4 ms·

This is very cool but it's not quite what I expected out of economic primitives. I expected to see measures of the economic productivity generated as a result

This is very cool but it's not quite what I expected out of economic primitives. I expected to see measures of the economic productivity generated as a result of artificial intelligence use. Instead, what I'm seeing is measures of artificial intelligence use. I don't really see how this is measuring the most important economic primitives. Nothing related to productivity at all actually. Everything about how and where and who... This is just demographics and usage statistics...

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
kurttheviking 9mo ago
agree, was similarly hoping for something akin to a total factor productivity argument
johnrob 9mo ago
Until AI is used to generate new revenue streams (i.e. acquire new customers), I don’t think the economic impact is going to impress. My two cents.
- mr_toad 9mo ago
  People used to say the same things about computers. Even back in the early 90s people still questioned the value of computers in the workplace.
  - no_wizard 9mo ago
    What people, exactly? You could see the introduction of desktop computing and other types of computing in industry with a double digit increase to productivity, all other things being equal. Any organization that properly adopted computers found out quickly how much they could improve productivity. The limiting factor was always understanding. The trouble with AI tools is they don’t have this trajectory. You can be very versed on using them well, know all the best practices and where they apply and you get at best uneven gains. This is not the introduction of desktops 2.0
p1necone 9mo ago
> I expected to see measures of the economic productivity generated as a result of artificial intelligence use. >Instead, what I'm seeing is measures of artificial intelligence use. Fun fact: this is also how most large companies are measuring their productivity increases from AI usage ;), alongside asking employees to tell them how much faster AI is making them while simultaneously telling them they're expected to go faster with AI.
- hazyc 9mo ago
  productivity is such a nebulous concept in knowledge work - an amalgamation of mostly-qualitative measures that get baked into quantitative measures that are mostly just bad data
  - reactordev 9mo ago
    You can thank agile for that
    - janwirth 9mo ago
      You don't seem to like agile, whatever that word even means.
      - reactordev 9mo ago
        On the contrary. I like agile for when you don’t know exactly what you’re building but you can react quickly to change and try to capture it. Moving fast and breaking things, agile. On the other hand. When you know what you want to build but it’s a very large endeavor that takes careful planning and coordination across departments, traditional waterfall method still works best. You can break that down into an agile-fall process with SAFe and Scrum of Scrums and all that PM mumbo jumbo if you need to. Or just kanban it. In the end it’s just a mode of working.
        PunchyHamster 9mo ago
salynchnew 9mo ago
So.... motivated reasoning makes the world go 'round? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning
fuzzfactor 9mo ago
>expected to see measures of the economic productivity I know what you mean. Imagine my disappointment when I was expecting their unique approach and brainpower to have arrived at a straightforward index of overall world macroeconomic conditions rather than an internal corporate outlook for AI alone.
amelius 9mo ago
I expected a simulation of the economy using economic primitives and AI.
PunchyHamster 9mo ago
I think we can surmise how bad that looked from the omission..
- sinnsro 9mo ago
  I wonder if it is even possible to get such measurements. With so many things affecting output, how can one establish a baseline or avoiding to compare apples to oranges?
  - PunchyHamster 9mo ago
    the papers I've seen that tried just picked a group of developers at supposedly similar level and gave them tasks to do with or without being assisted by AI. At the very least for programming the decline of improvement compared to difficulty of task and skill of programmer quickly got into "AI technically helps but time spent fudging with prompts is more than time saved". However if your task is to write some SEO slop about your products for your company's webpage, or to make a bunch of business emails to customers, I can absolutely believe AI can double productivity there, there is nothing of value produced that requires skill, it's just a few bits of info filled with fluff around them
w10-1 9mo ago
"wantin' ain't gettin'": you might find productivity more important, but they didn't sign up for that. They define primitives as "simple, foundational measures of how Claude is used". They're not signing up to measure productivity, which would combine usage with displacement, work factoring, and a whole host of things outside their data pool. What's the point? They're offering details on usage patterns relative to demographics that can help people assessing Anthropic's business and the utility of LLM-based AI. Notably, tasks and usage are concentrated in some industries (notably software) and localities (mainly correlated with GDP and the Gini index). This enables readers to project how much usage growth can be expected. As far as I know, no one publicly offers this level of data on their emerging businesses - not google, ebay, apple, microsoft, amazon, nvidia or any of the many companies that have reshaped our technical and economic landscape in the last 30 years. Normally we measure value with price and overall market (productivity gains is but one way that clients can recoup their price paid). But during this the build-out of AI, investors (of all stripes) are subsidizing costs to get share, so until we have stable competitive markets for AI services, value is an open question. But it's clear some businesses feel that AI could be a strategic benefit, and they don't want to be left behind. So there is a stampede, as reflected in the neck-and-neck utilization of chat vs API.
Animats 9mo ago
This is more like an internal marketing study. Nothing wrong with that, but it's being hyped as more than that.
verisimi 9mo ago
Reframing the meaning of words, in a way that your product's usages becomes the metric - eg so "economy" = "Claude" - makes this some sort of 'Claude promo pack'.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

kurttheviking 9mo ago

agree, was similarly hoping for something akin to a total factor productivity argument

johnrob 9mo ago

Until AI is used to generate new revenue streams (i.e. acquire new customers), I don’t think the economic impact is going to impress. My two cents.

