Tech's hyper-growth era is ending, with online 100 million new people getting online between 2022 and 2023, and almost every major web platform seeing a decline in growth since 2021. In this episode, Ed Zitron walks you through how tech's decline is driving the tech industry to try and sell you useless products like the metaverse, cryptocurrency and generative AI.

Original Air Date: 6.5.24

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In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how the “does AI have ROI?” debate is coming at the worst possible time for two companies that can’t afford to slow down thanks to their $1.1 trillion in compute commitments.

Newsletter: AI Doesn’t Have ROI https://www.wheresyoured.at/ai-doesnt-have-roi/ 
Ed on Bloomberg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbKDmkJPVvI 
The AI industry's profit problem is getting bigger, says Goldman Sachs' equity research chief
https://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-ai-boom-profit-problem-semiconductor-chip-companies-investment-2026-6 
Bloomberg: AI’s Bills Are Bigger Than Ever, And Coming Due https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-06-04/the-ai-boom-s-next-test-is-the-roi-worth-the-cost 
Axios: AI sticker shock hits corporate America https://www.axios.com/2026/05/28/ai-spending-roi-enterprise-costs 
Uber COO story: https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-andrew-macdonald-ai-token-spending-harder-justify-2026-5 

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In this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by economist Paul Kedrosky to talk about why nobody can find the ROI of AI, why there won’t be a Dot Com Bubble-style recovery for AI data centers, and how Google’s $80bn equity sale shows we’re at the top.

https://paulkedrosky.com/

The Nick, Dick and Paul Show: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFbDiETo29GTIjg6Lk4imig

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In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how AI’s move to token-based billing has revealed that absolutely nobody has a way of measuring AI’s ROI - and how these massive costs might finally burst the bubble.

Companion newsletter:
https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-revenge-of-the-business-idiot/

Axios: AI sticker shock hits corporate America https://www.axios.com/2026/05/28/ai-spending-roi-enterprise-costs 

Uber COO story: https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-coo-andrew-macdonald-ai-token-spending-harder-justify-2026-5

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In this week's Better Offline, Ed Zitron runs you through how Uber’s COO said the quiet part out loud - that AI’s outputs and efficacy do not match up with its ruinous costs - and how despite its bluster, the AI industry’s grift is failing.

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In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through Anthropic’s claims it will be non-GAAP EBITDA profitable for Q2 2026 by having SpaceX discount its compute costs, and how said revenues don’t match up with its CFO’s sworn affidavit or previous reporting on its finances.

Companion newsletter:
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https://www.flyingpenguin.com/wheres-ed-anthropic-told-court-5-billion-but-public-19-billion/

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In this episode, Ed Zitron is joined by Steve Burke of GamersNexus to talk about NVIDIA’s alleged GPU shipments to China, how AI is choking the PC gaming industry, and how mad Jensen Huang keeps getting on podcasts.

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GamersNexus:
Yes, This All Seems Very Legitimate - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUbJDrL6ZfM 
Support GamersNexus’ AI Surveillance Dystopia Series: https://store.gamersnexus.net/ai-dystopia 
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In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs you through how LLMs and the obsession with AI is actively destroying the fabric of the tech industry.

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On this week’s Better Offline, Ed Zitron is joined by the hosts of the Ben & Emil show to talk about how the markets have been driven insane by semiconductor buzz and social media hysteria.

https://benandemilshow.com/

https://www.youtube.com/@benandemilshow

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This week’s Better Offline is a recording of a panel held by Clarion West in Seattle earlier this year with Cory Doctorow and Ed Zitron, discussing enshittification, The Rot Economy, and the destruction of modern tech platforms, moderated by Whitney Beltrán.

Original Air Date: 11.12.25

Cory Doctorow: https://craphound.com/
Whitney Beltrán: https://brightwhitney.com/

Get involved with Clarion West: https://www.clarionwest.org/get-involved/give/

Clarion West is a nonprofit literary organization that runs an acclaimed six-week residential workshop every summer, online classes and workshops, one-day and weekend workshops, a reading series every summer, and other events throughout the year. At Clarion West, you’ll be among award-winning and best-selling writers in science fiction, fantasy, games, horror, and more. Our workshops and classes are taught by world-class instructors from across the field of speculative fiction. Wherever you may be in your career, whether novice or sage, we offer a diverse listing of classes that is packed with valuable information to take your writing to the next level.

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In this week's Better Offline monologue, Ed Zitron runs through how 70-80% of Amazon and Microsoft’s AI revenue and capacity is taken up by OpenAI and Anthropic, and how capacity constraints across the industry are a result of hyperscalers sacrificing their infrastructure to the least-profitable startups of all time.

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