Summary

Zitron argues that generative AI has no measurable return on investment, and that this isn't a temporary problem but a structural one: the cost of an AI task can't even be measured because hallucinations and ever-expanding token usage make outcomes unpredictable. He contends that AI companies deliberately obfuscated true costs through subsidized subscriptions with rate limits instead of real prices, conditioning users to ignore what their usage actually costs—a con now unraveling as enterprises move to token-based billing and panic over their bills. He rejects the Dot Com comparison, arguing that bubble left behind useful, cheap fiber infrastructure, whereas AI data centers full of GPUs are single-purpose, ruinously expensive to operate, and leave no salvageable 'redemption arc.' If AI truly worked, he says, the economic effects—collapsed software, accounting, and law industries, obvious AI-built companies—would be impossible to ignore, yet four years and a trillion dollars in we still trade in hypotheticals and reassurances that AI is 'real.' His conclusion: if AI's ROI can't be pointed to, it doesn't exist, and anyone who relies on LLMs is the victim of a manufactured con.

Key Insight

AI's return on investment can't be measured because it doesn't exist—the entire industry runs on subsidized pricing and manufactured hype designed to hide the fact that the technology's real costs vastly exceed its real value.

Spicy Quotes (click to share)

• 6

  If you can't measure how good something is, how much it might cost, or what your return on investment might be, it's fair to ask why you're even paying for it in the first place.

• 4

  AI is more expensive today than it was three years ago, and it is not getting cheaper.

• 8

  The reason nobody can show you the ROI from AI is that AI does not have a return on investment.

• 8

  The technology 'worked (?),' but did not provide value in doing so. Sounds like it didn't fuckin' work to me!

• 7

  If AI had ROI, we wouldn't be debating whether it had ROI.

• 7

  The demand for AI services is a mirage built on subsidized subscriptions, and companies paying the actual costs are already screaming for mercy.

• 8

  This is a product, and if you feel the need to defend a product you are the victim of a con.

• 8

  You spent a trillion dollars to make it somewhat easier to code some things sometimes but not in such a way that it actually results in anything.

Tone

combative, critical, profane