past, and I repeat that claim today.”
Our reading: Generative AI is a group delusion.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“When a company uses the term “agent,” they are intentionally trying to be deceitful, because the term “agent” means “autonomous AI that does stuff without you touching it.””
Our reading: When a company uses the term 'agent', it is intentionally trying to be deceitful, because 'agent' means autonomous AI that acts without user involvement.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Those developers actually using OpenAI’s APIs in actual commercial projects likely represent a vanishingly small percentage of that three million.”
Our reading: Commercial users likely make up a vanishingly small share of OpenAI's three million developers.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“This bubble will only burst when either the markets or the hyperscalers accept that they have chased their own tails toward oblivion.”
Our reading: The AI bubble will only burst when the markets or the hyperscalers accept that they have chased their own tails toward oblivion.
No horizon
Only if: markets or hyperscalers accept they have chased their own tails toward oblivion
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“I believe that this announcement is a very bad omen for OpenAI.”
Our reading: The GPT-4.5/GPT-5 roadmap announcement is a very bad omen for OpenAI.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“If the biggest player in the space only made a billion dollars in 2024 selling access to its models (unprofitably), and that amount is the minority of its revenue, there may not actually be a real industry here.”
Our reading: Given OpenAI made only about $1B from API access in 2024, the market for implementing LLMs may not be a real industry.
No horizon
Source: There Is No AI Revolution
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“OpenAI's next big thing is the ability to generate a report that you would likely not be able to use in any meaningful way anywhere, because while it can browse the web and find things and write a report, it sources things based on what it thinks can confirm its arguments rather than making sure the source material is valid or respectable.”
Our reading: Deep Research generates reports you would likely not be able to use in any meaningful way anywhere, because it sources material based on what it thinks confirms its arguments rather than making sure sources are valid or respectable.
No horizon
Qualifier: would likely not
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“These numbers suggest that these products aren't very popular at all!”
Our reading: The January 2025 Similarweb monthly visitor numbers for Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity and Claude suggest that these products aren't very popular at all.
No horizon
Qualifier: these numbers suggest
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“People like Marc Benioff claiming that "today's CEOs are the last to manage all-human workforces" are doing so to pump up their stocks rather than build anything approaching a real product.”
Our reading: Claims by CEOs like Benioff about AI replacing workforces are made to pump stocks, not reflecting real products.
No horizon
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“Generative AI is a financial, ecological and social time bomb, and I believe that it's fundamentally damaging the relationship between the tech industry and society, while also shining a glaring, blinding light on the disconnection between the powerful and regular people.”
Our reading: Generative AI is a financial, ecological and social time bomb damaging tech's relationship with society.
No horizon
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“These models don't know anything, and thus everything they do — even "reading" and "browsing" the web — is limited by their training data and probabilistic models that can say "this is an article about a subject" and posit their relevance, but not truly understand their contents.”
Our reading: Generative AI models know nothing and cannot truly understand the content they read or browse.
No horizon
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“This is laughable on many levels, chief of which is that OpenAI, which made around twice as much revenue as Anthropic did in 2024, barely made a billion dollars from API calls in the same year.”
Our reading: Anthropic's projection that API revenue will hit $20 billion in 2027 is laughable on many levels, chiefly because OpenAI, which made about twice Anthropic's revenue in 2024, barely made a billion dollars from API calls that year.
No horizon
Qualifier: OpenAI barely made about $1bn from API calls in 2024
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“Deep Research is the AI slop of academia — low-quality research-slop built for people that don't really care about quality or substance, and it’s not immediately obvious who it’s for.”
Our reading: Deep Research produces low-quality research slop with no clear audience.
No horizon
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“That may very likely mean Anthropic burned more money than OpenAI somehow last year! These companies are absolutely atrocious at business!”
Our reading: Anthropic very likely burned more money than OpenAI in 2024, and both are atrocious at business.
No horizon
Qualifier: per The Information figures
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“To break this down, Altman is describing his next model — GPT 4.5 — as launching in some indeterminate timeframe and doing something probably quite similar to the current GPT 4o model.”
Our reading: GPT-4.5 will probably do something quite similar to GPT-4o.
No horizon
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“It’s quintessential LLM copy — soulless and almost, but not quite, right.”
