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: AI's Compute Demand Story Is A Lie
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how 70-80% of Amazon and Microsoft’s AI revenue and capacity is taken up by OpenAI and Anthropic, and how capacity constraints across the industry are a result of hyperscalers sacrificing their infrastructure to the least-profitable st…
18:58
Palantir's Manifesto with June and Caleb from KTC
On this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron digs into Palantir’s 22-point manifesto with Caleb and June from Kill The Computer. The Manifesto: https://x.com/PalantirTech/status/2045574398573453312 Caleb and June https://bsky.app/profile/birdrespecter.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/killthecom…
1:07:25
Monologue: How OpenAI Kills Oracle
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how OpenAI must grow its revenue by 1000% in the next three years and raise at least another $200 billion for it to be able to pay its compute deals with Oracle and other providers, and how Oracle dies if OpenAI fails to pay its bills.…
11:04
Cal Newport on Mythos and Anthropomorphization
In this week’s Better Offline, Ed is joined by computer science professor and writer Cal Newport to talk about the Claude Mythos marketing scam, the lies around AI job loss, and why LLMs shouldn’t talk like they’re people. Please support me by subscribing to my premium newsletter - here’s $10 off …
59:02
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 …
12:06
More, Everything, Forever With Adam Becker
In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by journalist and astrophysicist Adam Becker to talk about introspection-free venture capital, the Pee-Wee’s Playhouse effect of LLMs, and trying to find a better future to focus on. https://bsky.app/profile/adambecker.bsky.social https://www.you…
47:49
Investigating Altman With Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz
In a special episode of Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by writers Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz of the New Yorker to talk about their massive investigation into Sam Altman, his ouster from OpenAI, and the consequences of trusting Silicon Valley with the future. https://www.newyorker.com/mag…
43:09
The Reality of AI Economics With Paul Kedrosky
In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by economist Paul Kedrosky to talk about the large amount of speculative data center land purchases, the brittle NVIDIA GPU economy, and the economic realities of AI. https://paulkedrosky.com/ The Nick, Dick and Paul Show: https://www.youtube.com…
40:47
Monologue: AI Isn't Too Big to Fail
In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron breaks down why AI isn’t too big to fail, why no bailout is coming, and how people need to learn more about history before using it to justify burning billions of dollars. This week’s free newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-subprime-ai-cr…
17:58
Monologue: What's Going On At Anthropic?
In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron discusses Anthropic’s aggressive new rate limits, the leak of Claude Code’s source code, and the dread consequences of having software written 100% by LLMs. Free newsletter: The Subprime AI Crisis Is Here https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-subprime-ai-crisis-i…
11:22