The Tech Report
Welcome to the Tech Report, where you can keep up to date with everything you need to know from the fast-changing world of technology. Every week we’ll bring you interviews with leading experts, journalists and commentators on everything from the future of AI to tech bro meltdowns. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
“Banks Are Herd Animals” | Ed Zitron on the AI Debt Slow Boil
“It’s kind of like a student loan where your mum or your dad co-signs, except your mum is Sundar Pichai.”
The Tech Report's Will Guyatt talks with Ed Zitron about his latest newsletter article 'Credit Crunch,' and how raising debt is becoming more costly for many key players in the AI business.
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"Superintelligence Is 'Completely Stupid' – Eli the Computer Guy
"If Apple comes out with AI AirPods, you might call the police." Eli the Computer Guy joins the Tech Report's Will Guyatt to discuss the White House rebranding of AI as Superintelligence and grapples with accusations that Google has been 'benchmaxxing' their latest AI model, Gemini Argon 4.
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“There’s no such thing as Rogue AI” David Gerard
Following Sam Altman’s suggestion that the world should accept “some bad things” in exchange for AI, The Tech Report’s Will Guyatt joins Pivot to AI’s David Gerard to discuss whether it's necessary to endure bad things - and whether anybody at OpenAI is still concerned about safety.
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"AI is a multipole Enron" | David Gerard
Will Guyatt from The Tech Report talks to David Gerard from Pivot-to-AI about Oracle referring to a gas-pipeline delay at a mega data centre as an act of God, and why the business of building AI infrastructure increasingly looks like a house of cards. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_tech_reprt/ Facebook: @TheTechReport
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“I’m really starting to see these companies as criminal enterprises” | Eli the Computer Guy
“Rogue AI agent is going to become the word of 2026.” Eli the Computer Guy talks to The Tech Report’s Will Guyatt about a new MIT Technology Review article which says almost every claimed AI advance this summer was overhyped.
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_tech_reprt/ Facebook: @TheTechReport
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Hyperscalers are hiding a massive secret about uninstalled GPUs | Ed Zitron
“I estimate $200bn to $300bn worth of GPUs are either in warehouses or sitting in unpowered data centres.”
Writers of Where’s Your Ed At and host of the Better Offline podcast Ed Zitron joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the data center overbuild and Oracle issuing a force majeure notice over expected delays to it’s data center project in New Mexico.
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AI wasn’t made for you | Paris Marx
“The threat of AI is there to force down wages and essentially force down the leverage of workers.”
Host of the Tech Won’t Save Us podcast and author of Hyperscalers Paris Marx joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the intersection between AI and labor movements as the AI backlash grows and new figures reveal support for unions are at a record high.
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Frontier AI is getting rejected by businesses | Dean Baker
“They need trillions of dollars in revenue. Who’s going to pay it?”
Senior Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research Dean Baker joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about how some of the founding principles of the AI industry are now in question after business leaders admit they’re not using frontier models.
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OpenAI is going to lose 90% of its revenue | Eli the Computer Guy
“Nobody cared about the model.”
Eli the Computer Guy talks to The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound about the tech underpinning the AI hype and how the industry is moving away from reliance on frontier models.
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AI can’t afford to slow down | Ed Zitron
“They’re talking about super intelligence and AI that trains itself so you take your eye off of what’s happening today.”
Writers of Where’s Your Ed At and host of the Better Offline podcast Ed Zitron joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about if the AI industry can afford to slow down and why industry leaders are calling for a pacing of development in the first place.
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AI Bubble: ‘This could humiliate the largest companies in the world’ | Ed Zitron
“Half of Nvidia’s revenue could literally be sitting in warehouses.”
Writers of Where’s Your Ed At and host of the Better Offline podcast Ed Zitron joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about why the AI industry is continuing to buy AI chips despite reports that significant amounts of GPUs are going uninstalled.
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AI Safety: ‘Sam Altman should face a grand jury’ | Eli the Computer Guy
“If you drag Dario Amodei and Sam Altman in front of a grand jury I think we’ll solve a lot of these problems incredibly quickly.”
Eli the Computer Guy talks to The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound about the AI safety, regulation and the possible explanation for why OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI are really calling for the pace of AI development to be slowed down.
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AI is about to his a cashflow wall | Ed Zitron
“The vast majority, including the richest of investors do not know what they’re investing in. They have no idea.”
Writer of Where’s Your Ed At and the host of the Better Offline podcast Ed Zitron talks to The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound about the exaggerated claims AI will eradicate the human race and the next stage in the commoditisation of AI, compute futures.
