ars live

ars-live:-is-the-ai-bubble-about-to-pop?-a-live-chat-with-ed-zitron.

Ars Live: Is the AI bubble about to pop? A live chat with Ed Zitron.

As generative AI has taken off since ChatGPT’s debut, inspiring hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and infrastructure developments, the top question on many people’s minds has been: Is generative AI a bubble, and if so, when will it pop?

To help us potentially answer that question, I’ll be hosting a live conversation with prominent AI critic Ed Zitron on October 7 at 3: 30 pm ET as part of the Ars Live series. As Ars Technica’s senior AI reporter, I’ve been tracking both the explosive growth of this industry and the mounting skepticism about its sustainability.

You can watch the discussion live on YouTube when the time comes.

Zitron is the host of the Better Offline podcast and CEO of EZPR, a media relations company. He writes the newsletter Where’s Your Ed At, where he frequently dissects OpenAI’s finances and questions the actual utility of current AI products. His recent posts have examined whether companies are losing money on AI investments, the economics of GPU rentals, OpenAI’s trillion-dollar funding needs, and what he calls “The Subprime AI Crisis.”

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Credit: Ars Technica

During our conversation, we’ll dig into whether the current AI investment frenzy matches the actual business value being created, what happens when companies realize their AI spending isn’t generating returns, and whether we’re seeing signs of a peak in the current AI hype cycle. We’ll also discuss what it’s like to be a prominent and sometimes controversial AI critic amid the drumbeat of AI mania in the tech industry.

While Ed and I don’t see eye to eye on everything, his sharp criticism of the AI industry’s excesses should make for an engaging discussion about one of tech’s most consequential questions right now.

Please join us for what should be a lively conversation about the sustainability of the current AI boom.

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Ars Live: Consumer tech firms stuck scrambling ahead of looming chip tariffs

And perhaps the biggest confounding factor for businesses attempting to align supply chain choices with predictable tariff costs is looming chip tariffs. Trump has suggested those could come in August, but nearing the end of the month, there’s still no clarity there.

As tech firms brace for chip tariffs, Brzytwa will share CTA’s forecast based on a survey of industry experts, revealing the unique sourcing challenges chip tariffs will likely pose. It’s a particular pain point that Trump seems likely to impose taxes not just on imports of semiconductors but of any downstream product that includes a chip.

Because different electronics parts are typically assembled in different countries, supply chains for popular products have suddenly become a winding path, with potential tariff obstacles cropping up at any turn.

To Trump, complicating supply chains seems to be the point, intending to divert entire supply chains into the country to make the US a tech manufacturing hub, supposedly at the expense of his prime trade war target, China—which today is considered a world manufacturing “superpower.”

However, The New York Times this week suggested that Trump’s bullying tactics aren’t working on China, and experts suggest that now his chip tariffs risk not just spiking prices but throttling AI innovation in the US—just as China’s open source AI models shake up markets globally.

Brzytwa will share CTA research showing how the trade war has rattled, and will likely continue to rattle, tech firms into the foreseeable future. He’ll explain why tech firms can’t quickly or cheaply divert chip supply chains—and why policy that neglects to understand tech firms’ positions could be a lose-lose, putting Americans in danger of losing affordable access to popular tech without achieving Trump’s goal of altering China’s trade behavior.

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ars-live:-consumer-tech-firms-stuck-scrambling-ahead-of-looming-chip-tariffs

Ars Live: Consumer tech firms stuck scrambling ahead of looming chip tariffs

And perhaps the biggest confounding factor for businesses attempting to align supply chain choices with predictable tariff costs is looming chip tariffs. Trump has suggested those could come in August, but nearing the end of the month, there’s still no clarity there.

As tech firms brace for chip tariffs, Brzytwa will share CTA’s forecast based on a survey of industry experts, revealing the unique sourcing challenges chip tariffs will likely pose. It’s a particular pain point that Trump seems likely to impose taxes not just on imports of semiconductors but of any downstream product that includes a chip.

Because different electronics parts are typically assembled in different countries, supply chains for popular products have suddenly become a winding path, with potential tariff obstacles cropping up at any turn.

To Trump, complicating supply chains seems to be the point, intending to divert entire supply chains into the country to make the US a tech manufacturing hub, supposedly at the expense of his prime trade war target, China—which today is considered a world manufacturing “superpower.”

However, The New York Times this week suggested that Trump’s bullying tactics aren’t working on China, and experts suggest that now his chip tariffs risk not just spiking prices but throttling AI innovation in the US—just as China’s open source AI models shake up markets globally.

Brzytwa will share CTA research showing how the trade war has rattled, and will likely continue to rattle, tech firms into the foreseeable future. He’ll explain why tech firms can’t quickly or cheaply divert chip supply chains—and why policy that neglects to understand tech firms’ positions could be a lose-lose, putting Americans in danger of losing affordable access to popular tech without achieving Trump’s goal of altering China’s trade behavior.

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today!-ars-live:-what’s-up-with-the-sudden-surge-in-temperatures?

Today! Ars Live: What’s up with the sudden surge in temperatures?

At 1pm on Thursday, we encourage you to join us for a live chat with Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist and researcher at Berkeley Earth. We’ll talk a bit about how he got into climate science and ended up at Berkeley Earth and the role that organization plays in the world of climate science. It was launched by a physicist who was somewhat skeptical of the work being done by climate scientists, but it has evolved into one of the key groups that does the math needed to track the planet’s temperatures.