Our reading: Deep Research's writing is quintessential LLM copy, soulless and almost, but not quite, right.
No horizon
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“This entire bubble has been inflated by hype, and by outright lies by people like Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, their lies perpetuated by a tech media that's incapable of writing down what's happening in front of their faces.”
Our reading: The AI bubble has been inflated by hype and lies from Altman and Amodei, amplified by tech media.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: No evidence items were reviewed for this case.
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“And even then, we still don't have a killer app! There is no product that everybody loves, and there is no iPhone moment!”
Our reading: Generative AI has no killer app or iPhone moment despite massive investment.
No horizon
Qualifier: despite over $200bn hyperscaler capex and a third of VC investment
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“Deep Research repeatedly citing SEO-bait as a primary source proves that these models, even when grinding their gears as hard as humanely possible, are exceedingly mediocre, deeply untrustworthy, and ultimately useless.”
Our reading: Deep Research repeatedly citing SEO-bait as a primary source proves that these models, even when working as hard as possible, are exceedingly mediocre, deeply untrustworthy and ultimately useless.
No horizon
Qualifier: even when grinding their gears as hard as humanely possible
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“Dario Amodei — much like Sam Altman — is a liar, a crook, a carnival barker and a charlatan, and the things he promises are equal parts ridiculous and offensive.”
Our reading: Dario Amodei, like Sam Altman, is a liar, a crook, a carnival barker and a charlatan, and the things he promises are equal parts ridiculous and offensive.
No horizon
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“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 into an economy run by people that have no concept of labor other than their desperation to exploit or replace it.”
Our reading: In the just over two years since ChatGPT launched, LLMs have gone from a novel concept to one of the most craven cons of the 21st century: a cynical bubble inflated by Sam Altman, built to sell into an economy run by people whose only idea of labor is a desperate wish to exploit or replace it.
No horizon
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“When you put aside the hype and anecdotes, generative AI has languished in the same place, even in my kindest estimations, for several months, though it's really been years.”
Our reading: Putting aside the hype and anecdotes, generative AI has languished in the same place for several months even by his kindest estimate, though really for years.
No horizon
Qualifier: when you put aside the hype and anecdotes
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“$3.25 billion a quarter is absolutely pathetic.”
Our reading: Microsoft's roughly $3.25 billion a quarter in AI revenue is absolutely pathetic.
No horizon
Qualifier: compared with $69.63bn quarterly revenue and $15.80bn capex
Source: The Generative AI Con
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“They’re everywhere, and they are real, meaningful stories, ones that are more important than Anthropic’s Dario Amodei farting into a microphone about how AI will be smarter than humans at some point!”
Our reading: Everyday problems with consumer software are real, meaningful stories that are more important than Dario Amodei talking about how AI will be smarter than humans at some point.
No horizon
Source: What We're Fighting For
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“To this day I still can’t find a single journalist who has a cogent explanation as to why ChatGPT is big, other than the fact that lots of people use it.”
Our reading: To this day, Zitron says he still can't find a single journalist with a cogent explanation of why ChatGPT is big, other than the fact that lots of people use it.
No horizon
Qualifier: based on his own search ('I still can't find')
Source: What We're Fighting For
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“Generative AI would never have been any kind of “movement” or “industry” if the media had approached it from the perspective of a consumer and said “okay, sure, but what does this actually do?” and the same goes for both the metaverse and cryptocurrency.”
Our reading: Generative AI would never have become any kind of 'movement' or 'industry' if the media had approached it from a consumer's perspective and asked what it actually does, and the same goes for the metaverse and cryptocurrency.
No horizon
Qualifier: counterfactual: if the media had approached it from a consumer perspective and asked what it actually does
Source: What We're Fighting For
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“It’s all been a con, a painfully-obvious one, one I’ve been screaming about since February 2024, trying to explain that beneath the hype was an industry that provided modest-at-best outcomes rather than resembling any kind of “next big thing.””
Our reading: The generative AI industry has been a con delivering modest-at-best outcomes.
No horizon
Source: Deep Impact
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“As I’ve said before, I believe we’re at peak AI, and now that generative AI has been commoditized, the only thing that OpenAI and Anthropic have left is their ability to innovate, which I’m not sure they’re capable of doing.”
