Better Offline

Monologue: Silicon Valley is A Cargo Cult

June 24, 2026·8 min·4-min readsolotechnology
Podzilla Summary (4 min)
TLDR
Ed Zitron argues that OpenAI is manipulating its financial reporting to mask massive losses, particularly by reclassifying inference costs as sales and marketing, all to sustain a 'cargo cult' mythology that AI will inevitably become profitable and dominant—despite no real evidence of sus

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Mentions

Books, people, and resources mentioned in this episode.

People

Ed ZitronAndrej KarpathyIlya Sutskever

Companies

OpenAIAnthropicMicrosoftCoca Cola Corporation

Topics

Artificial IntelligenceMachine LearningStartupsTech IndustryTech NewsVenture Capital

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