4 ms·

> According to the study, "users report average time savings of just 2.8 percent of work hours" from using AI tools. That's a bit more than one hour per 40 hour

> According to the study, "users report average time savings of just 2.8 percent of work hours" from using AI tools. That's a bit more than one hour per 40 hour work week. Could be data is lagging as sibling comment said but this seems wildly difficult to report on a number like this. It also doesn't take into account the benefits to colleagues of active users of LLMs (second order savings). My use of LLMs often means I'm saving other people time because I can work through issues without communications loops and task switching. I can ask about much more important, novel items of discussion. This is an important omission that lowers the paper's overall value and sets it up for headlines like this.

jaredklewis 1y ago
The headline is about wages and jobs. It’s very possible that AI could result in time savings of 50% of work hours in a week and still have no impact on wages or jobs. This is because the economy is not a static thing. If one variable changes (productivity), it’s not a given that GDP will remain constant and jobs/wages will consequently be reduced. More likely is that all of the variables are always in flux, reacting and responding to changes in the market.
- bredren 1y ago
  Very well, I acknowledge this point. However, the parent comment is about an examination of what has happened so far and facts that feed into the paper and its conclusions. I was focused on what I see as important gaps in measuring impact of AI, and its actual (if difficult to measure) impact right now.
  - jaredklewis 1y ago
    The paper analyzes facts re: wages and jobs, which I think are (comparatively) easy to measure as compared with productivity, and are also an area where people have concerns about the impact of AI. Mostly people aren't worried about productivity itself, which would be weird. "Oh no, AI is making us way more productive, and now we're getting too much stuff done and the economy is growing too much." The major concern is that the productivity is going to impact jobs and wages, and at least so far (according to this particular paper) that seems to not be happening.
    - catlikesshrimp 1y ago
      Won't doing the same job in half the time lead to having to pay half the salary? Indirectly, I mean. You can now hire half the people or pay the same number of people half. Unless twice the work is suddenly required, which I doubt.
      - jaredklewis 1y ago
        No one knows, but if history is any guide, it is very unlikely. I would also be surprised if the twice the work was "suddenly" required, but would you be surprised if people buy more of something if it costs less? In the 1800s ordinary Americans typically owned only a few outfits. Coats were often passed down several generations. Today, ordinary Americans usually own dozens of outfits. Did Americans in the 1800s simply not like owning lots of clothing? Of course not. They would have liked to own more clothing, but demand was constrained by cost. As the price of clothing has gone down, demand for clothing has increased. With software, won't it be the same? If engineers are twice as productive as before, competitive pressure will push the price of software down. Custom software for businesses (for example) is very expensive now. If it were less expensive, maybe more businesses will purchase custom software. If my Fastmail subscription becomes cheaper, maybe I will have more money to spend on other software subscriptions. In this way, across the whole economy, it is very ordinary for productivity gains to not reduce employment or wages. Of course demand is not infinitely elastic (i.e. there is a limit on how many outfits a person will buy, no matter how cheap), but the effects of technological disruption on the economy are complex. Even if demand for one kind of labor is reduced, demand for other kinds of labor can increase. Even if we need less weavers, maybe we need more fashion designers, more cotton farmers, more truckers, more cardboard box factory workers, more logistics workers, and so on. Even if we need less programmers, maybe we need more data center administrators? No one knows what the future economy will look like, but so far the long term trends in economic history don't link technological innovations with decreased wages or unemployment.
        photonthug 1y ago
