Monologue: No, Something Big Isn't Coming

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through why Matt Shumer’s “Something Big Is Coming” is deceptive misinformation peddled by a guy who previously tried to defraud the AI community, and why everybody who boosted or republished it should be ashamed of themselves. The Annotated version of Something Big Is Coming: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qw6k5c3m575cq21p7jjac/Something-Big-Is-Coming-Annotated.pdf?rlkey=qlr0mgnlpjifo5xkon2crhrhw&dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/qw6k5c3m575cq21p7jjac/Something-Big-Is-Coming-Annotated.pdf?rlkey=qlr0mgnlpjifo5xkon2crhrhw&dl=0 Save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 - I’d be so grateful! YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitron Email Me: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.

• 0:36Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to Better Offline. This is your monologue for the week and I'm your host, Ed Zitron.

• 0:49Ed Zitron?

  So you've probably seen or heard about or even read the abominable, nonsensical hog slob essay called Something Big Is Coming, perhaps seeing people that should know better, like Mehdi Hassan's, who called it "the most important thing you read today, despite it being both AI-generated and complete fucking nonsense." This essay has done the rounds because of its histrionic tone and deliberate leaning upon the anxieties of those scared of AI and the mythology of AI boosters. And across 4,700 boobless shit-ass words, says very little new or interesting, along with multiple egregious lies. I will be attaching an annotated version of this essay to this monologue, but I want to give you a broad explanation of what it really says and why it's full of shit. But let's start with who wrote it.

• 1:31Ed Zitron?

  Matt Schumer is a guy who makes an AI startup called OtherSideAI, which does this thing called Hyperwrite, which is an AI writing assistant with web search and citations, which translates to mean it's a rapper for various large language models that he's prompting. Appropriately, when I asked it to write a critique of his piece, it said that its weaknesses lied in its lack of specifics and that its alarmist framing grabs attention and is heavy on the hype and light on actionable insight. And you know what, Matt? You fucking, you got one innovation and it's that even your shit-ass LLM rapper doesn't like your bullshit. And I think it's also being too kind. Schumer makes numerous egregious misstatements about the current State of AI using vague yet scary statements like being able to walk away from the computer for hours and find his work done.

• 2:16Ed Zitron?

  Again, his company has done the same thing for years. Or that an unnamed managing partner at a big law firm uses AI for hours to do the work of a team of associates. I choose these two statements because they're fairly typical of his entire piece. Entirely made up bullshit about how long an AI can work for or what it's capable of doing. Schumer repeatedly talks about AI being able to write software completely autonomously in a way that could not be further from the truth. His most egregious one is when he quotes OpenAI saying that GPT 5.3 Codex is the first model that was instrumental in creating itself. Because it used early versions to debug its own training, manage its own deployment and diagnose test results and evaluation. These are actual quotes from OpenAI. He's not lying. They said them. He's just lying about what they mean.

• 3:01Ed Zitron?

  To be clear, this is OpenAI saying that it used an app it built to test and debug code and to test. And debug the actual code and how it went up. It it it's literally, it's what the product, they used, they tested the product by testing what the product did. It's not the same as saying that software is designing itself, which is something that Schumer heavily intimates. Is happening throughout the piece, which it is not. He also suggests multiple times that AI is learning from itself, which is is not. Barely keeping my cool on this one because it's so fucking frustrating seeing how many people, I saw Fortune repost this. I saw Business Insider do a post, fucking the the technology brothers. Well, well, well, if it isn't the technology brothers. They had this fuck nut on. It make, it genuinely infuriates me.

• 3:46Ed Zitron?

  And most of the scary stuff in there that all software engineers will be replaced, that 50% of entry level white collar jobs will be gone in one to five years. Is Schumer directly copy pasting stuff that CEO of Anthropic, Wario Amadei said in one of his many interviews where he makes shit up. I am begging people to please, God, engage with basic, critical thinking when reading things like this. Schumer says a lot of vague marketing fluff. Each generation builds the next, which is smarter, which builds the next faster, which is smarter still. This is written specifically to make you believe that this is actually happening when it is not. It isn't. The generation is not building the next. There are still people doing this. He doesn't cite anything. He doesn't even bother to choose real-life examples.

• 4:28Ed Zitron?

  He just says stuff like, "AI is approaching or exceeding human performance in several areas of medicine," all without citation. Well, I've got a citation for you. "On September 5th, 2024, Matt Schumer released a model called Reflection 70B that he claimed had benchmarks that made it, and I quote, 'the world's top open-source AI model, built with something called Glave AI.'" Independent researchers were unable to recreate the benchmarks, and it became obvious that Schumer was a lying sack of shit. And that Reflection 70B was a wrapper for Anthropic's Claude Sonnet model, with one person posting that they had intentionally made it so that it would not respond to being called Claude, or say that it was Claude. He also didn't reveal that he was an investor in Glave AI,

• 5:10Ed Zitron?

  the platform that generated the synthetic data that allegedly trained this shit-ass model that does not work, did not work, never updated, never did anything it said, and everyone just memory-holed it. And what horrified me about this essay is how many top-tier media outlets and respectable journalists took it as gospel, because the statements he made vaguely lined up with the empty hype of scumbags like Sam Altman and Dario Amadei. "If you are a member of the media that shared or republished this, you are actively participating in an act of disinformation, and you should be fucking ashamed of yourself." Fuck Matt Schumer and fuck anybody who takes him seriously. Regular people got scared because of this, because mainstream media validated it. You should all be ashamed of yourselves.

• 5:53Ed Zitron?

  And to the many haters that emailed me about this, saying, "This looks like bullshit," you were correct. These people are deceiving you. They are misleading you so that they can sell AI software that they know is not doing the things it needs to to make any of this make sense. And I'm disgusted to see this keep happening. I am disgusted to see people like this platformed. And I think when all of this ends, people think that I will forget. I will not forget any of this. I am taking fucking detailed notes of everybody who pushes this shit uphill. I am furious. I am disgusted to see this. 60 million fucking views on this bullshit. And I know there are some people who don't like when I get angry, but I am furious about this. This is lies. This is platforming lies.

• 6:38Ed Zitron?

  Anyone in the media who platformed this, you need to, I don't know, think about whether you're capable of doing your jobs every day. Because you seem to lack the critical thinking to spot a scam artist.

• 6:51Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm done. I'm done, everyone. I'm sorry for flying off the handle a little.

• 7:03Speaker 00

  Empower is all about helping you invest well so you can go out and live a little. And their free Empower Personal Dashboard shows you your full financial life in one place. You'll be able to see your net worth, monitor budgets, analyze your portfolio, set retirement goals, and more. Whether you're saving for something big, want to treat yourself, friends, or family, or meet long-term goals, Empower helps you see where you stand. You've worked hard for your money, and Empower can help you make the most of it. Download the Empower Personal Dashboard or visit empower.com. Not an Empower client paid or sponsored.

• 7:34Speaker 03

  Being a small business owner isn't just a career. It's a calling. Chase for Business knows how much heart and effort go into building something of your own. Manage all your business finances, from banking to payments to credit cards, all in one place with our digital tools. Plus, access online resources designed to help your business thrive. Learn more at chase.com/business. Chase for Business: Make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., member FDIC. Copyright 2026 JPMorgan Chase & Company. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.