Ed Zitron

Ed Zitron is a British-born, Las Vegas-based writer who spent years running the tech PR firm EZPR before turning on the industry he once promoted. Through his newsletter Where’s Your Ed At and the iHeart podcast Better Offline (launched 2024), he built the definitive vocabulary of AI skepticism — “the Rot Economy,” his thesis that growth-obsessed tech has stopped making things people need — and became cable news’ go-to bubble caller.

The Generative AI Con

Zitron’s case is financial rather than philosophical: he argues large language models blossomed into “one of the most craven cons of the 21st century — a cynical bubble” inflated by Sam Altman, pointing to OpenAI reportedly burning billions more than it earns, circular chip-and-cloud deals, and datacenter buildouts whose math, he says, no one can square. In February 2025’s “The Generative AI Con” he called the technology a financial, ecological and social time bomb, and he told interviewer Guy Kawasaki that OpenAI is “one of the most successful cons of all time.” He has repeatedly predicted the market must crash, calling the moment worse than the dot-com boom.

His scorched-earth certainty has critics beyond the industry: Vox alum Kelsey Piper wrote in 2025 that “AI’s biggest critic has lost the plot,” arguing Zitron ignores genuine capability gains and real revenue growth, and even sympathetic readers note he dismisses every use case rather than the weakest ones. Zitron’s reply is that none of it matters until someone shows him profits — and that tech media exists to ask exactly that question, loudly.