        I am not an economist but isn’t there increasing evidence that for many goods/services, supply/demand/cost are just not that closely related anymore? I feel like we’ve seen this repeatedly with greedflation and the post Covid “supply shocks” blamed long after they stop being relevant. Prices go up but don’t come down because meaningful competition is simply not present anymore for large sectors. When it is present.. algorithmic price fixing can take the place of other kind of cabals. Outside of goods, there must be more schools than ever before, and more academics qualified to teach at them, but is it bringing down the cost of education?
- jrflowers 1y ago
  > It’s very possible that AI could save 50% of work hours in a week and still have no impact on wages or jobs. I like this sentence because it is grammatically and syntactically valid but has the same relationship to reality as say, the muttering of an incantation or spell has, in that it seeks to make the words come true by speaking them. Aside from simply hoping that, if somebody says it it could be true, “If everyone’s hours got cut in half, employers would simply keep everyone and double wages” is up there with “It is very possible that if my car broke down I’d just fly a Pegasus to work”
  - jaredklewis 1y ago
    The cited statistics is in reference to time saved (as a percent of work hours), not a reduction in paid working hours. But more generally, my comment is not absurd; it's a pattern that has played itself out in economic history dozens of times. Despite the fact that modern textile and clothing machinery are easily 1000x more efficient than weaving cloth and sewing shirts by hand, the modern garment industry employs more people today than that of middle age Europe. Will AI be the same? I don't know, but it wouldn't be unusual if it was.
    - catlikesshrimp 1y ago
      That is the result of using fuel. In spite of efficiency gained, more work is possible; more work is demanded, too: a dress is not lasting a decade now, hopefully one season. More people are also available since the fields are producing by themselves, comparatively. Not to mention less of us die to epidemies, famines and swords.
    - jrflowers 1y ago
      > The cited statistics is in reference to time saved (as a percent of work hours), not a reduction in paid working hours. This makes sense. If everyone’s current workloads were suddenly cut in half tomorrow, there would simply be enough demand to double their workloads. This makes sense across the board because much like clothing and textiles, demand for every product and service scales linearly with population. I was mistaken, you did not suggest that employers would gift workers money commensurate with productivity, you simply posit that demand is conceptually infinite and Jevons paradox means that no jobs ever get eliminated.
datpuz 1y ago
IMO, if you're gaining a significant amount of productivity from LLMs in a technical field, it's because you were either very junior and lacked much of the basic knowledge required of your role, or you performed like you were.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Arctic_fly 1y ago
  Definitely not the case for coding. I'm a capable senior engineer, and I know many other very experienced senior engineers who are all benefitting immensely from AI, both in the code editor and chat interfaces. My company just redid our landing page. It would probably have taken a decent developer two weeks to build it out. Using AI to create the initial drafts, it took two days.
- sanderjd 1y ago
  Sorry but this just definitely isn't true. I would (similarly insultingly) suggest that if you think this is true, you're spending time doing things more slowly that you could be doing more productively by using contemporary tools.
- grandmczeb 1y ago
  IMO, if you haven’t been getting a significant productivity boost from LLMs in a technical field, it’s because you lack the basic brain plasticity to adapt to new tools, or feel so psychologically threatened by change that you act like you do.
  - datpuz 1y ago
    The irony...
- treis 1y ago
  I disagree. Maybe there's savants out there that can write SQL, K8s auto scaling yaml, dockerfiles, React components, backend code, and a dozen other things. But for the rest of us LLMs are helpful for the things we wade into every so often. It's not miraculous but I feel like it saves me a couple hours a week from not going on wild goose chases. So maybe 5% of my time. I don't think any engineering org is going to notice 5% more output and layoff 1/20th of their engineers. I think for now most of the time saved is going back to the engineers.

