The Largest Man On The Beach with Ed Zitron

About this episode

Ed Zitron returns to discuss the ethical implications of AI and the motivations of major tech companies.

Ed Zitron is back on the show, because it’s been too long since he last came on to yell at us about AI. And there’s a lot to yell about! To kick it off, we get the latest on the Big AI Companies, and the seriously unethical house of cards they’ve built for all of us. Other than the ones Anthropic is providing to the Dept. of Defense, who are the actual targets for these products? Why are all of these companies dumping their vast fortunes into a product that devalues the human experience not just for their users but also everyone else, when they could be pouring that money into the kind of cool gadgets we used to have? How can all of us idiots even claim that this is Artificial Intelligence, when we don’t even know what intelligence is? Do you want to hear your question answered on the pod? Well, give us a call at 909-726-3720. That is 909-PANERA-0! Stuff We Talked About Clammy Sam Altman Vibe-code speedballs Teaching for the test The JD Vance of OpenAI Tokenmaxxing Credits - Hosts: Drew Magary & David Roth - Producer: Brandon Grugle - Editor: Mischa Stanton - Production Services & Ads: Multitude Podcasts - Subscribe to Defector ! About The Show The Distraction is…

People in this episode

Hosts: Drew Magary, David Roth

Guest: Ed Zitron

Topics covered

• AI ethics
• technology
• human experience
• Big AI Companies
• society
• culture

Keywords

• AI
• technology
• ethics
• human experience
• Big AI Companies
• OpenAI
• Anthropic

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Anthropic, OpenAI, Defector Media, Multitude Podcasts

More episodes of The Distraction: A Defector Podcast

• The Provenance of the Lobster with Giri Nathan · June 11, 2026 · 57 min
• Don’t Tell Anyone How I Live with Leander Schaerlaeckens · June 4, 2026 · 59 min
• A Larry David Look-a-like with David Grann · May 28, 2026 · 56 min
• You Can’t Zarf Someone in Pips with Ian Livengood · May 21, 2026 · 54 min
• Look at What They Done Been Through with Patrick Redford · May 14, 2026 · 59 min
• Introducing: No Such Thing · May 11, 2026 · 14 min