If you are not taking flak, you are not over the target. What flak? Death threats, stalkers, and maybe most disturbingly... insults about my gorgeous flowing hair.

Where was I flying that I attracted such miserable people? Was it because I insulted the mighty AI industry? No. The answer is much weirder: I publicly called one of AI's biggest critics on their bullshit.

I asked a man named Ed Zitron to sit down with me for an interview at the AI4 conference on his home turf of Las Vegas last week. He declined. Twice. So I went to his talk at the conference, and I was shocked at what I saw.

The corners of his lips turned downward into a permanent scowl as he sped through slides, his gestures contrived and self-conscious. He rattled off numbers too quickly to process while explaining how the entire AI industry is rotten and provides no value to anyone, ever. The flurry was punctuated by a few mid-morning jabs at the most prominent figures in the field, including calling Dario Amodei "Wario."

Pause for polite laughter. I often overthink things, and I overthought Ed. My initial impression was correct: he is a PR man. Everything else is a carefully manufactured illusion, yet another heatwave shimmer taking on a temporarily corporeal form in the Land of Neon Lights and Illusions.

Perfect stories only exist in novels. I've never run into a perfect story in life. My channel found its footing earlier this year when I started digging into the circular financing loop among AI labs, hardware manufacturers, the construction industry, and others.

Sam Altman tells a lovely perfect story about how AI will save the world. Zitron tells a perfect story about how AI will destroy the world. Both of those stories are wrong.

AI is genuinely useful technology, and people use it every day to write code that ships. Altman advertises more value than it currently provides. Zitron dismisses value that already exists. Regular workers are left trying to make decisions with two sales pitches where evidence should be.

Zitron and Altman are actually the same person. Both of them look like they could probably use some more time in the sun, but that's where the similarities start, not end. Zitron and Altman's financial success depends entirely on you buying (literally) their perfect stories.

Sam Altman has never had a real job. I made the case in Sam Altman Has Never Had a Real Job. Ed Zitron has never written a line of code in his life.

Both of them have one skill set: turning a vision into money. You'd tell a perfect story too if your livelihood depended on it. Ed is a multimillionaire and Sam is a billionaire. You get accustomed to a certain lifestyle, and you have to maintain it at all costs.

Luckily I have a day job and technical skills, so I can tell the nuanced version. That's exactly what I'll keep doing on my channel, in this newsletter, and with any other content I make.

I've made numerous videos detailing the circular financing loop in AI on my channel. Earlier this week, I released my teardown of how Ed has mastered PR to dupe thousands into believing his perfect story about "AI bad": Ed Zitron Is Wrong About AI: Inside His Con.

I also built a place where we can keep talking after the algorithm loses interest. The Discord is now the central free Dr. J community going forward. It is for AI, power, work, the show, and everything that does not fit cleanly into a feed.

The public community will stay free. When I launch paid work later, it will live in separate role-gated sections. I’m not going to yank access to the community for a quick buck.

The move: join the free Dr. J Discord. Read the rules, say hello in #a-general, and watch #a-announce for new work and community news.

The threats are not changing the work. For the rest of you, stay tuned. More good shit to come, as usual. Until then, I see some dark clouds gathering on the horizon, and it looks like a heavy monsoon is revving up.