Better Offline - Monologue: How The Media Keeps Inflating Bubbles

Episode Date: April 17, 2025

In this week's monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through how the media's lackluster approach to critiquing the powerful led to the needless, unsustainable AI bubble - and how things could change for the better. Vote for Better Offline's "Man Who Killed Google Search" as the best business podcast episode in this year's Webby's! Open until April 17! Vote today!https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/individual-episode/business Vote for Weird Little Guys in this year’s Webbys! https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2025/podcasts/individual-episode/crime-justice  --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/  Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron https://bsky.app/profile/edzitron.com https://www.threads.net/@edzitronSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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AllZone Media. Hello and welcome to this week's better offline monologue. I am your host, Ed Zittron, of course. Better on. So if you're listening to this as the episode's air, you're in the middle of a two-part episode about the systemic risk caused by Open AI, a company that's always been unsustainable and is ultimately rigged for collapse. But today I wanted to turn to a question I've been asked a few times. What are the ways the media can avoid doing this in the future and what are the things that they could have done differently? Well, it starts pretty simple.

I don't believe the media, and this partly falls upon the people running media outlets, actually knows enough about the subject matter, be it the technical side or the financial side of these companies. If you've ever read an article about tech that just didn't seem to make sense, like say about an AI company, like an obtuse series of sentences that sounds rational, but when you really think about it doesn't explain what it does, it's because the writer doesn't actually understand what they're saying, and that's because they're rarely given the time or incentivized in any way for knowing what it is they're talking about. They're just there to kind of get it out the door, and well, that and an alarming amount of tech writers are edited by editors that don't know a fucking thing. When ChatGPT launched, the press absolutely lost their shit despite nobody being able to describe what it actually did and why it was the future, other than it could create an image or a block of text based on a prompt. And this was about the level of nuance that we'd see applied to Open AI for pretty much the rest of history. Egregious extrapolations were made in part because the media was far too willing to just copy paste or quote whatever Sam Altman said. When interviewed on stage at the Wall Street Journal's Tech Live event in October 2023, a reporter allowed Sam Altman to say that ChatGPee's, and I quote, has this larval reasoning capacity that's going to get better and better. And this was a great moment to say, I'm sorry, Sam, what the fuck are you talking about?

And to be clear, this was October 2023. It would be just under a year later that they would release an actual reasoning product. No one's bothered to return to that, of course. I realize I sound like I'm being nasty or facetious, but here, right here was an opportunity to push back on the narrative. In part because the narrative was a guy will say fucking anything and anybody will print. The question, of course, would have been, can you explain what this means? And once he mumbles out some nonsense, say, I'm still not sure I understand. I genuinely believe that there are some reporters who don't want to push against the grain, but I think that there are plenty more that are scared of being

wrong. Well, you're still wrong if you allow a man to lie. Sam Altman became a billionaire because he was able to blather on nonsensically about whatever he wanted, knowing that the crowd of Gormless business types would rather say, wow, he's so smart. I ask the future than admit that they have no idea what he fucking meant. Really fixing these problems starts with making people like Sam Altman of Open AI and Dario Amadeo Anthropic actually explain themselves and holding their feet to the fire, even lightly on their promises in the economics underlying their companies. You can beat this shit, you can do it. And early on, Sam Altman actually been pushed back on, he would not have been able to do this. And indeed, had everyone not just copy-paced it any time Sam Altman said anything

about, I don't know, this chat GPT will eventually be an intelligent friend and knows everything about you. I believe he said that, or he just said AI will be. These are the times to say, I don't know, print it in and say Sam Altman lies. Sam Alman made something up. I realize the media writ large is very bad at this, but it's so much easier in tech. The fact that both open AI and Anthropic burned over $5 billion in 2024 is abominable. And any and all interviews should have brought this up and doggedly demanded a timeline for profitability, an unaccepted vagueness or dodging. And I just want to be clear, I know that this, if you remember the media listening to, so like, I won't get Sam Ormotton again, I won't get, I won't get, I won't get Barry Amaday.

Who fucking cares? These interviews suck. Every, I think I've listened to or watched every Sam Orkman interview that's online, and they're boring. They're like eating cardboard. He's not an endearing speaker. Wario Amadee is even worse. That bloviating fuck wit. Blah, blah, blah.

In 2027, the computer's going to be my best friend and my girlfriend. Well, he's married. I'm not saying Dario's. Anyway, Dario's not going to fuck the computer. You've got me on the record. The point is, you're afraid of losing access, but you're also afraid of having a hostile interview. First of all, skill issues. Second of all, why are you afraid?

