Make Fun Of Them, Pt. 1

Summary

Podcast Summary: Better Offline – "Make Fun Of Them, Pt. 1" (July 9, 2025)

Hosted by Ed Zitron, Better Offline delves into the intricate relationship between the tech industry and societal influences. In the episode titled "Make Fun Of Them, Pt. 1," Zitron delivers a scathing critique of prominent tech figures, questioning their intelligence, integrity, and influence.

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1. Introduction to the Episode

The episode opens with Ed Zitron addressing listeners directly, setting a confrontational tone towards influential figures in the tech industry. He focuses primarily on Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and extends his critique to other tech leaders like Sundar Pichai of Google and Satya Nadella of Microsoft.

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2. Critique of Sam Altman and OpenAI

Zitron begins by referencing a 37-minute podcast conversation between Sam Altman and his brother, Jack Altman. He expresses frustration with Altman's communication style and perceived lack of substantive insight.

• Key Points:

  • Superficial Discussions: Zitron criticizes the conversation for being filled with "word salad" and lacking meaningful content.
  • Skepticism of AI Claims: He challenges Altman's assertions about AI's ability to revolutionize science, labeling them as nonsensical.

• Notable Quotes:

  • "Have you ever heard the words come out of his mouth? Look, I'm going to share with you today some of the trenchant insights from Sam Altman... he really is an annoying and stupid dickhead." (03:10)
  • "Sam Altman... sounds like a huge fucking idiot." (04:15)
  • "Even reading back the transcript, I feel what little of my sanity remains kind of stripping away." (07:02)

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3. Analysis of Jack Altman's Remarks on AI

During the conversation, Jack Altman discusses the potential of AI to enhance productivity and discover new scientific breakthroughs. Zitron dissects these remarks, questioning their validity and practical implications.

• Key Points:

  • Productivity vs. Innovation: While acknowledging the potential for AI to boost productivity, Zitron remains unconvinced about claims of AI autonomously advancing scientific discovery.
  • Lack of Concrete Evidence: He notes the absence of substantial examples supporting the transformative impact of AI as portrayed by the Altmans.

• Notable Quotes:

  • "AI will actually discover new science." (03:53)
  • "I think he's heard people say, wow, this is like a good PhD. And that's the entire answer, by the way. It's a completely nonsensical answer." (04:15)
  • "There's definitely not. Like, you definitely can't go say like, hey, chatgpt, figure out new physics and expect that to work." (05:34)

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4. broader Critique of Tech Leadership Communication

Zitron extends his critique beyond OpenAI, targeting other tech leaders for their inability to provide clear, actionable insights. He argues that their communication often obfuscates rather than clarifies the true state of technological advancements.

• Key Points:

  • Obfuscation and Buzzwords: He accuses tech leaders of using vague language and buzzwords to mask the lack of real progress.
  • Media Complicity: Zitron criticizes the media for uncritically elevating these figures, perpetuating their influence without sufficient scrutiny.

• Notable Quotes:

  • "They sound like this for the entire 37 minutes. I didn't have to do anything. I didn't need to make many moves to make them sound like stupid dickheads." (06:15)
  • "When you've spent your entire career being asked friendly or friendly adjacent questions and never having someone say, wait, what does that mean?" (09:10)
  • "These people are powerful because they have names that are protected by the press." (09:45)

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5. Criticism of Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella

Zitron doesn't limit his critique to OpenAI, also lambasting Sundar Pichai of Google and Satya Nadella of Microsoft for their leadership and product decisions.

• Key Points:

  • Sundar Pichai: Zitron mocks Pichai's inability to provide substantive responses, likening his communication to corporate jargon devoid of real meaning.
  • Satya Nadella: He criticizes Nadella for overseeing products like Microsoft Teams and MSN.com, which Zitron deems ineffective and user-unfriendly.

