Revenge of The Business Idiot
We recorded 17 claims from this post. 17 can’t be checked. 13 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (17)
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
“AI is a perfect storm of failed concepts and organizations, and the apex of the Era of the Business Idiot, an epoch where we’re ruled by people so thoroughly disconnected from the actual workforce that it was inevitable that a technology would be created specifically to grift them.”
Our reading: AI is a combination of failed concepts and organizations and a technology made to grift disconnected executives.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“Organizations aren’t burning millions or hundreds of millions of dollars a year on AI because it’s good, they’re doing it because they are run by people who do not know what the fuck they’re doing.”
Our reading: Organizations spend heavily on AI because of incompetent leadership, not because AI is good.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“While I’m not saying every LLM user is an imbecile, they’re built to convince the mediocre and incurious that they’re remarkable, and it turns out that a great many of them run venture capital firms and Fortune 500 companies.”
Our reading: LLMs are built to convince the mediocre and incurious that they are remarkable, and a great many such people run venture capital firms and Fortune 500 companies.
No horizon
Qualifier: not every LLM user is an imbecile
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“In a rational society, Salesforce’s stock would take a beating and the SEC would open an immediate and brutal investigation.”
Our reading: Salesforce's marketing of AI capabilities that are not live should cause its stock to fall and prompt an SEC investigation.
No horizon
Qualifier: in a rational society
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“And yet none of it’s really working, because Business Idiots don’t really know how anything works.”
Our reading: None of the Business Idiots' push to have AI automate work and remove other people is really working, because Business Idiots don't really know how anything works.
No horizon
Qualifier: really
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“Only an economy oriented around coveting and coddling losers would have let AI get this far.”
Our reading: Only an economy oriented around coveting and coddling losers would have let AI get this far.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“LLMs were meant to be the thing that replaced all workers, but the actual outputs and outcomes don’t seem to be resulting in anything changing other than lots of things becoming worse or more-expensive.”
Our reading: LLMs were meant to replace all workers, but their actual outputs and outcomes don't seem to be changing anything other than making lots of things worse or more expensive.
No horizon
Qualifier: don't seem to be
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“I don’t think LLMs, as a tool, are a grift. There are use cases, though those use cases are miniscule compared to the egregious promises and extrapolations made by the majority of the media and the executive sect, and absolutely nothing about them warrants the amount of money invested in them.”
Our reading: LLMs as a tool are not a grift and have use cases, but those use cases are minuscule compared to the promises and extrapolations of most of the media and executives, and nothing about them warrants the amount of money invested in them.
No horizon
Qualifier: compared to the egregious promises and extrapolations
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“And they want you to do that because they’re losing.”
Our reading: The AI industry is losing.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Causal claim
“That’s because underneath the puffery and the propaganda and the pervasive sense of inevitability, the AI industry is losing. Anthropic and OpenAI’s revenue growth is only possible thanks to a near-perpetual misinformation campaign that overstates both the current and future capabilities of LLMs, and a near-society-wide ignorance at the executive level.”
Our reading: The AI industry is losing; Anthropic and OpenAI revenue growth depends on misinformation that overstates LLM capabilities and on executive ignorance.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“This is what an industry does when it’s in distinct, existential distress.”
Our reading: The AI industry is in existential distress.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“These men have no other hypergrowth ideas, and are more willing to annihilate their cashflows and dominate the Earth with half-finished data centers than to admit that their core businesses will eventually decline.”
Our reading: Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella and Andy Jassy have no other hypergrowth ideas and are more willing to annihilate their cashflows and fill the Earth with half-finished data centers than to admit that their core businesses will eventually decline.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“It’s very likely that Dario Amodei and Sam Altman’s plan is to keep burning money until somebody who works for them comes up with a way not to, and in the interim their plan is to get as many users as they can to keep raising money.”
Our reading: It is very likely that Dario Amodei's and Sam Altman's plan is to keep burning money until someone who works for them finds a way not to, and in the meantime to get as many users as they can so they can keep raising money.
No horizon
Qualifier: very likely
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“There is no other plan. They do not have a secret invention coming. They do not have AGI in a box in their office.”
Our reading: Microsoft, Google, Meta and Amazon have no plan other than building data centers in the hope of having a use for them, no secret invention coming, and no AGI in a box in their offices.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Rhetoric
“Anthropic is either the single-most successful grifter of all time or speed-running a con where it fudges together numbers to raise endless amounts of money to keep its billion-dollar burn going.”
Our reading: Anthropic is either the most successful grifter of all time or speed-running a con in which it fudges numbers to raise endless money to keep its billion-dollar burn going.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“It is inefficient, power-intensive, environmentally destructive, and inherently sold based on things that it might do, providing far more value to scam artists and con men than it does to its end users.”
Our reading: The AI industry and its LLMs are inefficient, power-intensive, environmentally destructive, inherently sold on what they might do, and provide far more value to scam artists and con men than to end users.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“No CEO that talks of a theoretical future as a means of selling you software in the present should be trusted. No technology that makes mistakes with regularity should be defended.”
Our reading: CEOs who sell software on a theoretical future should not be trusted, and technology that regularly makes mistakes should not be defended.
No horizon
Held from this post (13)
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 reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: Generative AI produces an impression of work and claims it can do tasks it cannot do.
- 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: To meet their combined $1.048 trillion compute commitments, OpenAI and Anthropic will need about a trillion dollars over the next four years from revenue or funding, more than any startup or public company has had to raise in history.
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently
- The two reviews read the claim differently