Why would you possibly be afraid? These men are far from invincible. Sam Wormwoodman is a solid con artist and a carnival barker, but when faced with blunt questions and even the slightest hint of memory about what he just said, he'd crumble. All of them would. Honestly, I media train people for a living. These people are weak. They're poorly trained and speciously informed and have no idea what to do. If you just refuse to black, like, you just sit on a question. If you're just like, no, I'm not happy with your answer. I don't understand. That doesn't make sense. Or even, hey, why won't you

give me a straight answer? Crazy, crazy question. You could just ask any of them here. You could do it today. Now, the other problem is that journalists too regularly find ways to ask these obtuse, muddied questions, in part because they want to find a way to sound like they're being aggressive to their readers without ever really showing any real aggression. And let me give you one of my favorite examples. In May 2024, Nilai Patel of The Verge, a man who has never met an executive outside of Intuit that he didn't want to let ramble, interviewed Sundar Peshai, the CEO of Google, and gave one of the single worst interviews I've seen in my life. Nilai Patel, as a lawyer, as the editor-in-chief of the Virgin, a reporter with over a decade of experience, possibly more,

asked multiple questions of over a hundred words. Objection, compound question! Which may seem like he's being thoughtful, but is actually what I like to call the buffet, an attempt to give the illusion of nuanced analysis and conversation where you're actually giving the person you're interviewing the opportunity to answer the question they'd like to. Sometimes these points are more like rambling statements, which again may seem harmless, like Nelai is trying to have a conversation, but this is the CEO of fucking Google, you're interviewing.

him. Not up. At one point, Nilay spends 159 words asking Sundar Peshai whether he expected publishers to act negatively to AI-powered search results. But he did so in such a clodgy way that Sundar Pashai is able to wave it off, at which point Niliq commits the ultimate sin, one very common in the tech media, where he doesn't listen to Pishai's answer and immediately asks another question, based on some theory he has called Google Zero, where the traffic from Google ends, which was already happening, Neelight. You talk to one of the many talented people at your fucking outlet. This, by the way, is the real fundamental flaw of American journalism, where an interviewer asks the question, doesn't listen to the answer, then asks another. I cannot express enough.

How many times this happens with tech CEOs, how much advantage they take of it, and how quickly they collapse if you listen to their answer, and I don't know, ask the follow-up question relevant to it. Neelai's interview could have been far more direct. Hey, why does Google search suck now? I've got eight different examples of it's sucking. Why are these bad. Nilai does have an example, searching for best Chromebook, and he has this clumsy, mumbling, meandering bullshit thing about how and the query. Well, the query in there, I didn't say, what is the best Chromebook? I did this and that, and he just like fumbles around with it. And then allows Sundar to just kind of ramble at him.

Neelai, you could just ask a simple fucking question, you're a lawyer, man. I don't know. I don't know, man. Maybe you're more concerned with being fucking famous. The reason I'm so angry is that the AI bubble was inflated on interviews like these. I realize Neilie Patel wants to continue getting access to the executives. But had he directly said, search is bad, here's the proof it's bad, and AI results are worse, and refuse to back off of it. That would have had a meaningful effect on Google's willingness to push this shit. It would have shown other journalists' solidarity that they too could step up and spit in the face of these people. And I know some of you are going to say, Ed, you can't spit in the face of them. I only feel like that because they want to

run away so bad, because they don't want to have a real interview. because they don't have anything to say. They don't want to say it. And the same goes for Sam Altman or Wario Damario Amadei or any other AI executive. They've garnered thousands of headlines and billions of dollars of funding by making shit up, or using lies of omission, or just being very vague and allowing people to fill in the gaps for them, which then gets published in the media,

which then gets pushed to investors who then line up to invest in shit that doesn't work or does not exist or can never exist. I even believe that Access Journalism can continue, We just need to show that there's a deep intolerance across the industry for marketing bullshit, a brick wall in front of anyone who would bullshit, and an interest in having actual conversations versus regurgitated talking points, and nodding to an audience of half-conscious Patagonia gargoyles. And I want to bring something up. I run a PR firm.

I media train people. This is actually how fucking startups are talked to by journalists. You are a seed startup or a series A. You get asked these fucking questions all the time. You get grilled. You get absolutely beaten to shit. But once you reach a certain scale, once you're worth, I don't know, some 300 billion theoretical dollars that you fit into a narrative, suddenly the gloves are off. And that's when the jerkin starts. I realize that was quite gross. But look, if you're listening to this as a member of the media and think I'm being mean to these executives, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from having fun, interesting conversations about the shit you love. There's nothing, nothing, nothing wrong with knowing subjects deeply and finding reasons to be excited. But please, fuck, actually learn what you're talking about and be excited about something that's actually happening.

But I think that that might be the problem deep down. That's the ultimate problem with the tech media. I don't think enough people writing about technology actually know or give a shit about technology, or at least know enough to do their jobs. They see these executives as their sports teams, factions to ally behind, only learning enough about the tech to be able to write embargoed articles about whatever the next thing that OpenAI does. even if they don't really understand or care. Readers and listeners deserve better.

And when all of this shit collapses, I believe they'll start treating some of the members of the tech media with well-deserved scorn. Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy, not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.

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