Technology cross-examined.
Five selections making the adversarial economic, labor, product, and infrastructure case against the generative-AI boom.
Ed Zitron argues like counsel for the prosecution after everyone else has gone home. The tone is combative by design; the value is a serious skeptical case that readers can test beside Amodei, Hassabis, Karpathy, and the rest.
For a shorter, falsifiable claim about limits to LLM scaling, Are We At Peak AI? remains a useful alternate exhibit.
Ed Zitron
A four-part argument against the labor myths, compute demand, software-replacement claims, and financial assumptions surrounding generative AI.
The series supplies a comprehensive adversarial case against the boom's labor and economic narratives. Agreement is optional; answering the evidence is not.
Open the note →Ed Zitron
Zitron argues that subsidized AI services conceal their underlying costs and may look very different when customers face the actual bill.
The economic argument in concentrated form: cheap access can manufacture demand, while the eventual invoice has opinions of its own.
Open the note →Ed Zitron
DeepSeek becomes a challenge to assumptions about capital intensity, innovation, and the competitive moat of frontier AI laboratories.
A more efficient model tests whether giant capital commitments are an enduring moat or an expensive habit with unusually good public relations.
Open the note →Ed Zitron with Lily Ray
Google's generative search rollout becomes an observable case study in product quality, incumbent incentives, and performing innovation for investors.
This case can be tested without forecasting AGI. Billions already use Google, so the consequences of inserting generative answers into search are available for public inspection.
Open the note →Ed Zitron with Steve Burke of GamersNexus
GPU demand, memory markets, and manufacturing capacity connect AI infrastructure spending to the price of ordinary consumer electronics.
AI infrastructure competes for physical capacity. The costs can surface far from a chatbot subscription—in memory, components, and devices bought by people who never requested a model.
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