Better Offline
Better Offline
Better Offline is a weekly show exploring the tech industry’s influence and manipulation of society - and interrogating the growth-at-all-costs future that tech’s elite wants to build. Combining narrative-form storytelling, one-on-one interviews and panel-based discussions, Better Offline cuts through the buzzwords and obfuscation of the tech industry, investigating and evaluating the schemes a…Social links:
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Monologue: Into The Jensenverse
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how the AI bubble has increasingly become Jensen Huang and NVIDIA feeding different companies money, and how NVIDIA’s revenue is mostly dependent on a small handful of customers being able to raise more and more debt every year. EDIT…
08:57
No, AI Is Not "Autonomously Hacking" with Cal Newport
In this week’s Better Offline, Ed talks with computer science professor and writer Cal Newport about what the recent AI hacking incidents actually mean, why we should stop referring to LLMs as AI, and what the post-bubble world looks like for LLMs. Podcast & Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@CalNew…
1:05:27
Monologue: AI Hits A Wall
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how Anthropic and OpenAI’s revenue growth is decelerating, and how OpenAI’s pause on model development and collapsing economics create the very real possibility it could collapse. EDITOR’s NOTE: I incorrectly say at the beginning of t…
09:58
The AI Clown Car W/ Gamersnexus
In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about the increasingly-delusional promises of the AI semiconductors industry, the rotten economics of LLMs, and how everything is becoming more frantic and desperate as we reach the end. GamersNexus - There Are No Non-Clown…
44:51
AI Creativity Doesn't Exist With Chloe Radcliffe and Ed Ongweso Jr.
In this week's Better Offline, Ed is joined by comedian Chloe Radcliffe and critic Ed Ongweso Jr. to talk about AI’s attempts to interfere with the creative arts, horrible little robots, Mark Zuckerberg’s terrible AI essay, and why we can’t respect people writing using AI. Chloe’s Show Cheat - ht…
45:15
Monologue: NVIDIA's No IT Loads Refused Cash Dump
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through NVIDIA’s entirely-theoretical $500 billion AI infrastructure partnership with various asset managers, all to keep up with analyst expectations that it will make more than $1.6 trillion in the next three years. Chloe’s Show Cheat - htt…
11:16
Monologue: The Pale Horsemen Arrive
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how 70% of Microsoft, Google and Amazon’s AI revenues are from Anthropic and OpenAI, with 7% of Microsoft’s FY26 revenue coming from OpenAI alone, and how this is cast-iron proof that demand for AI doesn’t exist at a scale that warrant…
16:36
The AI Demand Bubble with Ed Elson
In this week's Better Offline, Ed is joined by Prof G Markets’ Ed Elson to talk about the recent slew of tech earnings, how analyst estimates show that 70% of Microsoft, Google and Amazon’s AI revenues come from OpenAI and Anthropic, and the logical endpoint of his AI bubble thesis. Save $10 off a…
54:06
Monologue: We Live Inside A Dream, But Who Is The Dreamer?
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how the media deliberately ignores reality to hide how Microsoft, Google and Amazon’s cloud growth is near-entirely driven by Anthropic and OpenAI, and how doing so threatens the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. To celeb…
13:11
AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making w/ Nik Suresh
In this week’s Better Offline, Ed is joined by writer and software engineer Nik Suresh to talk about how AI mania is eviscerating global decision-making, weakening businesses and creating a culture of fear that demands workers lie about the benefits of AI to kiss up to Business Idiots. Nik’s blog:…
58:42