{"id":21617,"date":"2026-01-19T08:37:17","date_gmt":"2026-01-19T07:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/19\/ed-zitron-on-big-tech-backlash-boom-and-bust-ai-has-taught-us-that-people-are-excited-to-replace-human-beings\/"},"modified":"2026-01-19T08:37:17","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T07:37:17","slug":"ed-zitron-on-big-tech-backlash-boom-and-bust-ai-has-taught-us-that-people-are-excited-to-replace-human-beings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/19\/ed-zitron-on-big-tech-backlash-boom-and-bust-ai-has-taught-us-that-people-are-excited-to-replace-human-beings\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Zitron on big tech, backlash, boom and bust: \u2018AI has taught us that people are excited to replace human beings\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

His blunt, brash scepticism has made the podcaster and writer something of a cult figure. But as concern over large language models builds, he\u2019s no longer the outsider he once was<\/p>\n

If some time in an entirely possible future they come to make a movie about \u201chow the AI bubble burst\u201d, Ed Zitron will doubtless be a main character. He\u2019s the perfect outsider figure: the eccentric loner who saw all this coming and screamed from the sidelines that the sky was falling, but nobody would listen. Just as Christian Bale portrayed Michael Burry<\/a>, the investor who predicted the 2008 financial crash, in The Big Short<\/a>, you can well imagine Robert Pattinson fighting Paul Mescal, say, to portray Zitron, the animated, colourfully obnoxious but doggedly detail-oriented Brit, who\u2019s become one of big tech\u2019s noisiest critics.<\/p>\n

This is not to say the AI bubble will<\/em> burst, necessarily, but against a tidal wave of AI boosterism, Zitron\u2019s blunt, brash scepticism has made him something of a cult figure. His tech newsletter, Where\u2019s Your Ed At<\/a>, now has more than 80,000 subscribers; his weekly podcast, Better Offline<\/a>, is well within the Top 20 on the tech charts; he\u2019s a regular dissenting voice in the media; and his subreddit<\/a> has become a safe space for AI sceptics, including those within the tech industry itself \u2013 one user describes him as \u201ca lighthouse in a storm of insane hypercapitalist bullshit\u201d.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nHis blunt, brash scepticism has made the podcaster and writer something of a cult figure. But as concern over large language models builds, he\u2019s no longer the outsider he once was
\nIf some time in an entirely possible future they come to make a movie about \u201chow the AI bubble burst\u201d, Ed Zitron will doubtless be a main character. He\u2019s the perfect outsider figure: the eccentric loner who saw all this coming and screamed from the sidelines that the sky was falling, but nobody would listen. Just as Christian Bale portrayed Michael Burry, the investor who predicted the 2008 financial crash, in The Big Short, you can well imagine Robert Pattinson fighting Paul Mescal, say, to portray Zitron, the animated, colourfully obnoxious but doggedly detail-oriented Brit, who\u2019s become one of big tech\u2019s noisiest critics.
\nThis is not to say the AI bubble will burst, necessarily, but against a tidal wave of AI boosterism, Zitron\u2019s blunt, brash scepticism has made him something of a cult figure. His tech newsletter, Where\u2019s Your Ed At, now has more than 80,000 subscribers; his weekly podcast, Better Offline, is well within the Top 20 on the tech charts; he\u2019s a regular dissenting voice in the media; and his subreddit has become a safe space for AI sceptics, including those within the tech industry itself \u2013 one user describes him as \u201ca lighthouse in a storm of insane hypercapitalist bullshit\u201d. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

His blunt, brash scepticism has made the podcaster and writer something of a cult figure. But as concern over large language models builds, he\u2019s no longer the outsider he once was If some time in an entirely possible future they come to make a movie about \u201chow the AI bubble burst\u201d, Ed Zitron will doubtless …<\/p>\n

Ed Zitron on big tech, backlash, boom and bust: \u2018AI has taught us that people are excited to replace human beings\u2019<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":21618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21617"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}