Make Fun Of Them
We recorded 18 claims from this post. 18 can’t be checked. 5 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (18)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, a company allegedly worth $300 billion to venture capitalists and SoftBank, kind of sounds like a huge idiot!”
Our reading: Sam Altman kind of sounds like a huge idiot.
No horizon
Qualifier: kind of
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“This is gobbledygook, nonsense, bullshit peddled by a guy who has only the most tangential understanding of the technology his company is building.”
Our reading: Sam Altman has only a tangential understanding of the AI technology OpenAI is building.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“Sundar Pichai, when asked one of Nilay Patel’s patented 100-word-plus-questions about Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s new (and likely heavily delayed) hardware startup:”
Our reading: The OpenAI/Jony Ive hardware venture is likely to be heavily delayed.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“This quote has been used as a means of suggesting that Nadella is saying that “generative AI is generating basically no value,” which, while somewhat true, obfuscates its true meaning: Satya Nadella isn’t saying a fucking thing.”
Our reading: It is somewhat true that generative AI is generating basically no value.
No horizon
Qualifier: somewhat true
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“Every member of the media covering this uncritically should feel ashamed of themselves.”
Our reading: Journalists who covered Anthropic's blackmail stories uncritically should be ashamed.
No horizon
Qualifier: covering uncritically
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“Put aside however you feel about generative AI for a second and face one very simple point: it doesn’t do enough, it’s really not cool at all, and we’re being forced to use it.”
Our reading: Generative AI doesn't do enough, is really not cool at all, and people are being forced to use it.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“OpenAI has — allegedly — hit “$10 billion in annualized revenue” (essentially the biggest month it can find, multiplied by 12), which is…not that much, really, considering it’s the most prominent company in the software world, with the biggest brand, and with the attention of the entirety of the world’s media.”
Our reading: OpenAI's alleged $10 billion in annualized revenue is not that much, really, given that it is the most prominent software company with the biggest brand and the whole world's media attention.
No horizon
Qualifier: allegedly
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“It has, allegedly, 500 million weekly active users — and, by the last count, only 15.5 million paying subscribers, an absolutely putrid conversion rate even before you realize that the actual conversion rate would be monthly active subscribers.”
Our reading: ChatGPT's allegedly 500 million weekly active users against, by the last count, 15.5 million paying subscribers is an absolutely putrid conversion rate.
No horizon
Qualifier: allegedly
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“These models are dangerous and chaotic, built with little intention or regard for the future, just like the rest of big tech’s products.”
Our reading: Generative AI models are dangerous and chaotic, built with little intention or regard for the future, just like the rest of big tech's products.
No horizon
Scope: just like the rest of big tech's products
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“ChatGPT would’ve been a much smaller deal if Google had any interest in turning Google Search into a product that truly answered a query (as opposed to generating more of them to show more impressions to advertisers) — a nuanced search engine that took a user’s query and spat out a series of websites that might help answer said question rather than just summarising a few of them for an answer.”
Our reading: ChatGPT would have been a much smaller deal if Google had had any interest in turning Google Search into a product that truly answered queries.
No horizon
Only if: if Google had any interest in making Search truly answer queries
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“And if you ever need proof that Google just doesn’t know how to fucking innovate anymore, look at AI Summaries, a product that both misunderstands search and why people use ChatGPT as a search replacement.”
Our reading: Google's AI Summaries misunderstand both search and why people use ChatGPT as a search replacement, which he offers as proof that Google no longer knows how to innovate.
No horizon
Qualifier: anymore
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“No matter how big ChatGPT is, the fact that there’s a product out there with hundreds of millions of users that constantly gets answers wrong is a genuinely worrying thing for society, and that’s before you get to the environmental damage, the fact it trained its models on millions of people’s art and writing, and oh, I dunno, the fact it plans to lose over a hundred billions of dollars before becoming profitable?”
Our reading: However big ChatGPT is, a product with hundreds of millions of users that constantly gets answers wrong is genuinely worrying for society.
No horizon
Qualifier: no matter how big ChatGPT is
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“Even if every single one of these companies was making $18 billion in revenue a year from this it wouldn’t be great, but it’s more than likely that these chunderfucks can’t even pull together the projected revenue ($32 billion) of the global smartwatch industry!”
Our reading: Big Tech's combined AI revenue most likely won't reach the $32 billion projected revenue of the smartwatch industry.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“I’m terribly, horribly bored, and if you’re interested in this shit I am genuinely curious why, especially if you’re a reporter, because right now the “innovation” happening in AI is, at best, further mutations of the Software As A Service business model, providing far less value than previous innovations at a calamitous cost.”
Our reading: Right now, AI 'innovation' is at best further variations on the software-as-a-service business model, giving far less value than previous innovations at a calamitous cost.
No horizon
Qualifier: at best
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“So, here’s my radical suggestion: start making fun of these people.”
Our reading: People should start mocking AI and tech leaders.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, Wario Amodei, Tim Cook, Andy Jassy — they deserve to be laughed at, mocked, or at the very least interrogated vigorously, because their combined might has produced no exciting or interesting products outside of, at best, what will amount to a productivity upgrade for integrated development environments and faster ways to throw out code that may or may not be reliable.”
Our reading: The combined might of Nadella, Altman, Amodei, Cook and Jassy has produced no exciting or interesting products, apart from, at best, what will amount to a productivity upgrade for coding tools (IDEs) and faster ways to produce code that may or may not be reliable.
No horizon
Qualifier: at best
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“Satya Nadella, Sam Altman, Wario Amodei, Tim Cook, Andy Jassy — they deserve to be laughed at, mocked, or at the very least interrogated vigorously”
Our reading: Nadella, Altman, Amodei, Cook and Jassy should be mocked or at least questioned vigorously.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“They can yammer at you all they want about “lots of people using ChatGPT,” but that doesn’t change the fact that ChatGPT just isn’t that revolutionary, and their only play here is to make you feel stupid rather than actually showing you why it’s so fucking revolutionary.”
Our reading: However many people use ChatGPT, it just isn't that revolutionary.
No horizon
Qualifier: regardless of how many people use it
Held from this post (5)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: For the capital invested in generative AI to make sense, the industry would need revenue that dwarfed the smartphone and enterprise SaaS markets combined, but its revenue is less than half that of mobile gaming.
- The two reviews read the claim differently