Monologue: On Dangerous Rhetoric

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron discusses how AI labs’ dangerous rhetoric around AI capabilities and job loss are antagonizing and terrifying people that are already on edge, and that de-escalation starts with Altman and Amodei talking about LLMs as normal software. This week’s free newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/i-will-never-respect-a-website/ Premium newsletter out later today - the Hater’s Guide to Private Credit - save $10 off a year of my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/gzqwkv54e1 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. Buy our new “FUCK DATA CENTERS” shirts today! --- 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

  Cash Flow Crunch. OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. 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.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  With LPL Financial, we provide the services to help push you forward. When it comes to your finances, your business, your future, the only question should be, what if you could?

• 1:16Speaker 04

  Paid advertisement. Anika Hendrick is not a client of LPL Financial LLC and receives compensation to promote LPL. Investing involves risk, including potential loss to principal. LPL Financial LLC member FINRA, SIPC.

• 1:24Speaker 05

  Financial growth begins long before the first investment. It comes from understanding what you're building toward, what's at stake, and what success looks like for you. At Oppenheimer, we bring bold thinking guided by the full strength of our expertise to put capital to work building and protecting wealth that lasts generations. Put the power of Oppenheimer Thinking to work for you. Wealth management, capital markets, investment banking.

• 1:55Speaker 06

  Call Zone Media.

• 1:58Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to this week's Better Off Line Monologue. I'm your host, Ed Zitron.

• 2:11Ed Zitron?

  Now I want to be abundantly clear about something: it is illegal to throw a Molotov cocktail at anyone and it's morally objectionable to do so. I explicitly and fundamentally object to the recent acts of violence against Sam Altman. These acts of violence are not something I endorse in any way, I'm also glad that nobody was hurt. It's also morally repugnant for Sam Altman to somehow suggest by stating that we should de-escalate the rhetoric and tactics around AI criticism, that the careful, thoughtful, determined and eagerly fair work of Ronan Farrow and Andrew Morantz is in any way responsible for these acts of violence. Doing so is a deliberate and cynical attempt to chill the air around criticism of AI and its associated companies. I do however agree with Mr.

• 2:53Ed Zitron?

  Altman that the rhetoric around AI does need to change. Both he and Mr. Amadei of Anthropic need to immediately stop overstating the capabilities of large language models. Mr. Altman and Mr. Amadei should not discuss being scared of their models as they have both done so since 2023, or being uncomfortable that men such as they are in control unless they wish to shut down their services or... They should also definitely not say that their models are conscious or suggest that they have emotions either, Anthropic is particularly guilty of this. These men should immediately stop misleading people through company documentation, that models are blackmailing people, or as Anthropic did in its Mythos system card, suggest the model has broken containment and sent a message.

• 3:36Ed Zitron?

  This was not the case, it was in a completely separate instance to the container it was messing with, and it was instructed explicitly to do so. This is an act of deceit that is scaring people. These men must stop discussing threats to jobs without actual, meaningful data that is significantly more sound and rigorous than jobs that might be affected by AI at some point someday, but for now, we've got a chambon. Mr. Amade should immediately cease any and all discussions of AI potentially or otherwise eliminating 50% or any level of white-collar jobs, as Mr. Altman should cease predicting when superintelligence might arrive, as Mr. Amade should actively reject and denounce any suggestions of AI creating a white-collar bloodbath.

• 4:19Ed Zitron?

  This dangerous rhetoric is scaring people. Those that defend AI labs and indeed people I’ve spoken to are anthropic will claim that these are difficult conversations that need to be had, when in actuality, these conversations engage in dangerous and frightening rhetoric as a means of boosting a company’s valuation and garnering attention. If either of these men truly believed the things they were saying were true, they would do something about it, other than saying “You should be scared of us and the things we’re making, and we’re the only ones brave enough to say anything about it.” These conversations are also nonsensical and misleading when you compare them to what large language models can actually do. And this rhetoric is a blatant attempt to scare people into paying for software today

• 5:02Ed Zitron?

  based on what it absolutely cannot do and will not do in the future. It is an attempt to obfuscate the actual efficacy of a technology as a means of deceiving investors, the media, and the general public. Both Altman and Amade engage in a language of AI doomerism as a means of generating attention, revenue, and investment capital, actively selling their software and future investment potential based on their ownership of a technology that they say, disingenuously, is potentially going to take everyone’s jobs. Now, based on the reports from his Instagram, the man who threw the Molotov cocktail at Sam Altman’s house was at least partially inspired by “If anyone builds it, everyone dies,” a doomer porn fantasy written by a pair of overlevered dunces, spreading fearful

• 5:43Ed Zitron?

  language about the power of AI, inspired by the fear-mongering of Altman himself. Altman once suggested that Aliyaz Yudkowsky might deserve the Nobel Peace Prize one day. I also think we need to be clear about the circumstances and the rhetoric that led someone to do this, and why the AI industry needs to be well aware that the society they’re continually threatening with job loss is one full of people that are very, very close to the edge. This is not about anybody being deserving of anything, but a frank evaluation of cause and effect.

