How accurate have Ed Zitron's AI skeptic predictions been?
The author evaluates the accuracy of AI skeptic Ed Zitron's predictions while reflecting on their own history of forecasting AI's impact on the labor market. The piece emphasizes the difficulty of predicting technological trajectories and the author's lack of financial bias.
Why it matters
It provides a meta-analysis of the current discourse surrounding AI progress and the credibility of industry commentators.
I was curious how well the predictions of the most widely cited AI skeptic I've seen (Ed Zitron) have done, so I looked at how his predictions panned out. To disclose my own biases, I've never had a particularly strong pro or anti AI progress position. For example, in 2022, I did a comprehensive look at predictions Futurists made, including well-respected folks like Kurzweil and found them to be generally wrong on both the prediction results as well as the reasoning. On the flip side, in 2015, I wrote about how people were underestimating AI's ability to displace humans in jobs and have repeatedly been on the record as saying that many people are underestimating AI's ability to displace humans from jobs.
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