• Notable Quotes:

  • "What are you on about? Sundar? Your answer to a question about whether you anticipate more competition is to say yeah, I think people are going to make shit we haven't come up with yet..." (08:09)
  • "Microsoft Teams is an insulting mess that only sometimes works..." (09:30)
  • "Great job, Satya, you fucking Platt." (10:28)

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6. The Role of Media and Public Perception

Zitron challenges the media's role in perpetuating the status and influence of tech elites, arguing that journalists often fail to hold these figures accountable.

• Key Points:

  • Lack of Accountability: He asserts that the media rarely questions the efficacy and integrity of tech leaders, allowing them to maintain their elevated status unchallenged.
  • Call for Critical Journalism: Zitron advocates for a more investigative approach, urging media outlets to scrutinize and critique the actual performance and impact of these tech giants.

• Notable Quotes:

  • "Most of the media covering these uncritically should feel ashamed of themselves." (09:50)
  • "Why can't we write three of them about how fucked Microsoft Office is, or Google Search is..." (13:15)
  • "These people have at scale, torn down a tech industry that allowed me to be who I am today..." (14:45)

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7. Conclusion and Call to Action

Zitron concludes the episode with a passionate plea to listeners to reject the idolization of tech elites. He emphasizes the need for critical thinking and accountability, urging society to hold these powerful figures responsible for their actions and the products they produce.

• Key Points:

  • Rejecting Idolization: He calls for society to view tech leaders as accountable individuals rather than untouchable icons.
  • Embracing Accountability: Zitron urges listeners to actively question and challenge the decisions and narratives presented by these tech figures.

• Notable Quotes:

  • "I believe it's high time we started mocking these people and tearing down their legends as geniuses." (15:00)
  • "We are their customers and they failed us." (18:25)
  • "We live in an era of digital tinnitus, nagged by notifications..." (26:00)

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Final Thoughts

In "Make Fun Of Them, Pt. 1," Ed Zitron delivers a forceful and unapologetic critique of the current state of tech leadership and media coverage. By dissecting the communications and actions of figures like Sam Altman, Sundar Pichai, and Satya Nadella, Zitron highlights perceived shortcomings and calls for a more accountable and transparent relationship between tech elites, the media, and the public.

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Note: This summary intentionally omits non-content sections such as advertisements, intros, and outros to maintain focus on the episode's primary discussions and analyses.

Transcript

[Ed Zitron]

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[Sam Altman]

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[Ed Zitron]

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[Jack Altman]

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[Ed Zitron]

Call Zone Media hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitron. Of course, Better Offline, and I want to start you off with a little bit of a question. Have you ever heard Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI speak? You ever heard the words come out of his mouth? Look, I'm going to share with you today some of the trenchant insights from Sam Altman. I'm going to start with this agonizing 37 minute long podcast conversation he had with his brother Jack Altman from last month. I warn you, he really is an annoying and stupid dickhead.

[Jack Altman]

Well, I think there will be incredible like other products, like there will be crazy new social experiences. There will be like Google Docs style AI workflows that are just way more productive. You'll start to see like you'll have these like virtual employees. But the thing that I think will be the most impactful on that 5 to 10 year timeframe is AI will actually discover new science.

[Ed Zitron]

Yes, this tech podcast is now actually a food podcast and today's special is the word salad. When asked why he believes AI will discover new science, Altman says, I think we've cracked reasoning in the models, adding that we we've got a long way to go and that he thinks we know what to do. Adding the OpenAI's O3 model is already pretty smart. And that he's heard people say, wow, this is like a good PhD. And that's the entire answer, by the way. It's a completely nonsensical answer. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, a company allegedly worth $300 billion to venture capitalists and SoftBank. He kind of sounds like a huge fucking idiot. But Ed, you cry. You can't just call Sam Altman an idiot. He isn't stupid. He runs a big company. He's super successful. My counter to that, first, just, I can. I'm actually doing it right now. And second, if Altman didn't want to be called stupid, he wouldn't say stupid shit with a straight face to a massive global audience. Now, when his brother Jack asked, so reasoning will lead to science going faster or just new stuff or both. And by the way, that is the question, Sam Altman said, I mean, you.