For the past couple of years, those temperatures have seen a remarkable rise to record highs, at one point setting a yearlong string where every month set a record for the warmest instance of that month on record. The rise leaves us at risk of exceeding key climate targets much earlier than expected and has left the climate science community scrambling to explain the intensity of the heat. So we plan to ask Zeke a bit about what scientists are thinking about the dramatic nature of these changes, attempts to explore the relationship between temperatures, and things like tipping points and individual weather events.

And all that leads to the key question: What does this tell us about where our climate is likely to go over the rest of this century?

After that, we’d like to turn things over to your questions. Is there anything you’ve always wanted to know about climate science but didn’t know who to ask? Zeke may be your guy—and if not, then he almost certainly knows who is. So please join us for this discussion, happening Thursday, June 26, at 1 pm US Eastern Time.

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Ars Live recap: Where does NASA go from here?

Our discussion with Reuters’ Joey Roulette and WaPo’s Christian Davenport. Click here for transcript.

Recently, during the first Ars Live event of this year, two noted space journalists joined Ars space editor Eric Berger for a discussion of NASA’s future in the age of the second Trump administration.

During the hour-long discussion, Christian Davenport of The Washington Post and Joey Roulette of Reuters covered a range of issues, from uncertainty at the space agency to the likelihood of NASA sponsoring a humans-to-Mars mission any time soon.

This is an especially frenetic time in space policy. In the days since this video was recorded, President Trump canceled the longstanding nomination of private astronaut Jared Isaacman to become NASA administrator—at the time we recorded the video, Senate approval was assured, and a vote was imminent. Then Trump and SpaceX founder Elon Musk had a serious falling out, with the two trading nasty words on social media and culminating in Musk threatening to end Dragon spacecraft missions before pulling back.

“It’s a fascinating time right now to be a space journalist, to do what we get to do, to write about what we get to write about at this time,” Davenport said. “Everyone says, you know, journalism, it’s a first rough draft of history. I believe that to be true. I think people are gonna look back at this time, 10, 20, 30 years from now, as a seminal moment.”

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ars-live:-four-space-journalists-debate-whether-nasa-is-really-going-to-mars

Ars Live: Four space journalists debate whether NASA is really going to Mars

I’m incredibly excited, as part of the Ars Live series, to host a conversation with three of the very best space reporters in the business on Thursday, May 29, 2025, at 3: 00 pm EDT about the future of NASA and its deep space exploration ambitions.

Joining me in a virtual panel discussion will be:

  • Christian Davenport, of The Washington Post
  • Loren Grush, of Bloomberg
  • Joey Roulette, of Reuters

The community of professional space reporters is fairly small, and Chris, Loren, and Joey are some of my smartest and fiercest competitors. They all have deep sourcing within the industry and important insights about what is really going on.

And there are some juicy things for us to discuss: expectations for soon-to-be-confirmed NASA administrator Jared Isaacman; the viability of whether humans really are going to Mars any time soon; Elon Musk’s conflicts of interest when it comes to space and space policy; NASA’s transparency in the age of Trump, and more.

Please join us for what will be a thoughtful and (if I have anything to say about it, and I will) spicy conversation about NASA in the age of a second Trump administration.

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ars-live:-how-profitable-is-starlink?-we-dig-into-the-details-of-satellite-internet.

Ars Live: How profitable is Starlink? We dig into the details of satellite Internet.

Let’s talk —

How has Starlink has gone from zero to profitability in five years?

A stack of 60 Starlink satellites being launched into space, with Earth in the background.

Enlarge / A stack of 60 Starlink satellites launched in 2019.

SpaceX began launching operational Starlink satellites five years ago this month. Since then, the company has been rapidly developing its constellation of broadband satellites in low-Earth orbit. SpaceX has now launched about 6,000 satellites with its Falcon 9 rocket and has delivered on its promise to provide fast Internet around the world. Today, the company is the largest satellite operator in the world by a factor of 10.

But is this massive enterprise to deliver Internet from space profitable?

According to a new report by Quilty Space, the answer is yes. Quilty built a model to assess Starlink’s profitability. First, the researchers assessed revenue. The firm estimates this will grow to $6.6 billion in 2024, up from essentially zero just four years ago. In addition to rapidly growing its subscriber base of about 3 million, SpaceX has also managed to control costs. Based upon its model, therefore, Quilty estimates that Starlink’s free cash flow from the business will be about $600 million this year.

So, what does it mean for this industry that Starlink has gone from zero to profitability in five years? What’s next for the network? Are there credible competitors to Starlink in OneWeb, Amazon’s Project Kuiper, or other planned megaconstellations? Can low-Earth orbit accommodate all of these satellites?

Please join me for a discussion of Starlink and these questions with Caleb Henry, the director of research for Quilty. Henry is a true expert in the area of satellite-based Internet, and we’ll get into the weeds of this topic. We’ll also be taking your questions.

This will be the first Ars Live event we’ve done in a few years. During these discussions, reporters and editors at Ars Technica speak with industry leaders about the most important technology and science news of the day. So please join us at 2 pm ET (18: 00 UTC) on June 11 on our YouTube livestream.

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