CZM Rewind: The Academics That Think ChatGPT Is BS
Better Offline13 Elo 2025

CZM Rewind: The Academics That Think ChatGPT Is BS

In a paper released earlier this year, three academics from the University of Glasgow classified ChatGPT's outputs not as "lies," but as "BS" - as defined by philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt in "on BS" (and yes I'm censoring that) - and created one of the most enjoyable and prescient papers ever written. In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by academics Michael Townsen Hicks, James Humphries and Joe Slater in a free-wheeling conversation about ChatGPT's mediocrity - and how it's not built to represent the world at all.

Paper: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5
Michael Townsen Hicks: https://www.townsenhicks.com/
Joe Slater: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/humanities/staff/joeslater/

Original Air Date: 7.18.24

YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more.

BUY A LIMITED EDITION BETTER OFFLINE CHALLENGE COIN! https://cottonbureau.com/p/XSH74N/challenge-coin/better-offline-challenge-coin#/29269226/gold-metal-1.75in

---

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

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jaksot(225)

Hater Season: Victoria Song & Alex Cranz

Hater Season: Victoria Song & Alex Cranz

Better Offline’s “Hater Season” - an ongoing roundtable with tech’s greatest haters - continues as Ed talks with Victoria Song of The Verge about “wellness products,” bullshit workout metrics and blac...

25 Helmi 59min

Monologue: AI Isn't Replacing Software Companies, Calm Down About Claude Code

Monologue: AI Isn't Replacing Software Companies, Calm Down About Claude Code

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through why AI isn’t replacing all software companies, and why the hype behind Claude Code is utterly specious.Save $10 off a year of my pr...

20 Helmi 8min

Hater Season: Caleb Wilson, Juniper and Arif Hasan

Hater Season: Caleb Wilson, Juniper and Arif Hasan

Better Offline’s “Hater Season” - an ongoing roundtable with tech’s greatest haters - continues as Ed talks with Kill The Computer’s Juniper and Caleb and Arif Hasan of Wide Left about prediction mark...

18 Helmi 59min

Monologue: No, Something Big Isn't Coming

Monologue: No, Something Big Isn't Coming

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through why Matt Shumer’s “Something Big Is Coming” is deceptive misinformation peddled by a guy who previously tried to defraud the AI com...

13 Helmi 6min

Hater Season: Cal Newport on AI Reporting

Hater Season: Cal Newport on AI Reporting

Better Offline’s “Hater Season” - an ongoing roundtable with tech’s greatest haters - continues as Ed talks with computer science professor and writer Cal Newport about the ways in which the media fai...

11 Helmi 1h 6min

Monologue: Is Oracle Screwed?

Monologue: Is Oracle Screwed?

In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through the world finally realizing that NVIDIA’s $100bn deal with OpenAI was BS, and the very real possibility of Oracle’s collapse.Save $...

6 Helmi 8min

Hater Season: Openclaw with David Gerard

Hater Season: Openclaw with David Gerard

In the first episode of Better Offline’s “Hater Season” - an ongoing roundtable with tech’s greatest haters - Ed is joined by David Gerard of Pivot to AI to talk about Openclaw/Clawdbot/Moltbot, how s...

4 Helmi 38min

AI Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble: Part Four

AI Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble: Part Four

In the final part of this week’s Dot Com Bubble series, Ed Zitron walks you through to the logical endpoints of his arguments about the AI bubble - a 40%-90% collapse of NVIDIA’s revenues, tens of bil...

30 Tammi 11min