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We must pop the AI bubble sooner rather than later | Cory Doctorow
“If enshitificaiton is what you do when you’ve grown your market all you can and then you squeeze it, then AI is what happens when you run out of squeezing.”
Author of The Reverse Centaur’s Guide To Life After AI Cory Doctorow join The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the the narrative and economics of Artificial Intelligence and why the AI bubble needs to end sooner rather than later.
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Poisoning AI is trivially easy | Deana Burke
“There is this sort of laundering that’s happening around recommendations that ChatGPT and the chatbots are doing.”
Author of Regular Benchmarks and Co-Founder of Boys Club Deana Burke joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about how chatbots can be easily influenced by marketing information and incorrect data.
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The hype around AI is dying | Eli the Computer Guy
“The excitement around AI is dying at the same time they need more investment.”
Eli the Computer Guy join The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the value proposition of ChatGPT 6 ‘Astra’ as industry leader declare we have entered the era of AGI.
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Only 1% of customers are holding up the AI bubble | Ed Zitron
“1% of customers hold up everything else.”
Author of Where’s Your Ed At and host of the Better Offline podcast Ed Zitron joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the instability of the AI industry as new Ramp statistics reveal that the 80% of OpenAI and Anthropic’s revenue come from 1% of their customers.
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Nobody wants to buy something AI generated | David Gerard
“The use case for AI is work that should not have been done.”
Author and host of Pivot to AI David Gerard joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about why people don’t want to buy or use AI generated products and content as companies like Spotify and LinkedIn take steps to limit and remove AI slop.
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Data center opposition is only going to grow | Jowi Morales
“The opposition to AI data centers is only going to grow.”
Tech journalist Jowi Morales joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the state of the AI build out after Sam Altman admitted people ‘clearly hate’ the developments as the total cost of blocked and delayed data centres reaches $150bn.
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Sam Altman was wrong about AI | Eli the Computer Guy
“Sam Altman has backed himself into a corner.”
Eli the Computer Guy joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about how specialised AI is looking to replace generalist models as OpenAI looks to slow down model development and Thomson Reuters released a model trained on 175 years of proprietary data for $40m.
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AI Bubble: Nvidia can’t rely on other companies debt forever | Ed Zitron
“Each quarters success is content on whether Nvidia’s various fin-dom victims will be able to raise debt.”
Writer of Where’s Your Ed At and host of the Better Offline podcast Ed Zitron joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the instability of Nvidia’s sky rocketing revenue growth and Anthropic’s lofty IPO target as they claim the addressable AI market is $30trn.
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AI has failed to boost productivity says 90% of execs | Edward Ongweso Jr
“Until it’s clear how AI development can be centred on what workers and the consumers want, there’s no reason to expect the public not to hate AI.”
Co-host of This Machine Kills and author of The Tech Bubble newsletter Edward Ongweso Jr joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the lack of identifiable return on investment from AI as 90% of executives admit they still have not seen any boost to productivity from adopting the technology.
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Data center developers have ‘dug their own graves’ | Brian Merchant
“There is no issue that unites the public like hatred of data centers, Big Tech, and the AI companies.”
Author of the book and newsletter Blood in The Machine Brian Merchant joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about AI data center and local opposition after the governor of Texas says developers have “dug their own graves.”
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Nobody wants to buy frontier AI anymore | Eli the Computer Guy
“It may not be feasible of them to say that they’re wrong.”
Eli the Computer Guy joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the uncertain future of frontier AI model development as usage numbers for Anthropic’s Fable 5 have stagnated and OpenAI says they plan to slow down the development of their next model.
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Open AI’s Big Pause is Hubris, not Safety | Alex Hudson
Journalist and AI Advisor Alex Hudson from the Crashed podcast joins The Tech Report’s Will Guyatt to look into Open AI’s slowing down of AI development to overhaul safety systems, They also discuss warnings to UK local government that AI tools are not a silver bullet to recoup £4bn budget cuts, new AI slop research and a start-up’s new writing policy.
Alex Hudson is co-host of the Crashed podcast; a new episode drops every Thursday.
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AI Bubble: ‘The moment they stop spending, they crash’ | Ed Zitron
“Nothing is where it needs to be. Absolutely nothing. Nvidia’s $200bn in revenue, that’s chump change compared to where they need to be in a year.”
Writer of Where’s Your Ed At and host of the Better Offline podcast Ed Zitron joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about Nvidia exacerbating the AI bubble circular financing problem with a newly announced $500bn financing proposal as the SEC exempts some data center backed securities from regulations put in place after the 2008 financial crisis.
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AI has started killing itself | David Gerard
“Why should people read something you couldn’t be bothered to write?”
