AI and the Cult of Personality
January 29, 2026
Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.
AI or smart software may be in a cluster of bubbles or a cluster of something. One thing is certain we now have a cult of personality emerging around software that makes humans expendable or a bit like the lucky worker who dragged megaliths from quarry to nice places near the Nile River.
Let me highlight a few of the people who have emerged as individuals who saw the future and decided it would be AI. These are people who know when a technology is the next big thing. Maybe the biggest next big thing to come along since fire or the wheel. Here are a few names:
Brett Adcock
Sam Altman
Marc Benioff
Chris Cox
Jeff Dean
Timnit Gebru
Ian Goodfellow
Demis Hassabis
Dan Hendrycks
Yann LeCun
Fei-Fei Li
Satya Nadella
Andrew Ng
Elham Tabassi
Steve Yun
I want to add another name to his list, which can be expanded far beyond the names I pulled off the top of my head. This is none other than Ed Zitron.
Thanks, Venice.ai. Good enough.
I know this because I read “Ed Zitron on Big tech, Backlash, Boom and Bust: AI Has Taught Us That People Are Excited to Replace Human Beings.” The write up says:
Zitron’s blunt, brash skepticism has made him something of a cult figure. His tech newsletter, Where’s Your Ed At, now has more than 80,000 subscribers; his weekly podcast, Better Offline, is well within the Top 20 on the tech charts; he’s a regular dissenting voice in the media; and his subreddit has become a safe space for AI sceptics, including those within the tech industry itself – one user describes him as “a lighthouse in a storm of insane hyper capitalist bullsh#t”.
I think it is classy to use a colloquial term for animal excrement in a major newspaper. I wonder, however, if this write up is more about what the writer perceives as wrong with big AI than admiration for a PR and marketing person?
The write up says:
Explaining Zitron’s thesis about why generative AI is doomed to fail is not simple: last year he wrote a 19,000-word essay, laying it out. But you could break it down into two, interrelated parts. One is the actual efficacy of the technology; the other is the financial architecture of the AI boom. In Zitron’s view, the foundations are shaky in both cases.
The impending failure of AI is based upon the fact that it is lousy technology; that is, it outputs incorrect information and hallucinates. Plus, the financial structure of the training, legal cases, pings, pipes, and plumbing is money thrown into a dumpster fire.
The article humanizes Mr. Zitron, pointing out:
Growing up in Hammersmith, west London, his parents were loving and supportive, Zitron says. His father was a management consultant; his mother raised him and his three elder siblings. But “secondary school was very bad for me, and that’s about as much as I’ll go into.” He has dyspraxia – a coordination disability – and he was diagnosed with ADHD in his 20s. “I think I failed every language and every science, and I didn’t do brilliant at maths,” he says. “But I’ve always been an #sshole over the details.”
Yes, another colloquialism. Anal issues perhaps?
The write up ends on a note that reminds me of good old Don Quixote:
He just wants to tell it like it is. “It’d be much easier to just write mythology and fan fiction about what AI could do. What I want to do is understand the truth.”
Several observations:
- I am not sure if the write up is about Mr. Zitron or the Guardian’s sense that high technology has burned Fleet Street and replaced it with businesses that offer AI services
- A film about Mr. Zitron does seem to be one important point in the write up. Will it be a TikTok-type of film or a direct-to-YouTube documentary with embedded advertising?
- AI is now the punching bag for those who are not into big tech, no matter what they say to their editors. Social media gang bangs are out of style. Get those AI people.
Net net: Amusing. I wonder if Mr. Beast will tackle the video opportunity.
Stephen E Arnold, January 29, 2026
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