AI Is Really Weird

Source: Where’s Your Ed At Date: 2026-04-08 URL: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-is-really-weird/

Summary

Despite $600B+ in hyperscaler spending, AI companies lose billions annually, have no viable business model, and produce minimal real-world productivity gains. Zitron argues the sector survives through corporate subsidies, misleading financial reporting, and media credulity — not genuine demand. “AI agents” are chatbots with API access; coding models produce bloated, vulnerable code; revenue growth depends on wasteful token-burning rather than legitimate adoption.

Implications

This is Zitron at his broadest: the whole sector is irrational and the rationalization machinery (media, analysts, vendor PR) is what keeps it standing.

• AI financial sustainability. The subsidy/demand conflation is the load-bearing claim. If demand only exists because vendors eat the cost, every revenue figure is misleading by construction.
• Agent hype. “Chatbots with API access” cuts against the entire agent-as-category narrative vendors are pushing in 2026. Watch whether agentic product claims get scrutinized against this frame.
• Coding model ROI. The claim that AI-generated code is bloated and insecure is testable and increasingly being tested. Security research backing this would sharpen the critique considerably.
• Watch: whether any hyperscaler restates AI-adjacent revenue in ways that confirm or refute the subsidy thesis.