[Jack Altman]

Already hear scientists who say they're faster with AI. Like, we don't have AI maybe autonomously doing science, but if a human scientist is three times as productive using O3, that's still a pretty big deal.

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah.

[Jack Altman]

And then as that keeps going, then the AI can like autonomously do some science, figure out novel physics.

[Ed Zitron]

At this point, Jack Altman asked if, and I quote, that is all happening as a co pilot now. And I know it sounds like I may have maybe misunderstood him. Maybe I read the transcription. I didn't actually. I listened to the whole thing. In fact. Matasowski, my producer, please play the clip in question. Is it all that happening as a.

[Jack Altman]

Co pilot right now?

[Ed Zitron]

Yeah, there's.

[Jack Altman]

There's definitely not. Like, you definitely can't go say like, hey, chatgpt, figure out new physics and expect that to work. So it is, I think it is currently copilot, like, but I've heard like anecdotal reports from biologists where it's like, wow, it really did figure out an idea. I had to develop it a little bit more, but it made like a fundamental leap.

[Ed Zitron]

Now this is a nonsensical conversation and both of them sound very, very stupid. To be clear, none of this is like, poorly put into context. Like, they sound like this for the entire 37 minutes. I didn't have to do anything. I didn't need to make many moves to make them sound like stupid dickheads. They sound like it on their own. Now let's go to some of the more quotes. So. So this is going to make new science or make science faster? Asked Jack Altman. Yeah, I hear scientists are using AI to go faster and Citation needed there, Sammy. But if a human scientist goes three times faster, need another citation there. Using my model, that would be good. Also, I heard from a guy that he heard a guy who did biology who said this helped. And that's what Sam Altman fucking said.

[Sam Altman]

Even.

[Ed Zitron]

Even reading back the transcript, I feel what little of my sanity remains kind of stripping away. All of this is so good and so phenomenal. Let's give this man $40 billion or more every year until he creates superintelligence that'll fucking work. But. But I want to share with you some of the other incredible quotes from the genius mind of Sam Altman, a person with the integrity of Deepak Chopra and the ability to spout inane, vapid shit that sounds impressive to morons. Like, well, Deepak Chopra, you know, you.

[Jack Altman]

Hear these stories of people who, like, use AI to do market research and like, figure out new products and then, like, email some manufacturer and get some dumb thing made and sell it on Amazon and run ads. Like, there are people that have actually figured out at small scale, in the most boring ways possible, how to put a dollar into AI and get the AI to run a toy business. But it's actually working. Yeah, so that'll climb the gradient.

[Ed Zitron]

Now, you may wonder if the gradient is mentioned at some point elsewhere. It's not, but here's another clip.

[Jack Altman]

So every year before the last, maybe up until last year, I would have said, hey, I think this is going to go really far. But it still seems like there's a lot that we've got to figure out.

[Ed Zitron]

And here's another clip.

[Jack Altman]

If something goes wrong, I would say, like, somehow it's that we build legitimate superintelligence and it doesn't make the world much better, it doesn't change things as much as it sounds like it should.

[Ed Zitron]

And just one more.

[Jack Altman]

So, yeah, I think the relativistic point is really important. But, like, you know, to us, our jobs feel incredibly important and stressful and satisfying. And if we're all just making better entertainment for each other in the future, maybe that's kind of what at least one of us is doing right now.

