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Newton: "It’s not impossible that the tech industry’s planned quarter-trillion dollars of spending on infrastructure to support AI next year will never pay off. But it is a signal that they have already seen something real."

You could create a media literacy curriculum on this kind of reporting. You should worry when the writer is avoiding saying anything of substance. Roose: "But among people who pay close attention to what’s happening in A.I., alarms are starting to go off."

I mean this, as with everything, sincerely: it would be super profitable to do it

If I hear "we all know it's coming, and it will transform everything" one more time...

"Blandly repeating what an executive or politician says and thinking that appending it with “...said [person]” is sufficient to communicate their biases or intentions isn’t just irresponsible, it’s actively rejecting your position as a journalist." rapturousapplause.gif

This is passable for an untrained undergrad student trying to check a box on the path to their bachelor's degree, but it wouldn't fly for an instant in any master's or PhD program! For actual, trained journalists who should know better? Absolutely unforgivable.

Reminded by the Anthropic section: more and more it seems like the GenAI "business model" closely resembles the one described in this Wondermark strip from 2008: 1) Create a product that makes absurd promises 2) Abandon your dignity by hawking the product shamelessly to gullible people

Thanks for this fantastic article--and for fighting the good fight.

Thanks, Ed.

I don't really get what it's saying about Ai. The claim isn't that Ai can take jobs now and will never improve. The claim is that Ai is improving and will take jobs in the near future.

I feel like the tech media response would be: "But accountability is haaaaaard!"