Our reading: We are at peak AI, and OpenAI and Anthropic may not be capable of the innovation they now depend on.
No horizon
Source: Deep Impact
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“This doesn’t mean that we know for a fact that DeepSeek distilled 4o or Claude, but frankly, it would be odd if they didn’t.”
Our reading: DeepSeek likely distilled GPT-4o or Claude, though this is not known for certain.
No horizon
Source: Deep Impact
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“It’s not essential, and it’s only been treated as such because the media (and the markets) ran away with a narrative they barely understood.”
Our reading: ChatGPT is not essential and has only been treated as essential because the media and markets ran away with a narrative they barely understood.
No horizon
Source: Deep Impact
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“I could absolutely see Meta releasing its own version of DeepSeek’s models — it has the GPUs and Zuckerberg can never be fired, meaning that if he decided to simply throw billions of dollars into specifically creating his own deep-discounted LLMs to wipe out OpenAI he absolutely could.”
Our reading: He could absolutely see Meta releasing its own version of DeepSeek's models, and if Zuckerberg decided to throw billions into deep-discounted LLMs to wipe out OpenAI, he absolutely could.
No horizon
Qualifier: wiping out OpenAI depends on Zuckerberg deciding to commit billions
Source: Deep Impact
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“I’d argue that despite the significant price difference between o1 and DeepSeek’s r1 reasoning model, the real danger to both OpenAI and Anthropic is DeepSeek v3, which competes with GPT-4o.”
Our reading: He would argue that, despite the large price difference between o1 and R1, the real danger to OpenAI and Anthropic is DeepSeek V3, which competes with GPT-4o.
No horizon
Qualifier: I'd argue
Source: Deep Impact
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“In any case, if I had to guess, the result will be the markets accepting that generative AI isn’t the future.”
Our reading: His guess is that markets will come to accept that generative AI is not the future.
No horizon
Source: Deep Impact
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“Post-DeepSeek, there isn’t really a compelling argument for investing hundreds of billions of capital expenditures in data centers, buying new GPUs, or even pursuing Large Language Models as they currently stand.”
Our reading: After DeepSeek, there is no compelling argument for hundreds of billions in data center capex, new GPUs, or current-style LLMs.
No horizon
Qualifier: post-DeepSeek
Source: Deep Impact
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“As I've written before, OpenAI simply burns money, has been allowed to burn money, and up until recently likely would've been allowed to burn even more money, because everybody — all of the American model developers — appeared to agree that the only way to develop Large Language Models was to make the models as big as humanly possible, and work out troublesome stuff like "making them profitable" later”
Our reading: OpenAI burns money, has been allowed to, and until recently likely would have been allowed to burn even more, because all American model developers appeared to agree that the only way to develop LLMs was to make them as big as possible and work out profitability later.
No horizon
Qualifier: appeared to agree
Source: Deep Impact
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Conditional forecast
“Synthetic data might work where the output is something that you could figure out on a TI-83 calculator, but when you get into anything a bit more fuzzy (like written text, or anything with an element of analysis) you’ll likely start to encounter unhappy side effects..”
Our reading: Synthetic training data may work for unambiguous domains like math but will likely cause bad side effects for fuzzy domains like text or analysis.
No horizon
Only if: for fuzzy domains like written text or analysis
Source: Deep Impact
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“My mistake was — if you can believe this — being too generous to the AI companies, assuming that they didn’t pursue efficiency because they couldn’t, and not because they couldn’t be bothered.”
Our reading: He says he was too generous in assuming that AI companies didn't pursue efficiency because they couldn't, when potentially they didn't because they couldn't be bothered.
No horizon
Qualifier: 'potentially, nobody was trying' (preceding hedge)
Source: Deep Impact
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“Putting aside my personal beliefs for a second, it’s fairly obvious why these companies wouldn’t want to create something like DeepSeek — because creating an open source model that uses less resources means that OpenAI, Anthropic and their associated hyperscalers would lose their soft monopoly on Large Language Models.”
Our reading: It is fairly obvious that OpenAI, Anthropic and their hyperscalers wouldn't want to create something like DeepSeek, because an efficient open-source model would cost them their soft monopoly on LLMs.
No horizon
Qualifier: fairly obvious
Source: Deep Impact