ZITRON DROPPED

New piece from Ed Zitron - a 44-minute read about OpenAI’s threat to the entire tech industry

I’ve repeated this prediction a bajillion times, but I suspect this bubble’s discredited the idea of artificial intelligence, and expect it to quickly die once this bubble bursts.

Between the terabytes upon terabytes of digital mediocrity the slop-nami’s given us, LLMs’ countless and relentless failures in logic and reason, the large-scale enshittification of daily life their mere existence has enabled, and their power consumption singlehandedly accelerating the climate crisis, I feel that the public’s come to view computers as inherently incapable of humanlike cognition/creativity, no matter how many gigawatts they consume or oceans they boil.

Expanding on this somewhat, I suspect AI as a concept will likely also come to be seen as an inherently fascist concept.

With the current bubble’s link to esoteric fascism, the far-right’s open adoration of slop, basically everything about OpenAI’s Studio Ghibli slopgen, and God-knows-what-else, the public’s got plenty of reason to treat use or support of AI as a severe indictment of someone’s character in and of itself - a “tech asshole signifier”, to quote Baldur Bjarnason.

And, of course, AI as a concept will probably come to be viewed as inherently anti-art/anti-artist as well - considering how badly the AI bubble’s shafted artists, and artists specifically, that kinda goes without saying.

New YouTube video I ran across: The Art Of Poison-Pilling Music Files

Any military use of AI is already gonna be seen in a warcrimey light thanks to Israel using it in their Gaza Geneva Checklist Speedrun - add in the public being fully aware of your average LLM’s, shall we say, tenuous connection to reality, and you have a recipe for people immediately assuming the worst.

Me, eight months ago

Fun fact: the rise of autoplag is now threatening the supply chain as well, as bad actors take advantage of LLM hallucinations to plant malware into people’s programs.

Here’s a screenshot of two screenshots of an AI bro getting humiliated:

They’re giving the American people what they voted for

A Group of Indians

That’s called a call center

Alternatively, “A Guy (from) India”.

Zitron’s preparing to drop his strongest diss of 2025:

overtonussy

Mods, crush his skull /j

New piece from 404 Media: Facebook Pushes Its Llama 4 AI Model to the Right, Wants to Present “Both Sides”

On a related note, Baldur Bjarnason has chimed in noting how he called this exact shit happening:

Remember when I told you that using these LLMs was like giving US tech a bigotry dial for all your writing?

Ed Zitron having a very good day today:

>humanoid robot

They’re called “clankers”

You’re dead right on that.

On a wider front, I expect the bubble’s burst will deal some long-lasting damage to the tech industry, on two major fronts:

1. Evaluations/stock prices will go through the floor, as investor assumptions of Endless Growth^tm are shattered, and the tech industry comes to be seen as “a stable, mature industry whose days of endless growth are behind it” (quoting Baldur Bjarnason), at best and deep in the throes of a serious malaise era at worst. One outcome is obviously better than the other, but both will lead to a lotta pain.

2. The tech industry’s public image, already in the shitter for a litany of reasons, will likely take another significant blow as the industry’s ability to generate hype for AI and/or counteract the boiling resentment towards it completely falls apart.

For the enterprise using it, yes. For the enterprise selling it, probably not so much.

“I should start the Butlerian Jihad”

Solid, high-quality sneer from Adactio - the end is a particular highlight:

The worst of the internet is continuously attacking the best of the internet. This is a distributed denial of service attack on the good parts of the World Wide Web.

If you’re using the products powered by these attacks, you’re part of the problem. Don’t pretend it’s cute to ask ChatGPT for something. Don’t pretend it’s somehow being technologically open-minded to continuously search for nails to hit with the latest “AI” hammers.

Considering PC Gamer bought the AI hype hook, line and sinker a few months ago, I’d say this is a particularly notable sneer.

This is pure gut instinct, but it seems AI bros’ ability to bedazzle the press is fading fast.

TAKE ME BACK