Better Offline

As the AI bubble collapses, it's time for the tech industry to repent, and to recognize that the future cannot be decided entirely by four or five trillion-dollar firms that are no longer capable of innovation, only copying other people's ideas. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how the generative AI boom shows how little big tech cares about actual innovation - and how this might eventually lead to their collapse.

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After a year of opulent spending, the markets have begun to sour on big tech's $200 billion bet on generative AI, unfortunately timing with the delay of Nvidia's new AI-specialized "blackwell" chips. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through the pale horses of the AI apocalypse - and what this means for the tech industry at large.

LINKS: http://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks 

Newsletter: wheresyoured.at 

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/betteroffline 

Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at 

Ed's Socials -

http://www.twitter.com/edzitron 

instagram.com/edzitron 

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https://www.threads.net/@edzitron 

 

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In the third live-to-tape episode of Better Offlive, Ed Zitron is joined in-studio in Los Angeles by Cory Doctorow and Brian Merchant to talk about the forces that have turned the tech industry away from innovation - and how we might turn the tide against them.

CORY DOCTOROW:

https://pluralistic.net/

https://x.com/doctorow

BRIAN MERCHANT: 

Blood In The Machine Book: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/?lens=little-brown

Newsletter: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/

https://x.com/bcmerchant

Ed's Socials:

https://www.twitter.com/edzitron

https://instagram.com/edzitron

https://bsky.app/profile/zitron.bsky.social 

https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

Newsletter: wheresyoured.at

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/betteroffline

Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the second live-to-tape episode of Better Offlive, Ed Zitron is joined in-studio by the New York Times' Mike Isaac and The Verge's Kylie Robison to discuss the current state of tech journalism.

KYLIE: https://x.com/kyliebytes https://www.threads.net/@kylie.robison

MIKE: https://x.com/MikeIsaac https://www.threads.net/@mike_isaac?hl=en https://www.instagram.com/mike_isaac

Newsletter: wheresyoured.at Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/betteroffline

Discord chat.wheresyoured.at

Ed's Socials -

http://www.twitter.com/edzitron 

instagram.com/edzitron

https://bsky.app/profile/zitron.bsky.social https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Ed Zitron sits down with famed MIT economist Daron Acemoglu to talk about the economics of the tech ecosystem, the ridiculousness of generative AI's promises, and the realities of tech's growth-at-all-costs ecosystem.

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On Friday July 19, millions of Windows PCs entered a doom-loop that rendered them non-functional thanks to an update sent by a little-known company called CrowdStrike - and in this emergency Better Offline dispatch, Ed Zitron walks you through exactly what happened, why it's so bad, and why both CrowdStrike and Microsoft executives should face criminal prosecution for such a catastrophic managerial failure. These are the dark consequences of the growth-at-all-costs movement.

Newsletter: wheresyoured.at

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/betteroffline

Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

Ed's Socials - http://www.twitter.com/edzitron instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/zitron.bsky.social https://www.threads.net/@edzitron

LINKS: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

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In a paper released earlier this year, three academics from the University of Glasgow classified ChatGPT's outputs not as "lies," but as "BS" - as defined by philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt in "on BS" (and yes I'm censoring that) - and created one of the most enjoyable and prescient papers ever written. In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by academics Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries and Joe Slater in a free-wheeling conversation about ChatGPT's mediocrity - and how it's not built to represent the world at all.

LINKS:

Paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5

Michael Townsen Hicks: https://www.townsenhicks.com/

Joe Slater: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/joeslater/

Newsletter: wheresyoured.at

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/betteroffline

Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at

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See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When the money gets nervous, so should you. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through a remarkable report from global investment bank Goldman Sachs where multiple economists call BS on the AI movement - and why it's time for the rest of the world to follow suit.

LINKS: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

Newsletter: wheresyoured.at

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/betteroffline

Discord chat.wheresyoured.at

Ed's Socials - http://www.twitter.com/edzitron instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/zitron.bsky.social https://www.threads.net/@edzitron 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The shareholder supremacy has eaten the tech industry, driving private and public companies to chase unprofitable, unsustainable ideas like generative AI as a means of expressing eternal growth to the markets. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how this destructive mindset has created an entirely new kind of manager - one disconnected from labor and creation - and how the dark hand of shareholder supremacy is behind everything strange and bad in tech in the last few years

LINKS: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

Newsletter: wheresyoured.at

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/betteroffline

Discord chat.wheresyoured.at

Ed's Socials - http://www.twitter.com/edzitron instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/zitron.bsky.social https://www.threads.net/@edzitron 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this episode, Ed Zitron tracks the history of the growth-at-all-costs rot economy to a court case in 1916 that established the Shareholder Supremacy, and set the terms for General Electric's Jack Welch to fundamentally break capitalism, an era where companies moved away from building lasting, sustainable companies that created things and instead began focusing on pleasing shareholders - and how it leads to today's terrible tech companies and leaders.

LINKS: https://tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks

Newsletter: wheresyoured.at

Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/betteroffline 

Discord chat.wheresyoured.at

Ed's Socials - http://www.twitter.com/edzitron  instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/zitron.bsky.social  https://www.threads.net/@edzitron  

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.