• 6:17Ed Zitron?

  Many people feel like they're being fucking tortured every time they load social media. Their money doesn't go as far, their financial situation has never been worse. Every time they read something, it's a story about ICE patrols, or a near-nuclear war in Iran, or that gas is more expensive, or that there are more worrying things happening in private credit. Nobody can afford a house and layoffs are constant. One group, however, appears to exist in an alternative world where anything they want is possible. AI people can raise as much money as they want. They can build as big a building as they want anywhere in the world. Everything they do is taken so seriously that the government will call a meeting about it. Every single media outlet talks about everything they do. Your boss forces you to use it.

• 6:59Ed Zitron?

  Every piece of software forces you to at least acknowledge that they use AI too. Everyone is talking about it with complete certainty, despite it not being completely clear as to why they're doing so. As many people writhe in continual agony and fear, AI promises but never quite delivers some sort of vague utopia at the highest cost known to man. And these companies are in no uncertain terms coming for your job. That's what they want to do. They all say it. They use deceptively worded studies that talk about AI-exposed careers to scare and mislead people into believing LLMs are coming for their jobs, all while spreading vague proclamations about how said job loss is imminent,

• 7:43Ed Zitron?

  but also always 12 months away. Autman even says that jobs that will vanish weren't real work to begin with. Much as former OpenAI CTO Mira Marathi said that some creative jobs shouldn't have existed in the first place. These are people who sell a product with no benefit comparable on any level to its ruinous trillion-dollar cost, both financially and to the environment, and are able to get away with anything and get anything they want at a time when those who work hard are given a kick in the fucking teeth, sneered at for not using AI that doesn't actually seem to make their lives easier, and then told that their labor doesn't constitute real work by people that don't appear to do anything other than go on fucking CNBC.

• 8:28Ed Zitron?

  At a time when nobody living a normal life feels like they have enough, the AI industry always seems to get more. There's not enough money for free college, or housing, or healthcare, or daycare, but there's always more money for AI compute. Regular people face the harshest credit market in generations, but private credit, and specifically data centers, can always, always get more money and more land. AI can never fail, it can only be failed. If it doesn't work, you simply don't know how to use AI properly, and will be at a huge disadvantage, despite the sales pitch being this is intelligent software that just does stuff. AI companies can get as much attention as they need, their failings explain the way,

• 9:11Ed Zitron?

  their meager successes celebrated, like the ball dropping on New Year's Eve, their half-assed sub-war of the world's mythos horseshit, treated like they've opened the gates of hell.

• 9:29Speaker 08

  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.

• 9:57Speaker 06

  This is Alexis Christofres for Bloomberg Surveillance. AI is everywhere, outcomes are not. Not because AI doesn't work, but because AI hasn't reached the workflows yet. The campaigns, the launches, the quarterly planning, those workflows are still run by humans alone. AI is making individuals faster, but it's not making businesses more productive. That's the gap Asana is built to close. Asana is the operating system for human agent teams, your easy button for AI productivity across every team. Ready-to-go AI teammates pre-built for marketing, ops, and IT. No prompt engineering, no setup. They show up where the work is happening, already onboarded in your workflows, ready to deliver. And the more they work with your team, the smarter they get.

• 10:43Speaker 06

  With Asana, your whole company can work on the same plan, towards the same goal, whether you're a team of 10 or 10,000. Asana, where humans and agents workflow together. Try it at asana.com, that's A-S-A-N-A dot com.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  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.

• 11:29Speaker 05

  We believe in starting with your financial goals, not a formula. At Oppenheimer, we put the full strength of our longstanding expertise to work, understanding your life and your ambitions, and designing the precise strategies that build and protect your wealth with confidence, across this generation and the next. Put the power of Oppenheimer Thinking to work for you. Wealth management, capital markets, investment banking.

• 12:01Ed Zitron?

