The BS Bubble
Better Offline
Cool Zone Media and iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 687 Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through why it’s so harmful that the media keeps taking OpenAI at its word - and responds to the most common critiques from AI boosters.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed human. |
| 0:06.6 | Quarzone Media. |
| 0:09.5 | Hi, I'm Ed Zittron, and you're listening to Better Offline. |
| 0:22.4 | As a reminder, you can now buy glorious Better Offline merchandise. |
| 0:27.8 | There's a link to it in the episode notes, the T-shirts, the tumblers, the tote bags, all that shit. |
| 0:32.5 | It's lovely. You're going to love it. |
| 0:34.2 | Buy it today. |
| 0:36.1 | But if I'm honest, today I'm actually a little bit pissed off. And that's why we've got a two-part episode this week about how fucking stupid the AI boom has become. I wrote Farsicle in the script. And I'm going to be honest, I need to be a little more pointed. Because I've written tens of thousands of words about this now. I've recorded hours upon hours of podcasts and still to this day. |
| 0:54.6 | People are babbling about the AI revolution as the sky rains, blood and crevices open in the |
| 0:58.2 | fucking earth, dragging houses and cars and domesticated animals into their moors. |
| 1:02.2 | Things are astronomically fucked outside, yet the tech media continues to tell me to get my |
| 1:07.0 | swimming trunks on and take a long, nice dip in the fucking pool. As you can tell, this is going to be a little less reserved than usual. I'm just, I'm a little bit frustrated. I don't know why I'm the one saying this, and I frequently feel with that I, a part-time blogger and podcaster, I'm writing the things that I'm writing. Since I put out the newsletter OpenAI as a systemic risk of the tech industry, |
| 1:28.9 | and actually a couple weeks back I did the two-partter about it too, I've heard nothing in response, |
| 1:33.2 | as was the case with how does Open AI survive and how Open AI is a bad business. There just |
| 1:38.9 | seems to be little concern or belief that there's any kind of risk at the heart of AI, |
| 1:43.9 | and Open AI in particular. |
| 1:45.3 | And there are companies that spent $9 billion in 2024 to lose $5 billion. |
| 1:50.5 | Well, I'd love to add a because here, if not because it's important to be intellectually |
| 1:54.8 | honest and represent views that directly contrasts my own, even if I do in somewhat sarcastic |
| 1:59.2 | and sardonic fashion, nobody seems to actually |
| 2:01.6 | have a cogent response to how they write this ship, other than hard fork, a Casey Newton, |
... |
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