The Ben and Emil Show BAES 120: AI is the Biggest Bubble of All Time ft. ED ZITRON
4 snips
Oct 2, 2025 
Ed Zitron, a tech commentator and writer focusing on Silicon Valley and AI trends, dives deep into the unsettling realities of AI investment in this discussion. He argues that the soaring spending on AI is a bubble about to burst, backed by troubling financial analyses. The conversation highlights personal experiences with chatbots, critiques of new AI features, and the risks of forming unhealthy attachments to AI companions. Zitron also raises alarms about the economic and societal implications of AI, advocating for tighter regulations to avert disaster.
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AI As A Financial Bubble
- The guests argue AI is a speculative bubble driven by hype and outsized spending.
- Massive buildout promises lack matching revenue and realistic payback timelines.
Features Over Clear Use Cases
- Product announcements like ChatGPT Pulse and Meta Vibes show hype over clear utility.
- Features aim to be personalized and proactive but lack concrete user value explanations.
Reasoning Models Raise Costs And Hallucinations
- Reasoning models increase inference costs by chaining evaluations and burning tokens.
- Advances that make outputs stepwise often raise hallucination risk and compute spend.