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I think Ed Zitron is mentioned just because his name is Zitron. He just repeats ad nauseam opinions concentrated around one simple, very boring pole on a wild and interesting landscape of emerging reality. Anybody could be doing that. A lot of people do that. Yet no other is named Zitron. And that's why I heard name Ed Zitron hundred times. That's how you become a voice of (a part of) the generation. Just have a memorable name and repeat the same opinion over and over that people can flock around comfortably. Content is irrelevant.

Personally I prefer to follow explorers rather than swamp-sitters.

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to an extent zitron is saying its not useful, but as a more nuanced opinion, "ai is not cost effective, nor is it improving profits or revenue"
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From a random article I grabbed of his (https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/):

"it isn't clear whether generative AI actually provides much business value at all"

"cannot seem to find a product that people will pay for, in part because the results are so mediocre"

"Last week, we got our first real, definitive glimpse of what’s around that corner that future. And boy, was it underwhelming."

"OpenAI claims that o1 “performs similarly to PhD students on challenging benchmark tasks in physics, chemistry, and biology.” Just not in geography, it seems. Or basic elementary-level English language tests. Or math. Or programming. "

"Worse still, it's kind of hard to explain why anybody should give a shit about o1."

"o1 shows that OpenAI is both desperate and out of ideas."

"the software is not becoming more useful"

Honestly, every other line is quotable in this context.

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Yep, he is a PR stunt guy, and the number of videos that come up when you type Ed Zitron into YouTube should tell you how many people are eager to feed their cognitive biases.
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It’s comical and honestly incredibly embarrassing…

But it seems we have somehow optimized away shame. It wasn’t good for profits, I guess.

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