Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At

A few months ago, Casey Newton of Platformer ran a piece called "The phony comforts of AI skepticism," framing those who would criticize generative AI as "having fun," damning them as "hyper-fixated on the things [AI] can't do."
I am not going to focus too hard on this blog, in part because because Edward Ongweso Jr. already did so, and in part because I believe that there are much larger problems at work here. Newton is, along with his Hard Fork co-host Kevin Roose, actively...

Soundtrack: EL-P (ft. Aesop Rock) - Run The Numbers
In my years writing this newsletter I have come across few companies as rotten as CoreWeave — an "AI cloud provider" that sells GPU compute to AI companies looking to run or train their models.
CoreWeave had intended to go public last week, with an initial valuation of $35bn. While it’s hardly a recognizable name — like, say, OpenAI, or Microsoft, or Nvidia — this company is worth observing, if not for the fact that it’s arguably the first...

A week ago, analyst TD Cowen revealed that Microsoft had canceled leases "totalling a couple hundred MWs," with "at least two private data center operators across multiple US markets." The report also details how Microsoft "pulled back on converting...

Soundtrack: Mack Glocky - Chasing Cars
Last week, I spent a great deal of time and words framing the generative AI industry as a cynical con where OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei have used a compliant media and braindead investors to frame unprofitable, unsustainable, environmentally...