mr_toad 9mo ago
People used to say the same things about computers. Even back in the early 90s people still questioned the value of computers in the workplace.
- no_wizard 9mo ago
  What people, exactly? You could see the introduction of desktop computing and other types of computing in industry with a double digit increase to productivity, all other things being equal. Any organization that properly adopted computers found out quickly how much they could improve productivity. The limiting factor was always understanding. The trouble with AI tools is they don’t have this trajectory. You can be very versed on using them well, know all the best practices and where they apply and you get at best uneven gains. This is not the introduction of desktops 2.0

p1necone 9mo ago

> I expected to see measures of the economic productivity generated as a result of artificial intelligence use. >Instead, what I'm seeing is measures of artificial intelligence use. Fun fact: this is also how most large companies are measuring their productivity increases from AI usage ;), alongside asking employees to tell them how much faster AI is making them while simultaneously telling them they're expected to go faster with AI.

hazyc 9mo ago
productivity is such a nebulous concept in knowledge work - an amalgamation of mostly-qualitative measures that get baked into quantitative measures that are mostly just bad data
- reactordev 9mo ago
  You can thank agile for that
  - janwirth 9mo ago
    You don't seem to like agile, whatever that word even means.
    - reactordev 9mo ago
      On the contrary. I like agile for when you don’t know exactly what you’re building but you can react quickly to change and try to capture it. Moving fast and breaking things, agile. On the other hand. When you know what you want to build but it’s a very large endeavor that takes careful planning and coordination across departments, traditional waterfall method still works best. You can break that down into an agile-fall process with SAFe and Scrum of Scrums and all that PM mumbo jumbo if you need to. Or just kanban it. In the end it’s just a mode of working.
      - PunchyHamster 9mo ago

salynchnew 9mo ago

So.... motivated reasoning makes the world go 'round? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

fuzzfactor 9mo ago

>expected to see measures of the economic productivity I know what you mean. Imagine my disappointment when I was expecting their unique approach and brainpower to have arrived at a straightforward index of overall world macroeconomic conditions rather than an internal corporate outlook for AI alone.

amelius 9mo ago

I expected a simulation of the economy using economic primitives and AI.

PunchyHamster 9mo ago

I think we can surmise how bad that looked from the omission..

sinnsro 9mo ago
I wonder if it is even possible to get such measurements. With so many things affecting output, how can one establish a baseline or avoiding to compare apples to oranges?
- PunchyHamster 9mo ago
  the papers I've seen that tried just picked a group of developers at supposedly similar level and gave them tasks to do with or without being assisted by AI. At the very least for programming the decline of improvement compared to difficulty of task and skill of programmer quickly got into "AI technically helps but time spent fudging with prompts is more than time saved". However if your task is to write some SEO slop about your products for your company's webpage, or to make a bunch of business emails to customers, I can absolutely believe AI can double productivity there, there is nothing of value produced that requires skill, it's just a few bits of info filled with fluff around them

w10-1 9mo ago

"wantin' ain't gettin'": you might find productivity more important, but they didn't sign up for that. They define primitives as "simple, foundational measures of how Claude is used". They're not signing up to measure productivity, which would combine usage with displacement, work factoring, and a whole host of things outside their data pool. What's the point? They're offering details on usage patterns relative to demographics that can help people assessing Anthropic's business and the utility of LLM-based AI. Notably, tasks and usage are concentrated in some industries (notably software) and localities (mainly correlated with GDP and the Gini index). This enables readers to project how much usage growth can be expected. As far as I know, no one publicly offers this level of data on their emerging businesses - not google, ebay, apple, microsoft, amazon, nvidia or any of the many companies that have reshaped our technical and economic landscape in the last 30 years. Normally we measure value with price and overall market (productivity gains is but one way that clients can recoup their price paid). But during this the build-out of AI, investors (of all stripes) are subsidizing costs to get share, so until we have stable competitive markets for AI services, value is an open question. But it's clear some businesses feel that AI could be a strategic benefit, and they don't want to be left behind. So there is a stampede, as reflected in the neck-and-neck utilization of chat vs API.

Animats 9mo ago

This is more like an internal marketing study. Nothing wrong with that, but it's being hyped as more than that.

verisimi 9mo ago

Reframing the meaning of words, in a way that your product's usages becomes the metric - eg so "economy" = "Claude" - makes this some sort of 'Claude promo pack'.