The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

The Man Who Calls BS On AI: AI Is The World’s Greatest SCAM, And They All Know It! | Ed Zitron

August 27, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Ed Zitron has spent the past three years arguing that the generative AI industry is the world’s largest con. On The Diary Of A CEO, he laid out the case in stark financial terms: the entire enterprise rests on a circular system where a handful of unprofitable companies are kept alive by the very tech giants they are supposed to disrupt, and the math has never added up.

The Circular Economy of AI

Zitron’s central argument is that the AI boom is not driven by real demand or profitable products. It is a closed loop of capital. He points to the six leading AI companies—Anthropic, Amazon, Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Google—and notes that almost all of their reported AI revenue comes from just two sources: OpenAI and Anthropic. The problem is that both companies are profoundly unprofitable. OpenAI alone lost $20.9 billion last year.

“They are misleading the entire world,” Zitron says. “None of these people could just say, ‘Yeah, we’re on the path to making this profitable,’ because they can’t.”

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:33) **The Core Thesis: AI as a "Con"** - Ed Zitron states his central argument that generative AI is fundamentally a con, sold as magic but is actually expensive, unreliable cloud software.
  • 2 (04:40) **The "Circular Economy" of AI Revenue** - Zitron explains that the majority of AI revenue is generated by two unprofitable companies, OpenAI and Anthropic, which are funded by the very tech giants they sell to.
  • 3 (08:20) **Adoption vs. "Non-Consensual Push"** - Zitron challenges the narrative of rapid AI adoption, arguing it is driven by force-feeding the technology to users and widespread fear-mongering.
  • 4 (11:22) **The True Cost of AI and Token Economics** - Zitron reveals the unsustainable cost structure of AI, where companies subsidize heavy usage, leading to massive losses for providers.
  • 5 (14:54) **The Unsustainable Business Model** - Zitron dismantles the argument that AI companies are simply "spending ahead of value," asserting that the math does not work and the technology is not improving fast enough.
  • 6 (21:58) **The Limits of Moore’s Law and Hardware** - Zitron refutes the idea of exponential improvement, arguing that hardware breakthroughs are not keeping up with the massive costs and energy demands of AI.
  • 7 (28:58) **The "Intern" Analogy vs. Human Context** - Zitron and Bartlett debate the value of AI by comparing it to a human intern, with Zitron arguing that AI lacks the context, trust, and ability to learn that a human possesses.

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Guests on this episode

Ed Zitron

Show Notes

Tech critic Ed Zitron exposes the AI bubble, why OpenAI and Anthropic are burning billions, the fake AI boom, and why the crash could wipe out the ENTIRE economy!

Ed Zitron is a British AI critic and one of the most cited voices warning that the AI industry is one giant bubble. He hosts the 'Better Offline' podcast, reaching over a million monthly downloads, and writes the newsletter 'Where's Your Ed At'. He is the founder and CEO of the PR firm EZPR, and is currently writing his upcoming book, 'Why Everything Stopped Working'. 


He explains: 
■ Why he believes generative AI is a “con” 
■ The real reason OpenAI and Anthropic can't turn a profit 
■ Why data centers could leave a $500 billion debt bomb 
■ Why superintelligence is a myth sold by tech billionaires 
■ Why AI won't take your job, no matter what CEOs promise


Chapters

  • 00:00:00 Intro
  • 00:02:15 AI Is A Con
  • 00:05:55 How Much Power Data Centres Really Need
  • 00:07:42 Is Widespread AI Adoption Manipulation Or Do People Actually Like Using It?
  • 00:11:40 The Actual Cost Of AI And How Tokens Actually Work
  • 00:15:49 Is The Spending Of AI Companies Justifiable?
  • 00:19:47 Will The Rate Of Improvement Of AI Go Up, Like Previous Innovations?
  • 00:24:03 How Bad Are AI Mistakes?
  • 00:26:34 Comparing Human Error To AI Hallucinations
  • 00:31:11 If The Output Is The Same, Does It Matter If Humans Or AI Created It?
  • 00:33:58 Can We Trust AI Like We Trust Humans?
  • 00:38:17 Would People Use AI If They Paid The Honest Cost?
  • 00:42:15 How Does The AI Bubble Compare To The Dot-Com Bubble?
  • 00:47:22 Does AI Demand Match The Cost And Risk Of Data Centres?
  • 00:52:26 Is AI Making Websites Like Google Worse?
  • 00:58:26 Ads
  • 01:00:30 Is AI Job Disruption A Lie?
  • 01:10:02 Could Your Narrative Be Helping AI Companies?
  • 01:14:02 How Dangerous Is AI Cyberhacking
  • 01:17:10 Is The AI Industry Creating Economic Growth?
  • 01:18:53 How Would The US Beat China In The AI Race?
  • 01:19:33 Is Robotics A Threat To Jobs?
  • 01:23:03 What Do You Think About Agentic AI?
  • 01:24:43 Is The Adoption Of AI The Same As The Rise Of The Internet?
  • 01:27:46 The Overhype Of AI
  • 01:30:03 What Do You Use Generative AI For?
  • 01:33:21 Has AI Gotten More Intelligent?
  • 01:34:09
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

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