Author and host of Pivot to AI David Gerard joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about dead internet theory and how AI is eating itself as the CFO of Cloudflare predicts bots will outnumber humans 1000:1 in five years.
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AI is now answering 911 calls | Eli the Computer Guy
“This is a great example of what AI should be used for… as long as the systems are designed properly.”
Eli the Computer Guy joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the pros and cons of using AI in emergency call dispatching as New Orleans, Seattle and Atlanta incorporate AI emergency call answering agents into their 911 systems.
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The AI boom is an illusion built on two companies | Ed Zitron
“If 70% of AI revenues are these two companies, there is no AI industry.”
Writer of Where’s Your Ed At and the host of the Better Offline podcast Ed Zitron joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the state of the AI industry as it’s revealed that over two thirds of hyperscaler AI revenue is coming from two companies.
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AI surveillance is already being abused | Joseph Cox 404 Media
“People don’t want Tech coming into their neighbourhood without permission, or arrogantly.”
404 Media’s Joseph Cox joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the controversies surrounding automatic license plate recognition cameras as the backlash against Flock grows.
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Office workers don’t want to use AI anymore | Paris Marx
“I think we’re in this moment where those promises are starting to kind of erode.”
Tech journalist and author of Hyperscale Paris Marx joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about AI in the workplace after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns one of the biggest risks of AI is ‘cognitive atrophy’ and a study by Adaptavist reveals two thirds of office workers want to go back to working without AI.
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Rogue AI agents aren’t the real problem | Eli the Computer Guy
“They committed felonies and the government isn’t doing anything.”
Eli the Computer Guy joints The Tech Report’s Isaac pound to talk about the negligence of AI companies after OpenAI and Anthropic admit their agents were hacking other companies without their knowledge.
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AI Bubble: ‘We’re coming to the end of this’ | Ed Zitron
“It’s never been about what LLMs can actually do. It’s about the perception of AI’s potential.”
Author of Where’s Your Ed At and host of the Better Offline podcast Ed Zitron joins the Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the state of circular financing in the AI bubble after Nvidia floated a $250 loan guarantee to build OpenAI a data center and another $350 loan of GPUs to put in it.
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AI CEOs are trying to slow down model development | Gary Marcus
“I’ not sure this really is going to be paced. I think it’s almost like a cry for help.”
Author of 'Marcus on AI' and Professor Emeritus of psychology and neural science at NYU joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about OpenAI and Anthropic backing an international slow down of AI model development, that AI pacing might look like and why AI companies should not be left to regulate themselves.
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The AI Lie: ‘It’s not just misleading it’s dangerous’ | House of El: AI
“I’m very exited about this technology… but I’m also deeply critical of how it’s being deployed and I don’t think those two positions are contradictory.”
El from House of El joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the pro-AI vs anti-AI debate, some fundamental misunderstandings that deepen the divide and why differentiating types of artificial intelligence is important when criticising AI companies’ business strategies.
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SpaceX’s crash gives xAI $0 valuation | Eli the Computer Guy
“The debt always comes due.”
Eli the Computer Guy joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the continued drop in the valuation of SpaceX and Tesla as Elon Musk struggles to make the business case for his unproven technology.
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OpenAI’s ads are failing and it can’t survive without them | Ed Zitron
“We’re in a situation where the only way of sustaining free large language models isn’t going to work.”
Author of Where’s Your Ed At and host of the Better Offline podcast Ed Zitron joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to discuss OpenAI falling short of its own internal ad targets and how the company cannot survive without them.
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AI Bubble: Tech giants are hiding $1.65trn in AI debt | Ed Zitron
“People are dreaming so they don’t have to face the nightmare of reality.”
Author of Where’s Your Ed At and host of the Better Offline podcast Ed Zitron joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the $1.65trn of AI debt being kept off the books of the hyperscalers and how the same big tech companies have already protected themselves from the worst of the AI bubble popping.
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Data Centres Canceled: $286bn blocked and delayed by local opposition | Paris Marx
“People do have the power to shut data centers down and to disrupt the narrative of inevitability the tech industry relies on.”
Author of Hyperscalers and host of Tech Won’t Save Us Paris Marx join The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about how the public is turning on the AI industry and has so fare blocked or delayed $286bn of data center development.
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Kimi 3: AI bench marks are just marketing | David Gerard
“Absolutely everyone tunes their models to all the benchmarks.”
Author and host of Pivot to AI David Gerard joins The Tech Report’s Isaac Pound to talk about the value of AI benchmarking following the reaction to Kimi 3, Chinese company Moonshot’s newest open weight LLM that created a shock to US tech stocks.
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