[Ed Zitron]

It's gobbadugook. It's nonsense, it's bullshit peddled by a guy who has only the most tangential understanding of the technology his company is building that made him a billionaire. Every single interview with Sam Altman is like this, every single one, ever since he became a prominent tech investor and founder, without fail, every time. And the sad part is that Sam Altman is alone at in this Sundar Pichai. When asked one of Nilay Patel's patented 100 word plus questions about Joni I've and Sam Altman's new and likely heavily delayed hardware startup had this to say. I think AI is going to be bigger than the Internet. There are going to be companies, products, categories created which we aren't aware of today. So I think the future looks exciting. I think there's a lot of opportunity to innovate around hardware form factors at this moment. With this platform shift, so I'm looking forward to seeing what they do. We are going to be doing a lot as well and I think it's an exciting time to be a consumer, it's an exciting time to be a developer, so I think looking forward to it. The fuck are you on about? Sundar? Your answer to a question about whether you anticipate more competition is to say yeah, I think people are going to make shit we haven't come up with yet and hardware of some sort will be involved. Well, I think Pichai is likely a little bit smarter than Klammy Sammy in the same way that Satya Nadella is a little bit smarter than Sundar Pichai and in the same way that a Golden Treever is smarter than a Chihuahua. Well, that's it. None of these men are super intelligences, nor when pressed do they appear to have any actual answers or regular intelligences.

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[Ed Zitron]