  Regular people feel ignored and like they're not taken seriously. And the people being given the most money and attention are the ones loudly saying, "We're richer than anyone has ever been. We intend to spend more than anyone has ever spent, and we intend to take your job." He mentally unstable took them seriously. Did they not think that people would be angry? Constantly talking about how your company will make an indeterminate amount of people jobless, while also being able to raise over $162 billion in the space of two years and taking up as much space on Earth as you please is something that could send people over the edge. Every day, the news reminds you that everything sucks and is more expensive. Unless, of course, you're in AI, where you'll be given as much money as you want

• 12:44Ed Zitron?

  and told you're the most special person alive. I can imagine it tearing at a person's soul as the world beats them down. And I will say that what they did was a disgraceful act of violence. But what do you think happens when you go to people for years and years and years and accumulate so much wealth? Unstable people in various stages of torment act in erratic and dangerous ways. The suspect in the Molotov cocktail incident apparently had a manifesto, where he had listed the names and addresses of both Altman and multiple other AI executives, and, per CNBC, discussed the threat of AI to humanity as the justification for his actions. I'm genuinely happy to hear this person was apprehended without anyone being hurt.

• 13:28Ed Zitron?

  These actions are morally wrong, and are also the direct result of the AI industry's deceptive and manipulative scare campaign, one promoted by men like Altman and Amade, as well as Duma fanfiction writers like Yudkowsky and of course, Daniel Kokotachlo, of AI 2027, both of whom have had their work validated and propagated via The New York Times, and Kevin Roos, who should feel fucking ashamed of himself for ever, ever platforming these freaks. It's a disgrace. And on the subject of dangerous rhetoric, I think we need to reckon with the fact that the mainstream media has helped spread harmful propaganda, and that a lack of scrutiny of said propaganda is now causing genuine harm. I also do not hear any attempts by Mr. Altman to deal with the actual documented threat

• 14:12Ed Zitron?

  of AI psychosis, and the people that have been twisted by large language models to take their lives and those of others. These are acts of violence that could have been stopped, had ChatGPT and similar applications not anthropomorphized by design, and trained to be friendly. I genuinely believe that these things should not be able to have conversations. That shouldn't happen. They should act like computers. They should act like software. These people have deliberately made that not the case. They've deliberately tried to make them friends, and are now trying to wash their hands of their responsibility. Nah, nah. It wasn't an act of violence inspired by Ronan Farrow publishing a piece about Sam Altman. It was the result of a years-long publicity campaign that has, since the beginning,

• 14:57Ed Zitron?

  been about how scary the technology is, and how much money its owners make, and how many jobs they intend to take as a result. I separately believe these executives and their cohort are intentionally scaring people as a means of growing their companies and that these continual statements of "we're making something to take your job or we need more money and space to do it" could be construed as a threat by somebody that's already on the edge. I agree that the dangerous rhetoric around AI must stop. Dario Amadei and Sam Altman must immediately cease their manipulative and disingenuous scare tactics and begin describing large language models in terms that match their actual abilities, all while dispensing with any further attempts to extrapolate their future capabilities. Enough with the fluff.

• 15:42Ed Zitron?

  Enough with the bullshit. Stop talking about AGI. Start talking about this like regular, old, boring software because that's all that ChatGPT and Claude are. In the end, if Altman wants to engage in good-faith criticism, he should actually act in good faith, and the same goes for Dario Amadei. This starts with taking ownership of their roles in a global disinformation campaign. It starts with them recognizing how the AI industry has sold itself based on spreading mythology with the intent of creating unrest and fear. And it starts with Altman and Amadei and their ilk accepting any responsibility for their actions. I'm not holding my breath.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Cash Flow Crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds, up to $200,000, right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. 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.

• 17:30Speaker 03

  What if you could have even more and more and more help to pursue your goals? At LPL Financial, we offer more ways for advisors and their clients to thrive. So, what if you could?

• 17:40Speaker 09

  Paid advertisement. Investing involves risk, including potential loss of principal. LPL Financial, LLC member FINRA, SIPC.

• 17:46Speaker 10

  She's been thinking about this sleepover all week, but I think about her food allergies all the time. Fortunately, her doctor prescribed Zolair, omalizumab. It's proven to significantly reduce allergic reactions if a food allergy accident happens.

• 17:59Speaker 11

  Zolair 150mg is a prescription medication used to treat food allergy in people one year of age and older to reduce allergic reactions due to accidental exposure to one or more foods. While taking Zolair, you should continue to avoid all foods to which you are allergic. Don't use if you are allergic to Zolair. Zolair may cause a severe, life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. Tell your doctor if you ever had anaphylaxis. Get help right away if you have trouble breathing or if you have swelling of your throat or tongue. Zolair should not be used for the emergency treatment of allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis. Zolair is for maintenance use to reduce allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, while avoiding food allergens. Serious side effects such as cancer, fever, muscle aches and rash, parasitic infection, or heart and circulation problems have been reported. Please see zolair.com for full prescribing information. Ask an allergist about Zolair.

• 18:42Speaker 11

  This is an advertisement for Zolair paid for by Genentech and Novartis.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.