BAES 120: AI is the Biggest Bubble of All Time ft. ED ZITRON

**Ben** (0:00)
The big question is whether or not all of this AI spending is a bubble. I feel very safe in saying yes.

**Ed Zitron** (0:07)
You have committed to failure, there is no doing this. If they gave every dollar just to Sam Altman, the guy who can't even tell you why you're giving the money to him, when you're like, what are you going to do? Sam is like, why can't we do that?

**SPEAKER_3** (0:20)
And then it's going to be really intelligent.

**Emil** (0:22)
It could get agentic at some point.

**Ed Zitron** (0:25)
No one else has a big business doing this, even Claude Code with Anthropic, which is theoretically meant to be super popular. $33 million a month. That's less than the Cincinnati Reds make.

**Ben** (0:37)
What's you do with the Reds?

**Ed Zitron** (0:38)
What if it's stupid? What if they make the AGI and it can't do stuff? And they're like, yeah, we need you to make this a PowerPoint. It's like, no, I don't want to.

**Emil** (0:46)
And I'm just like wasting some small town in like West Virginia's water. And I'm just like, what am I doing with this?

**Ben** (0:53)
Hey, you got this. You know what? You got this. You got this. I hate, you got this. I hate when the robot says, you got this.

**Ed Zitron** (1:00)
I don't ever hear that from it because I'm abusing it.

**Ben** (1:17)
Your hair looks okay.

**Ed Zitron** (1:18)
Oh, thanks, thank you.

**Ben** (1:19)
Were you wearing a hat?

**Ed Zitron** (1:20)
No, it just looks f***ing messy. And he doesn't have a f***ing hairbrush, did he? Now all the f***ing perverts are gonna...

**Ben** (1:26)
Wait, you can't cuss in the first 10 seconds!

**Ed Zitron** (1:29)
I can and I will.

**Ben** (1:37)
Oh, man.

**Ed Zitron** (1:38)
Oh, shuts.

**Ben** (1:39)
Oh, shuts. Well, we should have...

**Ed Zitron** (1:41)
Piddlesticks.

**Ben** (1:43)
I wish I could do the ChatGPT voice to intro us because of what this episode is gonna be about.

**Ed Zitron** (1:48)
I'm sorry, thank you for holding me accountable. It's this, and it's also that.

**Ben** (1:51)
Hey, you got this. You know what? You got this. You got this. I hate you got this. I hate when the robot says, you got this.

**Ed Zitron** (1:58)
I don't ever hear that from it because I'm abusing it.

**Ben** (2:00)
I never, I don't even have it. Oh.

**Emil** (2:02)
You do, don't lie.

**Ben** (2:03)
I have Claude, but I've only used it a couple times.

**Ed Zitron** (2:06)
Oh, I pay for both.

**Emil** (2:07)
He uses it for therapy.

**Ben** (2:08)
I have, that's not correct entirely. I used it like five times over the course. It was one time stretched over the course of five times. One long thing that I was like, and I had another thought. It was like midnight and I was just-

**Ed Zitron** (2:24)
Five times over the course of one time.

**Ben** (2:27)
It was like watching a movie that you broke up in the civil park.

**Ed Zitron** (2:30)
Oh, you have one session where you fucked with it five times.

**SPEAKER_7** (2:33)
Okay, that's not too bad.

**Ben** (2:34)
And it was just, I will say, it was interesting. And it was very insightful. And it wasn't like, yeah, you got this type of shit.
It was very, don't get me wrong. It's not replacing anything for me. I graduated therapy. I got the medal and everything.

**Ed Zitron** (2:52)
Nice.

**Emil** (2:53)
They fixed you.

**Ben** (2:54)
They fixed me. They fixed me.

**Ed Zitron** (2:55)
Like he can be fixed.

**Ben** (2:56)
Well, one part, the other parts are pretty fucked up still. But it was recommended to me by a friend who found herself using it when she was going through some troubles with her immigration stuff. And she was like, I'm kind of ashamed to say it, it was very helpful. And I was like, okay. And she said, it's not replacing human therapist for me. It's just in those moments late at night, if I don't want to bother anybody or I'm just spiraling, it was very easy.
And that's like one of the small, I mean, we'll get to some of the small things.

**Ed Zitron** (3:31)
It's one of those things from like, I'm glad it helped you.

**SPEAKER_8** (3:33)
Yeah.

**Ed Zitron** (3:35)
Okay.

**Emil** (3:35)
I also still am very skeptical that that's a good way to get the help that you need.

**Ed Zitron** (3:40)
But that also doesn't even sound like the help you need. It was like, you needed someone to talk to.