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No she’s less productive. She just use it because she wants to do less work, be less likely to get promoted, and have to stay in the office longer to finish her

No she’s less productive. She just use it because she wants to do less work, be less likely to get promoted, and have to stay in the office longer to finish her work. /s What kind of question is that? Seriously. Are some people here so naive to think that tens of millions out there don’t know when something they choose to use repeatedly multiple times a day every day is making their life harder? Like ChatGPT is some kind of addiction similar to drugs? Is it so hard to believe that ChatGPT is actually productive?

echelon 1y ago
Serious thought. What if people are using LLMs to achieve the same productivity with more cost to the business and less time spent working? This, to me, feels incredibly plausible. Get an email? ChatGPT the response. Relax and browse socials for an hour. Repeat. "My boss thinks I'm using AI to be more productive. In reality, I'm using our ChatGPT subscription to slack off." That three day report still takes three days, wink wink. AI can be a tool for 10xers to go 12x, but more likely it's also that AI is the best slack off tool for slackers to go from 0.5x to 0.1x. And the businesses with AI mandates for employees probably have no idea. Anecdotally, I've seen it happen to good engineers. Good code turning into flocks of seagulls, stacks of scope 10-deep, variables that go nowhere. Tell me you've seen it too.
- mrbungie 1y ago
  That's Jevons paradox for you.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  Yeah, I think this is why it's more important to shift the question to "is the team/business more productive". If a 0.5xer manager is pushing 0.1x work and a 1xer teammate needs to become a 1.5xer to fix the slop, then we have this phenomenon where the manager can feel way more productive, while the team under him is spending more time just to fix or throw out his slop. Both their perspectives are technically right. But we'll either have burned out workers or a lagging schedule as a result in the long term. I miss when we thought more long term about projects.
raincole 1y ago
[flagged]
freehorse 1y ago
It is the kind of question that takes into account that people thinking that they are more productive does not imply that they actually are. This happens in a wide range of contexts, from AI to drugs.
- 1123581321 1y ago
  It isn’t a question asked by people generally suspicious of productivity claims. It’s only asked by LLM skeptics, about LLMs.
  - rimunroe 1y ago
    That doesn’t seem to me like a good reason to dismiss the question, and especially not that strongly/aggressively. We’re supposed to assume good intentions on this site. I can think of any number of reasons one might feel more productive but in the end not be going much faster. It would be nice to know more about the subject of the question’s experience and what they’re going off of.
    - 1123581321 1y ago
      You’re right; I’m rereading and it’s rude. Thanks.
  - happymellon 1y ago
    It absolutely is a question people ask when suspicious of productivity claims. Lots of things claim to make people more productive. Lots of things make people believe they are more productive. Lots of things fail to provide evidence of increasing productivity. This "just believe me" mentality normally comes from scams.
  - danaris 1y ago
    As a counterexample to your assertion, I've seen it a lot on both sides of the RTO discourse.
    - rimunroe 1y ago
mrbungie 1y ago
> What kind of question is that? Seriously. Are some people here so naive to think that tens of millions out there don’t know when something they choose to use repeatedly multiple times a day every day is making their life harder? That's just an appeal to masses / bandwagon fallacy. > Is it so hard to believe that ChatGPT is actually productive? We need data, not beliefs and current data is conflicting. ffs.
spicyusername 1y ago
I mean... there are many situations in life where people are bad judges of the facts. Dating, finances, health, etc, etc, etc. It's not that hard to imagine that your friend feels more productive than she actually is. I'm not saying it's true, but it's plausible. The anecdata coming out of programming is mostly that people are only more productive in certain narrow use cases and much less productive in everything else, relative to just doing the work themselves with their sleeves rolled up. But man to seeing all that code gets spit out on the screen FEEL amazing, even if I'm going to spend the next few hours needing to edit it, for the next few months managing the technical debt I didn't notice when I merged it.
bakugo 1y ago
You're working under the assumption that punching a prompt into ChatGPT and getting up to grab some coffee while it spits out thousands of tokens of meaningless slop to be used as a substitute for something that you previously would've written yourself is a net upgrade for everyone involved. It's not. I can use ChatGPT to write 20 paragraph email replies that would've previously been a single manually written paragraph, but that doesn't mean I'm 20x more productive. And yes, ChatGPT is kinda like an addictive drug here. If someone "can't work without ChatGPT anymore", they're addicted and have lost the ability to work on their own as a result.
- isamuel 1y ago
  > And yes, ChatGPT is kinda like an addictive drug here. If someone "can't work without ChatGPT anymore", they're addicted and have lost the ability to work on their own as a result. Come on, you can’t mean this in any kind of robust way. I can’t get my job done without a computer; am I an “addict” who has “lost the ability to work on my own?” Every tool tends to engender dependence, roughly in proportion to how much easier it makes the life of the user. That’s not a bad thing.
  - bakugo 1y ago
    > I can’t get my job done without a computer Are you really comparing an LLM to a computer? Really? There are many jobs today that quite literally would not exist at all without computers. It's in no way comparable. You use ChatGPT to do the things you were already doing faster and with less effort, at the cost of quality. You don't use it to do things you couldn't do at all before.
    - aurareturn 1y ago
      I can’t maintain my company’s Go codebase without chatgpt.
  - danaris 1y ago
    There's a big difference between needing a tool to do a job that only that tool can do, and needing a crutch to do something without using your own faculties. LLMs are nothing like a computer for a programmer, or a saw for a carpenter. In the very best case, from what their biggest proponents have said, they can let you do more of what you already do with less effort. If someone has used them enough that they can no longer work without them, it's not because they're just that indispensable: it's because that someone has let their natural faculties atrophy through disuse.
coderjames 1y ago
> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. It doesn't say she chooses to use it; it says she can't work without using it. At my workplace, senior leadership has mandated that software engineers use our internal AI chat tooling daily, they monitor the usage statistics, and are updating engineering leveling guides to include sufficient usage of AI being required for promotions. So I can't work without AI anymore, but it doesn't mean I choose to.
y0eswddl 1y ago
There's literally a study out the shows when developers think LLMs are making them 20% faster, it turned out to be making them 20% less productive: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089 https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089
johnnyanmac 1y ago
>Is it so hard to believe that ChatGPT is actually productive? Given what I've seen in the educational sector: yes. Very hard. We already had this massive split in extremes between the highly educated and the ones who struggle. The last thing we need is to outsource the aspect of thinking to a billionaire tech company. The slop you see in the workplace isn't encouraging either.

