Ep 386: Was 2025 a Great or Terrible Year for AI? (w/ Ed Zitron)

2025 was a year that was saturated in AI news, from Deep Seek, through claims of economic “blood baths,” to to GPT-5, Sora, and Chatbot girlfriends. Frankly, it was exhausting. As we now look back on 2025 an interesting question arises: all in all, did this end up being a good or bad year for AI? To help me answer this question, I’m joined by hard-hitting AI commentator Ed Zitron, who’s been everywhere in the media in recent months helping to make sense of the wild claims being thrown in the general public’s direction. Together we go through the biggest AI stories of the year to try to make sense of what just happened.

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Below are the questions covered in today’s episode (with their timestamps). For instructions on submitting your own questions, go to calnewport.com/podcast.

INTERVIEW

– Was 2025 a Great or Terrible Year for AI (w/ Ed Zitron) [3:03]

CAL REACTS TO COMMENTS:

– Is the Internet Becoming Television? [1:58:05]

YOUTUBE TITLE

– Was 2025 A Good Or Bad Year for AI? (Cal Newport and Ed Zitron Break it Down) | Cal Newport

LINKS:

Buy Cal’s latest book, “Slow Productivity” at www.calnewport.com/slow
Order a signed copy of “Slow Productivity” here: https://peoplesbooktakoma.com/event/cal-newport/
Cal’s monthly book directory: bramses.notion.site/059db2641def4a88988b4d2cee4657ba?v=448bf8afad0740d18f6b109b4bd40d51
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yv5976z9po
http://www.axios.com/2025/01/23/davos-2025-ai-agents
https://blog.google/technology/google-deepmind/gemini-model-updates-february-2025/
https://openai.com/index/sora/
https://openai.com/index/introducing-gpt-4-5/
https://ai-2027.com/
https://fortune.com/2025/05/28/anthropic-ceo-warning-ai-job-loss/
https://www.media.mit.edu/publications/your-brain-on-chatgpt/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2025/08/07/chat-gpt-5-release-date-open-ai/85566627007/#:~:text=GPT%2D5%20release%20date,release%20date%20for%20Part%202
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/open-questions/what-if-ai-doesnt-get-much-better-than-this
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-bubble-building-spree-55ee6128
https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/openai-and-nvidia-announce-strategic-partnership-to-deploy-10gw-of-nvidia-systems
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/technology/openai-sora-video-app.html
https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-opus-4-5
https://www.ft.com/content/064bbca0-1cb2-45ab-85f4-25fdfc318d89
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_WEmjygNK0

Thanks to our Sponsor:

This episode is sponsored by Better Help:

https://www.betterhelp.com/deepquestions
https://www.reclaim.ai/cal
https://www.expressvpn.com/deep
https://www.calderalab.com/deep

Thanks to Jesse Miller for production, Jay Kerstens for the intro music, and Mark Miles for mastering.

DEEP QUESTIONS