Monologue: Why We Need Tech Criticism More Than Ever

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast.

0:04Parking shouldn't slow you down. ParkWiz gives every driver a shortcut. Book ahead, save up to 50%, and skip the hassle of circling the block. Park smarter, park faster. ParkWiz. Download the ParkWiz app today and save every time you park. Call Zone Media Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue. I'm Ed Zitron, your host.

0:31Better Offline.

1:01buy next. I believe this movement is symbolic of a greater rot in the tech industry and indeed in media criticism, both inside and outside of the tech media, and that the nature of criticism must indeed change to meet this moment. Now, a few of the most consistent critiques in my work are mostly around my tone. I'm a hater, I'm a cynic, I'm a skeptic, I'm too emotional, I've gone overboard, the local townspeople should throw tomatoes at me, I should be treated in the way of Shrek and exiled from society, things like that. But in all seriousness, it seems the only way my work is reliably critiqued is to suggest that my emotions invalidate my criticism somehow and that saying fuck somehow weakens my arguments.

1:38Basically that giving a shit is invalidating when it comes to criticizing something. And I find that putrid by the way, but it's how things are. And I kind of get it. Most financial tech criticism is expected to be dry and clinical and any emotional content should be positive or at the very least optimistic. And I do not believe this tone is sufficient for the seriousness of the matters at hand. We are, as I have said repeatedly, several years into a hysterical, illogical bubble, one launched off the back of two smaller yet no less hysterical bubbles, at times by the same people, some of them writing for the New York Times or The Verge.

2:11We as a society have accepted the terms that the generative AI companies want us to, that we must destroy the environment, that we must steal from millions of people, that we must burn billions of dollars, all in pursuit of a vague and specious outcome that will never really arrive. This isn't to say that we've had much choice in said acceptance. The media has repeatedly accepted and promoted these narratives, helped justify these costs, and presented ridiculous narratives as sensible ones. The outcome has been a massive transfer of wealth upwards, both into the market capitalization of hyperscalers and into the pockets of Sam Ortman and other founders pretending generative AI will become some sort of conscious intelligence or the next hyper-growth market, regardless of whether of these things is possible.

2:51The other outcome has been the rise of many new kinds of grifters. The Ethan Mollocks of the world that create scientific-sounding yet specious reviews of AI models, the slop-filled AI newsletters with fake subscriber counts, and the many, many AI influencers that exist as extensions of AI companies' PR departments. Yet the most worrying part has been the members of the media that have allowed this to happen. This isn't to say anybody is. Even Kevin Roos and Casey Newton are included here. I don't think anyone's corrupt. but the media is unprepared, unwilling, or unable to push back on the narratives.

3:21The structures that hold up tech and business media are not built to truly explain or criticize what's happening in the tech industry, or even the economy at large. These structures are built not to ask, is this real, or will this work? But when this works, what will it look like? They're built not to question whether an industry is, like, real at all, but to assume that there are always risks in building anything, and thus the most important part is discussing what the person in question wants to happen. Media's desperation for objectivity regularly deprives the reader of the value of being objective because objectivity is being conflated with being passive.

3:55True objective journalism, which is impossible by the way, would say that both that OpenAI raised a bunch of money and loses billions a year and that to continue doing business they'll have to raise unbelievable sums of money every year. Instead, articles in OpenAI just print that they raised money and why they raised it or that their products do something. No interest in finding out what that something is, whether it's important and whether it will lead to any outcome, probably because it won't. The initial consequences of this passivity are that venture capitalists and a select few startup founders have become very, very rich, the big tech firms have had something new to hock to their customers, and the access journalists have had a new thing to pretend they care about, and also a fellow tech industry has had something to get excited about.

4:35None of this money has trickled down to anybody other than the powerful, nor have any mass market productivity gains been realized, nor has society improved as a result. The only things that appear to have changed is that these companies need more money and they don't even need to tell anybody why. The media just assumes they need it to build powerful AI. I think it's fair to say at this point that the generative AI boom hasn't done much of anything other than create new ways for software companies to sell software or access to models. There are no killer apps, no major shifts in the way we live our lives outside of innovations in fraud and harms to our power grid, and whatever use cases there may be for large language models are minuscule in comparison to the way that AI is discussed in the media.

5:12I am justifiably angry because I watch these bubbles form again and again in exactly the same way. At every single point, with the metaverse, with cryptocurrency, and now with generative AI, there have been obvious moments to say, yeah, I get that this is what you say will happen, but what's happening today doesn't suggest that it'll happen at all. And every time, those moments have been missed. And the media has opted instead to ask, but what if it was true? When the media opts to trust whatever comes out of the mouth of a powerful person, and the beneficiary is always, always the powerful person in question.

5:44Yet a better world would be one where the Altmans and Amadeys have to actually justify themselves, show what the models can do, give realistic projections, know that they can't just say whatever and get quoted automatically, because this kind of accountability would make their current work, overstating their models' capabilities and running unsustainable and destructive businesses, impossible, or at least much more difficult. A better tech industry is one where the products we hear about actually exist, where hype cycles are built based on execution and outcomes rather than whether something may or may not be in the future.

6:13While there is always a place in the tech media to dream, to guess what might come next, to talk to people inventing things, to talk to researchers and stuff, I have no problem with that and it's fine to anticipate what the effects of these things could be, so much of this industry has become about those dreams to the point that innovation is far less relevant than whether you can convince enough people that something might happen. Nevertheless, there is definitely something missing in Better Offline and that's excitement. The feedback I got from my last monologue around fitness and tech I liked was profound, and I will be looking forward to doing more episodes like that, especially these monologues on the things that I use that I really enjoy, or the cool stuff that tech is actually doing.

6:49It's going to be a process to get there, but I think you're really going to like what you hear when I start doing it. Don't worry, though. There's still so much Rot Economy bullshit to unpack, as you'll hear in tomorrow's episode.

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7:52It's important that we just reassure people that they're not alone and there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast Season 2 takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join hosts Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission. One Tribe saved my life twice. Welcome to Season 2 of The Good Stuff. Listen to The Good Stuff podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It may look different, but Native culture is alive.

8:26My name is Nicole Garcia, and on Burn Sage, Burn Bridges, we aim to explore that culture. Somewhere along the way, it turned into this full-fledged, award-winning comic shop. That's Dr. Lee Francis IV, who opened the first Native comic book shop. Explore his story along with many other Native stories on the show, Burn Sage Burn Bridges. Listen to Burn Sage Burn Bridges on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.