“here’s the crux of the matter: generative AI is a product with no mass-market utility - at least on the scale of truly revolutionary movements like the original cloud computing and smartphone booms - and it’s one that costs an eye-watering amount to build and run.”
Our reading, the sentence that was checked:
Generative AI has no mass-market utility on the scale of the cloud or smartphone booms, and it costs an enormous amount to build and run.
Assessment: Unresolved Evidence as of
Where and when Ed Zitron wrote it
Where's Your Ed At, How Does OpenAI Survive?, paragraph 2.
- Said
- Source observed
- live page, full text, public
- Evidence as of
- the cutoff for this assessment
- Assessment recorded
- assessment wyea-to-serve-altman-544f0a-a1
We recorded 38 claims from this post. See every claim from this post.
The wording above is the version this site observed on 2026-10-28. The source may have been edited after 2024-07-29. This page does not claim the wording was captured then.
What the claim commits to
- Kind
- Observation
- Deadline, as the speaker wrote it
- None stated. This site does not add one.
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Deadline state on 2026-10-29
- No horizon (the release’s reference date)
Conditions
- on the scale of cloud computing and smartphone booms (qualifier, stated by the speaker)
From the speaker
- generative AI
- no mass-market utility
- at least on the scale of truly revolutionary movements like the original cloud computing and smartphone booms
- costs an eye-watering amount to build and run
Our interpretation
- The ordinary reading is that generative AI had not demonstrated widespread practical usefulness comparable with the early cloud and smartphone booms. The qualification does not assert that nobody found it useful.
- The observation describes the state around publication. Use the latest completed calendar quarter, April–June 2024, together with observations available for July before publication.
- Useful adoption and demonstrated benefits matter; registrations, trial use and investment alone do not establish utility.
- The cost clause concerns generative AI generally, rather than a specified company's financial metric. Company-specific cost estimates provide context.
- Neither the comparison years nor a numerical threshold for comparable utility or enormous costs is supplied.
Counts as supported if: Comparable evidence of sustained use and practical benefits shows substantially less mass-market utility than the early cloud and smartphone booms, alongside evidence of very large development and operating costs.
Counts as contradicted if: Comparable evidence establishes widespread practical utility on the stated scale by publication, or shows that development and operating costs were modest. Evidence against only one component must be identified as such.
Retrospective: these criteria were written after the outcome was public.
Current assessment
Was it true for the period described?
Outcome: Unresolved
The record was checked, and the evidence available by the cutoff does not settle it.
Scored on a plain reading. The speaker named no measure for this claim, so it was judged on the reading an informed reader would take, stated below under our interpretation. Both reviews had to find that reading fair.
- Evidence as of
- Deadline state when assessed
- No horizon
- Assessment recorded
- Policy version
- 2026-10-28.7
Rationale
The contemporary survey shows practical uses and satisfied users, alongside limited routine use. It therefore challenges an absolute denial of usefulness, but Zitron explicitly qualified his claim by comparison with earlier technology booms. The retrieved evidence does not establish that comparison. Historical training estimates and contemporary spending projections indicate substantial costs, but do not settle both parts of the compound observation.
Limitations
- Survey use and perceived usefulness are imperfect measures of economic utility.
- The smartphone comparison measures ownership in a different population and period.
- The financial reporting is partly projected and secondary.
Evidence (4 items)
Context only: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism,
private use
Why it matters here: The March–April survey found limited routine use but also practical uses and generally positive assessments among users. These findings qualify an absolute denial of utility without establishing equivalence to either historical boom.
- Where
- Section 1, discussion of Figure 4; Figures 2, 5 and 7 provide related usage and usefulness findings
- Publisher
- Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism
- Kind of source
- Independent measurement
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: Pew Research Center,
35% of all adults
Why it matters here: Pew measured smartphone ownership among American adults. This supplies a historical reference, but ownership in 2011 cannot be treated as the same measure as routine AI use in 2024.
- Publisher
- Pew Research Center
- Kind of source
- Independent measurement
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: Epoch AI and Stanford University, via arXiv,
$40M
Why it matters here: The paper places this GPT-4 estimate five years after its 2017 comparison. It documents expensive historical training, but does not measure industry-wide development and operating expenses during the target period.
- Publisher
- Epoch AI and Stanford University, via arXiv
- Kind of source
- Preprint, not peer reviewed
- Measures
- OpenAI, Estimated GPT-4 final-training-run compute expense, USD millions, estimate, 2022 to 2022
- Describes events of
- Public from
Context only: The Decoder,
$7 billion
Why it matters here: This contemporary account describes projected full-year OpenAI expenses, not realized expenses for the target period. It is secondary reporting because the underlying article could not be read and no equivalent primary financial disclosure was retrieved.
- Publisher
- The Decoder
- Kind of source
- Secondary summary
- Measures
- OpenAI, Projected full-year model training and inference expenses, USD billions, estimate, 2024-01-01 to 2024-12-31
- Describes events of
- Public from
What would settle it
Comparable mid-2024 evidence of regular beneficial use and economic value against clearly identified cloud and smartphone boom periods, together with realized development and operating costs.
Where it was said (1)
Said once in the sources this register covers.
: Where's Your Ed At, How Does OpenAI Survive?
here’s the crux of the matter: generative AI is a product with no mass-market utility - at least on the scale of truly revolutionary movements like the original cloud computing and smartphone booms - and it’s one that costs an eye-watering amount to build and run.
- Where
- paragraph 2
- Published
- 2024-07-29
- Source observed
- , live page
- Access
- full text, public
History
Assessment versions
- Assessment wyea-to-serve-altman-544f0a-a1: Current. Outcome: Unresolved. Evidence as of 2026-10-28. Public date not recorded.
Recorded events
Assessment publishedBy this site
First assessment published after both reviews and the final-text check passed.