jaredklewis 1y ago

The headline is about wages and jobs. It’s very possible that AI could result in time savings of 50% of work hours in a week and still have no impact on wages or jobs. This is because the economy is not a static thing. If one variable changes (productivity), it’s not a given that GDP will remain constant and jobs/wages will consequently be reduced. More likely is that all of the variables are always in flux, reacting and responding to changes in the market.

bredren 1y ago
Very well, I acknowledge this point. However, the parent comment is about an examination of what has happened so far and facts that feed into the paper and its conclusions. I was focused on what I see as important gaps in measuring impact of AI, and its actual (if difficult to measure) impact right now.
- jaredklewis 1y ago
  The paper analyzes facts re: wages and jobs, which I think are (comparatively) easy to measure as compared with productivity, and are also an area where people have concerns about the impact of AI. Mostly people aren't worried about productivity itself, which would be weird. "Oh no, AI is making us way more productive, and now we're getting too much stuff done and the economy is growing too much." The major concern is that the productivity is going to impact jobs and wages, and at least so far (according to this particular paper) that seems to not be happening.
  - catlikesshrimp 1y ago
    Won't doing the same job in half the time lead to having to pay half the salary? Indirectly, I mean. You can now hire half the people or pay the same number of people half. Unless twice the work is suddenly required, which I doubt.
    - jaredklewis 1y ago
      No one knows, but if history is any guide, it is very unlikely. I would also be surprised if the twice the work was "suddenly" required, but would you be surprised if people buy more of something if it costs less? In the 1800s ordinary Americans typically owned only a few outfits. Coats were often passed down several generations. Today, ordinary Americans usually own dozens of outfits. Did Americans in the 1800s simply not like owning lots of clothing? Of course not. They would have liked to own more clothing, but demand was constrained by cost. As the price of clothing has gone down, demand for clothing has increased. With software, won't it be the same? If engineers are twice as productive as before, competitive pressure will push the price of software down. Custom software for businesses (for example) is very expensive now. If it were less expensive, maybe more businesses will purchase custom software. If my Fastmail subscription becomes cheaper, maybe I will have more money to spend on other software subscriptions. In this way, across the whole economy, it is very ordinary for productivity gains to not reduce employment or wages. Of course demand is not infinitely elastic (i.e. there is a limit on how many outfits a person will buy, no matter how cheap), but the effects of technological disruption on the economy are complex. Even if demand for one kind of labor is reduced, demand for other kinds of labor can increase. Even if we need less weavers, maybe we need more fashion designers, more cotton farmers, more truckers, more cardboard box factory workers, more logistics workers, and so on. Even if we need less programmers, maybe we need more data center administrators? No one knows what the future economy will look like, but so far the long term trends in economic history don't link technological innovations with decreased wages or unemployment.
      - photonthug 1y ago
        I am not an economist but isn’t there increasing evidence that for many goods/services, supply/demand/cost are just not that closely related anymore? I feel like we’ve seen this repeatedly with greedflation and the post Covid “supply shocks” blamed long after they stop being relevant. Prices go up but don’t come down because meaningful competition is simply not present anymore for large sectors. When it is present.. algorithmic price fixing can take the place of other kind of cabals. Outside of goods, there must be more schools than ever before, and more academics qualified to teach at them, but is it bringing down the cost of education?
jrflowers 1y ago
> It’s very possible that AI could save 50% of work hours in a week and still have no impact on wages or jobs. I like this sentence because it is grammatically and syntactically valid but has the same relationship to reality as say, the muttering of an incantation or spell has, in that it seeks to make the words come true by speaking them. Aside from simply hoping that, if somebody says it it could be true, “If everyone’s hours got cut in half, employers would simply keep everyone and double wages” is up there with “It is very possible that if my car broke down I’d just fly a Pegasus to work”
- jaredklewis 1y ago
  The cited statistics is in reference to time saved (as a percent of work hours), not a reduction in paid working hours. But more generally, my comment is not absurd; it's a pattern that has played itself out in economic history dozens of times. Despite the fact that modern textile and clothing machinery are easily 1000x more efficient than weaving cloth and sewing shirts by hand, the modern garment industry employs more people today than that of middle age Europe. Will AI be the same? I don't know, but it wouldn't be unusual if it was.
  - catlikesshrimp 1y ago
    That is the result of using fuel. In spite of efficiency gained, more work is possible; more work is demanded, too: a dress is not lasting a decade now, hopefully one season. More people are also available since the fields are producing by themselves, comparatively. Not to mention less of us die to epidemies, famines and swords.
  - jrflowers 1y ago
    > The cited statistics is in reference to time saved (as a percent of work hours), not a reduction in paid working hours. This makes sense. If everyone’s current workloads were suddenly cut in half tomorrow, there would simply be enough demand to double their workloads. This makes sense across the board because much like clothing and textiles, demand for every product and service scales linearly with population. I was mistaken, you did not suggest that employers would gift workers money commensurate with productivity, you simply posit that demand is conceptually infinite and Jevons paradox means that no jobs ever get eliminated.

datpuz 1y ago

IMO, if you're gaining a significant amount of productivity from LLMs in a technical field, it's because you were either very junior and lacked much of the basic knowledge required of your role, or you performed like you were.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
Arctic_fly 1y ago
Definitely not the case for coding. I'm a capable senior engineer, and I know many other very experienced senior engineers who are all benefitting immensely from AI, both in the code editor and chat interfaces. My company just redid our landing page. It would probably have taken a decent developer two weeks to build it out. Using AI to create the initial drafts, it took two days.
sanderjd 1y ago
Sorry but this just definitely isn't true. I would (similarly insultingly) suggest that if you think this is true, you're spending time doing things more slowly that you could be doing more productively by using contemporary tools.
grandmczeb 1y ago
IMO, if you haven’t been getting a significant productivity boost from LLMs in a technical field, it’s because you lack the basic brain plasticity to adapt to new tools, or feel so psychologically threatened by change that you act like you do.
- datpuz 1y ago
  The irony...
treis 1y ago
I disagree. Maybe there's savants out there that can write SQL, K8s auto scaling yaml, dockerfiles, React components, backend code, and a dozen other things. But for the rest of us LLMs are helpful for the things we wade into every so often. It's not miraculous but I feel like it saves me a couple hours a week from not going on wild goose chases. So maybe 5% of my time. I don't think any engineering org is going to notice 5% more output and layoff 1/20th of their engineers. I think for now most of the time saved is going back to the engineers.