Now. If you've read the newsletter version of this episode, you'll come across a multi paragraph answer from Satya Nadella when asked on Dwarkesh Patel's podcast how Microsoft will reach $130 billion in revenue from AGI. I'm not going to read it out here, and I don't hate you enough to include a clip, but the question was how do you get Microsoft to $130 billion in revenue? And Satya Dadello's answer is like 150 words. And it's like abundance explosion, GDP will grow, industrial revolution, inflation adjusted percentages. The winners will be the people who do stuff and then productivity will go up. I will link to this interview in the episode Notes because it's fucking nonsense just like the rest of them. And I have this idea, I have this concept I've come up with and it's that we need to stop idolizing these speciously informed goobers. While kinder souls or Zitron haters may hear this and say actually, Satya Nadella is very smart. Stop. I want to stop there. And I suggest that you have a smart person who comes along and tells you what smart sounds like. A smart don't mean long words and nothing. It means actually knowing the shit you're talking about. And look, really, a truly smart person should be able to speak clearly enough that their intent is obvious and clear. Now it's tempting to believe that there's some sort of intellectual barrier between you and the powerful, that these confusing and obtuse things they say, that's the sound of genius, rather than somebody who has learned a lot of smart sounding words without ever learning what they mean. But Ed, they're trained to do this. I am someone who has media trained hundreds of people and there's only so much you can do to steer someone's language. You can't say to son d', eche, hey man, can you sound more confusing? You can, however, tell them what not to talk about and hope for the best. Sure, you can make them practice, sure you can give them feedback. But people past a certain stage of power or popularity are going to talk whoever they want. And if they're big stupid idiots pretending to be smart, they're going to sound exactly like this. Why? Because nobody in the media ever asks them to explain themselves. When you've spent your entire career being asked friendly or friendly adjacent questions and never having someone say, wait, what does that mean? You'll continue to mutate into a pseudo communicator that spits out information adjacent bullshit. I am, to be clear, being very specific about the question, what does that mean? Powerful CEOs and founders never, ever, ever get asked to explain what they're saying, even when what they're saying barely resembles a sentence, let alone an answer. But let's get clear here. Let's think about a hypothetical scenario where your friend just said their dog died. You'd say something like, oh no, what happened? And they let's say they responded with, well, my dog had a tragic yet ultimately final distinction between their ideal and non ideal state due to the involvement of a kind of automatic mechanical device. And when that happened, we realized we'd have to move on from the current paradigm of dog ownership and into a new era, which we both feel a great deal of emotion about and see the opportunities within. You'd probably be a little confused and ask them to explain what they meant. You'd ask, what do you mean by an automatic mechanical dev? What? What does that mean? They then reply with, yeah, exactly. And that was part of the challenge. You see, like the various interactions we have in our day that are challenging. We see a lot of opportunities in this sailing, those challenges. But part of the road to getting around them is facing them head on, which is ultimately what happened here. And while we were involved, we didn't want to be. And so we had to make some dramatic changes. At this point, you still don't really know what happened. Did a car hit their dog? Did they hit their dog with their car in this scenario? Would you nod and say, damn man, that sucks. I'm glad I have such a smart friend. Don't know what happened their dog though. Or would you ask them to explain what they're saying? Would you perhaps ask what it is they meant? Look, Pichai, Altman, Nadella, they've always given this kind of empty brained intellectual slop in response to questions because the media coddles them. These people are product managers or management consultants, and in Altman's case, a savvy negotiator and manipulator known for, and I quote, an absenteeism that rankled his peers and some of the startups he was supposed to nurture as an investor at Y Combinator, according to the Washington Post. And by coddle, I mean that these people are deliberately engaging in a combination of detective work and amnesia where the reader or the listener is forced to simultaneously try and divine the meaning of their answer while also not thinking too hard about the question the interviewer asked. Most importantly because the interviewer forgot already. Look at most modern business interviews. They involve a journalist asking a question, somebody giving an answer, and the journalist saying okay and moving on to the next question, occasionally saying, but what about this? When the appropriate response to many of the answers is to ask them to simplify them so that their meaning is clearer. Look at them. Listen to them. Now, a common response to all of this stuff is to say that interviewers can't be antagonistic. And I just don't think a lot of people understand what that actually means. It isn't antagonistic to say that you don't understand what someone said or that they didn't answer the question you asked. If this is antagonistic to you, you are, intellectually speaking, a giant fucking coward. Because what you're suggesting is that somebody cannot ask somebody to explain themselves, which is what an interview is. And I imagine nobody really wants to do this, because if you actually put these people on the spot, you'd realize the dark truth that I spoke of a few weeks ago, that the reason the powerful sound like idiots is because they're idiots. They sound like business idiots and create products to sell to business idiots because business idiots run most companies and buy solutions based on what the last business idiot told them. Now, I know some of you might hear this and say, these people can't be stupid. These people run companies, they make big deals, they read all these books. And my answer is that some of the stupidest people I have met in my life have read more books than you or I will read in a lifetime. Well, they might sound smart, or they might be smart when it comes to corporate chess moves or saying this product category should do this. None of these men, not Altman, Beshaya and Nadella, actually has a hand in the design or the creation of the things that their companies make. And they Never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever have. Regardless, though, I have a larger point. I believe it's high time we started mocking these people and tearing down their legends as geniuses. They're not better than us, nor are they responsible for anything that their companies build other than their share price, which is a meaningless figure and the accumulation of power and resources. These men are neither smart nor intellectually superior, and it's time to start treating them as such. These people are powerful because they have names that are protected by the press. They are powerful because it is seen as kind of unseemly to mock them because they're rich and running a company. A kind of corporate fealty that I find deeply unbecoming of an adult. We are, at most customers. We do not owe these people anything. We are long past the point when any of the people running these companies actually invented anything they sell. If anything, they owe us something because they're selling us a product, even if said product is free and monetized by advertising. While reporters, as anyone, should have some degree of professionalism in interviews or covering subjects, there's no reason to treat these people as special, even if they have managed to raise a lot of money or their popular product is, like, used by a lot of people. Because if that were the case, we'd have far more coverage of defense contractor Lockheed Martin. They made $1.71 billion in profit last quarter and haven't had a single quarter under a billion dollars in the last year. I realize I'm being a little glib, but the logic behind covering OpenAI is at this point, they make a lot of money and they have a popular product, which is also a fitting description of Lockheed Martin. The difference is that OpenAI has a consumer product that loses billions of dollars and Lockheed Martin has products that make billions of dollars by removing consumers from the earth. Both of them are environmentally destructive. Covering OpenAI doesn't seem to be about the tech, because if you looked at the tech, you'd have to understand the tech. You'd see that the user numbers weren't there outside of the 500 million people using ChatGPT. And of course referring to the generative AI industry. And of those 500 million people, very few are actually paying for the product. And the term user encompasses everything from the most occasional person who [e-mail] out of curiosity, or the people using it as part of their daily lives. If covering OpenAI was about the tech, you'd read about how the tech itself doesn't seem to have a ton of mass market use cases, and that those use cases aren't really the kind of things that people pay for. If they did, there'd be articles that definitively discuss them versus articles in the New York Times about everybody using AI. That boiled down to I use ChatGPT as search now, and I heard a guy who asked it to teach him about modern art. Yet men like Wario Dario Amade and Clammy Sam Altman continue to be elevated because they're building the future, even if they don't seem to have built it yet or have the ability to clearly articulate what the future actually looks like. Anthropic has now put out multiple stories suggesting that its generative AI will blackmail people as a means of stopping a user from turning off the system, something which is so obviously the company prompting its models to do so. Every member of the media covering this uncritically should feel ashamed of themselves. Sadly, this is all a result of the halo effect of being a guy who raised money or a guy who runs big company. We must, as human beings assume these people are smart, that they've never mislead us. Because if we accept that they aren't smart, and they will willingly mislead us, we'd have to accept that the powerful are, well, bad and possibly unremarkable assholes. And if they're untrustworthy people that don't seem to be smart, we have to accept that the world is deeply unfair and caters to people like them far more than it caters to people like us. We do not owe Satya Nadella any respect just because he's the CEO of Microsoft. If anything, we should show him outright scorn for the state of Microsoft's products. Microsoft Teams is an insulting mess that only sometimes works, leaving workers spending 57% of their time either in teams, chat teams meetings, or sending emails. According to A Microsoft study, msn.com is an abomination read by hundreds of millions of people a month, bloated with intrusive advertisements, attempts trick you into downloading an app, and quasi content that may or may not be AI generated. There are few products on the modern Internet that show more contempt for the user other than, of course, the former Skype, a product that Microsoft let languish for more than a decade, so thoroughly engorged with spam that leaving it unattended for more than a month left you with 100 unread messages from Eastern European romance scammers. And Microsoft has finally killed it in May. Great job, Satya, you fucking Platt. Anyway, products like Word and Excel don't need improving, but that doesn't stop Microsoft from trying to bloat them with odd user interface choices and forcing users to fight with prop ups that use an AI powered copilot that most of them hate. Why exactly am I meant to show these people respect? Because they run a company that provides a continually disintegrating service because that service is such a powerful monopoly that it's difficult to leave it if you're interacting with other people or businesses. I think it's because we live in hell. The modern tech ecosystem is utterly vile. Every single day our tech breaks in new and inventive ways. Our iPhones resetting at random, random apps not accepting button presses, our Bluetooth disconnecting our word processors harassing us to try and use AI while no longer offering us suggestions for typos. And I'm referring to Google Docs. You're not insane. It's happening and our useful products replaced with useless shit like how Google's previously functional assistants were replaced with generative AI that makes them tangibly worse than so that Google can claim that they have 350 million monthly active users on fucking Gemini. Yet the tech and the business media acts like everything is fine. It isn't fine, it's all really fucked. You can call me a cynic or a pessimist or throw trash at me or throw tomatoes or try and hose me down when I go outside, or call me every name under the sun, but the stakes have never been higher and the damage never more widespread. Everything feels broken and covering these companies as if it isn't is insulting to your readers and your own intelligence. Look at the state of your computer or phone and tell me anything feels congruent or intentional rather than an endless battle of incentives. Look at the notifications on your phone and count the number of them that have absolutely nothing to do with information you actively need.