echelon 1y ago

Serious thought. What if people are using LLMs to achieve the same productivity with more cost to the business and less time spent working? This, to me, feels incredibly plausible. Get an email? ChatGPT the response. Relax and browse socials for an hour. Repeat. "My boss thinks I'm using AI to be more productive. In reality, I'm using our ChatGPT subscription to slack off." That three day report still takes three days, wink wink. AI can be a tool for 10xers to go 12x, but more likely it's also that AI is the best slack off tool for slackers to go from 0.5x to 0.1x. And the businesses with AI mandates for employees probably have no idea. Anecdotally, I've seen it happen to good engineers. Good code turning into flocks of seagulls, stacks of scope 10-deep, variables that go nowhere. Tell me you've seen it too.

mrbungie 1y ago
That's Jevons paradox for you.
johnnyanmac 1y ago
Yeah, I think this is why it's more important to shift the question to "is the team/business more productive". If a 0.5xer manager is pushing 0.1x work and a 1xer teammate needs to become a 1.5xer to fix the slop, then we have this phenomenon where the manager can feel way more productive, while the team under him is spending more time just to fix or throw out his slop. Both their perspectives are technically right. But we'll either have burned out workers or a lagging schedule as a result in the long term. I miss when we thought more long term about projects.

raincole 1y ago

[flagged]

freehorse 1y ago

It is the kind of question that takes into account that people thinking that they are more productive does not imply that they actually are. This happens in a wide range of contexts, from AI to drugs.