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[Ed Zitron]

Now as I wrote the newsletter version of this and this script, I got a bunch of notifications. I'm gonna recount them because most of them are still on my phone. I have a notification from Adobe Lightroom, an app I use occasionally to edit photos that tells me to elevate any scene now, enhance people, sky, water and and more with quick actions. I don't know. Zero Cam, an app that brands itself as the first anti AI camera app where you capture moments not megapixels and got a ton of press about being this stripped down app sent me a notification asking if I took a photo Today. Amazon notified me that there's a deal picked just for me, a battery pack that I bought several months ago. Every single company that sends notifications like these should be mocked and possibly put in prison. But if we have accepted such vile conditions as the norm, I just believe that society is kind of lost. Apple should be tarred and feathered for allowing companies to send spam notifications. Yet they're not. Because by and large, Apple is less vile and exploitative than Microsoft, Google and Amazon, who also get pretty much a free ride. Now if you're listening to this as a member of the tech press, seriously, please look at your daily experience with tech. I'm begging you, count the number of times that your day or a task is interrupted by poorly designed software or hardware, such as the many many times zoom or teams is a problem with Bluetooth or a website just doesn't load. Like sometimes Google, you type google.com into the bar and it just doesn't load. This also happens with other websites. Like type something into your browser. Just doesn't work. Just happens. So cool. How about when software you're either using either actively impedes you. Like did you want to use AI or just refuses to work in a logical way, such as Google Drive. Look at this. You're covering tech, right? Maybe you should cover that the tech ain't working so good. There are tens of thousands of stories like this every day, and if you talk to actual people, you'd see how widespread it is. Or maybe, I don't know, see that it's happening to you. Look, I'm not trying to call anyone out, which is why I'm not using specific names. But there are people responsible here and the tech media writes about them every day. I realize it seems weird to constantly vent that a company is releasing broken, convoluted software, but hey, if you can write 300,000 stories about how crime ridden New York City is, why can't we write three of them about how fucked Microsoft Office is, or Google Search is, or even just one, like one a month one? And why can't we talk to the people in power about it? Why can't we ask them questions? Is it because the questions are too hard to ask? Is it because it feels icky to interrupt Satya Nadella as he waffles on about using Copilot his entire life by saying, hey man, Microsoft Teams is broken. Tons of people feel this way. Why is it so fucked? Or why have you let MSN.com turn into an AI slop hub? Or just a hub of disinformation? Oh no. You say, oh no, I won't get my access. I'm gonna lose my access. Who gives a shit? Write a story about how Microsoft has become so unbelievably profitable as its products get worse and talk about how weird and bad that is from the world. Ask the dealer those tough questions or publish that Microsoft's PR won't let you. These people are neither articulate nor wise, and whatever intelligence they may claim to have doesn't seem to manifest in good products or even intelligent statements. So why treat them like they're smart? Why show them any deference or pleasantries? These people have crapp up our digital lives at scale and they deserve contempt or at least a stern fucking reception. I realize I'm repeating myself again and again and again, but why is there such a halo around these fucking bozos? I'm serious. Why are we so protective of these people? Why? We're more than happy to criticize celebrities, musicians, professional sports players and politicians. Fucking barely. But the business class is somehow protected outside of the usual willingness to say that Elon Musk might have maybe done something wrong. I'm also not denying there are critics. We have Molly White, we've got Edward Anguasso Jr. Brian Merchant, and a major outlet no less, CNN. One of the greatest living business writers in Alison Morrow. I believe that tech criticism is a barely explored and hugely profitable industry. If we treat tech journalism less like the society pages and more like a force to hold the most powerful people in the world accountable as they continually harm billions of people in subtle ways. People are angry and they aren't stupid and they want to see that anger reflected in the stories they read and the meek deference we show to the dumb fucking tech asshol is the opposite of that. As I've said before, we live in an era of digital tinnitus, nagged by notifications, warring with software ostensibly built for us that acts as if we're the enemy. And if we're the enemy, we should treat those building this software as the enemy in return. We're their customers and they failed us. The entire approach to business owners in the tech media is ridiculous. These people are selling us a product and the product fucking sucks. Put aside however you feel about generative AI for a second and face one very simple point. It doesn't do enough. It's really not cool at all, and we're all being forced to use it, rather than the obvious benefits that everyone claims it has just making us do so. Now I realize some members of the tech media may want these people to succeed, or want to be the person who tells everybody that they did so. I get that there are rewards for you, promotions, new positions, TV appearances repeating exactly what the powerful did and why they did it, or a plush role as the company's head of communications. But I am telling you, your readers and viewers are waking up to it and they feel like you have contempt for them and contempt for the truth. It's easy and common to try and dismiss my work as some sort of haters bullshit. A cynical approach to a tech industry. That's true. Trying Brave New things or some other such shit. In my opinion, there's nothing more cynical than watching billions of people get shipped increasingly shitty, inexpensive solutions and then get defensive of the people shipping them and hostile to the people who are complaining that the products they use suck. I'm angry at these companies because they have at scale, torn down a tech industry that allowed me to be who I am today, and their intentional disgraceful moves fill me full of disgust. I've watched the tech media move away from covering technology and more toward covering the people behind technology to the point that the actual outputs, the software and the hardware we use every day have taken a backseat to stories about whether or not Elon Musk uses a computer, which is meaningless, empty gossip journalism built to be shared by peers and nothing else. And please, please do not talk to me about optimism. If you are blindly saying that everything OpenAI does is cool and awesome and interesting, you aren't being optimistic. You're telling other people to be optimistic about a company's success. It isn't optimistic to believe that a company is going to build powerful AI despite it failing to do so. It's propagand. And yes, this is also the case if you simply don't do the research to form a real opinion. I am not a pessimist because I criticize these companies and framing me as one is cowardly and ignorant. If you're so weak willed and speciously informed that you can't see somebody criticizing a company without outright dismissing them as a hater or a pessimist, you're an insult to journalism or analysis, and you know it in your wretched little heart. My art sings with a firm belief in the things I think founded on rigorous structures of knowledge that I've gained from reading things and talking to people because something in me is incapable of being swayed by something just because everybody else is. You're assuming people are right because it's inconvenient and uncomfortable to accept that they may not be, because doing so requires you to reckon with a market wide hysteria founded on desperation and a lack of hyper growth markets left in the tech industry. Worse still, in engaging with faux optimism, you are failing to protect your readers and the general public. And if that's what you want to do, ask yourself why? Why do you want these companies to win? What is it you want them to win? Do you want them to be rich? Do you want to be the person that told people they would be first? What is it that you want? What is the world you want and what does it look like? And how does doing your job in this way work towards creating that world? This isn't optimism. It's horse trading or strategic alignment behind powerful entities. It is choosing a side, because your side isn't the reader of the truth. If it was, even if you believe generative AI was powerful and that they simply didn't understand, your duty would be to educate the reader in a clear, set and obvious way. And if you can't find a way to do so, acknowledging that and explaining why True optimism requires you to have a deep, meaningful understanding of things so that you can engage in real hope, a magical feeling, one that could bore you through the most challenging times. What many claim is optimism is actually blind faith, the likes of which you'll see at a roulette or a craps table, or of course, knowingly peddling propaganda. Breathe, head, breathe. They can't get you behind the microphone anyway. We live in hell. As I've said before. Just like Churchill once said, when you're going through hell, keep going. You're in the middle of a good rant keep ranting. Tune in to the next episode where I will pick this right back. Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio [e-mail] m a t t o s o w s k-I.com you can email me at ezeteroffline.com or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to Chat wheresyoured app to visit the Discord and go to R betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening. Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media.

[Jack Altman]

For more from Cool Zone Media, Visit.

[Ed Zitron]

Our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out.

[Jack Altman]

On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.

[Sundar Pichai]

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This is an iHeart podcast.