1123581321 1y ago
It isn’t a question asked by people generally suspicious of productivity claims. It’s only asked by LLM skeptics, about LLMs.
- rimunroe 1y ago
  That doesn’t seem to me like a good reason to dismiss the question, and especially not that strongly/aggressively. We’re supposed to assume good intentions on this site. I can think of any number of reasons one might feel more productive but in the end not be going much faster. It would be nice to know more about the subject of the question’s experience and what they’re going off of.
  - 1123581321 1y ago
    You’re right; I’m rereading and it’s rude. Thanks.
- happymellon 1y ago
  It absolutely is a question people ask when suspicious of productivity claims. Lots of things claim to make people more productive. Lots of things make people believe they are more productive. Lots of things fail to provide evidence of increasing productivity. This "just believe me" mentality normally comes from scams.
- danaris 1y ago
  As a counterexample to your assertion, I've seen it a lot on both sides of the RTO discourse.
  - rimunroe 1y ago

mrbungie 1y ago

> What kind of question is that? Seriously. Are some people here so naive to think that tens of millions out there don’t know when something they choose to use repeatedly multiple times a day every day is making their life harder? That's just an appeal to masses / bandwagon fallacy. > Is it so hard to believe that ChatGPT is actually productive? We need data, not beliefs and current data is conflicting. ffs.

spicyusername 1y ago

I mean... there are many situations in life where people are bad judges of the facts. Dating, finances, health, etc, etc, etc. It's not that hard to imagine that your friend feels more productive than she actually is. I'm not saying it's true, but it's plausible. The anecdata coming out of programming is mostly that people are only more productive in certain narrow use cases and much less productive in everything else, relative to just doing the work themselves with their sleeves rolled up. But man to seeing all that code gets spit out on the screen FEEL amazing, even if I'm going to spend the next few hours needing to edit it, for the next few months managing the technical debt I didn't notice when I merged it.

bakugo 1y ago

You're working under the assumption that punching a prompt into ChatGPT and getting up to grab some coffee while it spits out thousands of tokens of meaningless slop to be used as a substitute for something that you previously would've written yourself is a net upgrade for everyone involved. It's not. I can use ChatGPT to write 20 paragraph email replies that would've previously been a single manually written paragraph, but that doesn't mean I'm 20x more productive. And yes, ChatGPT is kinda like an addictive drug here. If someone "can't work without ChatGPT anymore", they're addicted and have lost the ability to work on their own as a result.

isamuel 1y ago
> And yes, ChatGPT is kinda like an addictive drug here. If someone "can't work without ChatGPT anymore", they're addicted and have lost the ability to work on their own as a result. Come on, you can’t mean this in any kind of robust way. I can’t get my job done without a computer; am I an “addict” who has “lost the ability to work on my own?” Every tool tends to engender dependence, roughly in proportion to how much easier it makes the life of the user. That’s not a bad thing.
- bakugo 1y ago
  > I can’t get my job done without a computer Are you really comparing an LLM to a computer? Really? There are many jobs today that quite literally would not exist at all without computers. It's in no way comparable. You use ChatGPT to do the things you were already doing faster and with less effort, at the cost of quality. You don't use it to do things you couldn't do at all before.
  - aurareturn 1y ago
    I can’t maintain my company’s Go codebase without chatgpt.
- danaris 1y ago
  There's a big difference between needing a tool to do a job that only that tool can do, and needing a crutch to do something without using your own faculties. LLMs are nothing like a computer for a programmer, or a saw for a carpenter. In the very best case, from what their biggest proponents have said, they can let you do more of what you already do with less effort. If someone has used them enough that they can no longer work without them, it's not because they're just that indispensable: it's because that someone has let their natural faculties atrophy through disuse.

coderjames 1y ago

> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. It doesn't say she chooses to use it; it says she can't work without using it. At my workplace, senior leadership has mandated that software engineers use our internal AI chat tooling daily, they monitor the usage statistics, and are updating engineering leveling guides to include sufficient usage of AI being required for promotions. So I can't work without AI anymore, but it doesn't mean I choose to.

y0eswddl 1y ago

There's literally a study out the shows when developers think LLMs are making them 20% faster, it turned out to be making them 20% less productive: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089 https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089

johnnyanmac 1y ago

>Is it so hard to believe that ChatGPT is actually productive? Given what I've seen in the educational sector: yes. Very hard. We already had this massive split in extremes between the highly educated and the ones who struggle. The last thing we need is to outsource the aspect of thinking to a billionaire tech company. The slop you see in the workplace isn't encouraging either.