5 ms·

It took 20 years for computers to "add" to the economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox

by d_watt 7mo ago

h0dlnHorses 7mo ago
[dead]
kakapo5672 7mo ago
Yep, and the same with the internet. During the 1990s and 2000s, people kept wondering why the internet wasn't showing up in productivity numbers. Many asked if the internet was therefore just a fad or bubble. Same as some now do with AI. It takes time for technology to show measurable impact in enormous economies. No reason why AI will be any different.
- sillyfluke 7mo ago
  It didn't take mobile apps with the launch of the iPhone 20 years to add to the economy though, did it?
  - m4rtink 7mo ago
    The iPhone was not the first mobile device or even the first smartphone. Not to mention it did not support mobile applications as we know them today.
    - sillyfluke 7mo ago
      That seems a tad reductionist. Why not just say the iPhone was completely inconsequential because afterall it's simply another "computer". Why not go even back further and start the timer at the first physical implementation of a Turing machine? The iPhone killer UX + App store release can be directly traced to the growth in tech in the subsequent years its release.
      - m4rtink 7mo ago
        I think it would have happened regardless - late Symbian from Nokia was pretty close and Maemo was already a thing with N900 not that far off in the future, not to mention Android. We might have been possibly better of actually, with the Apple walled garden abominations and user device lockdowns not being dragged into the mainstream.
        eichin 7mo ago
        As someone who worked for Nokia around the iPhone launch (on map search, not phones directly) - I also wanted to believe this at the time. But in retrospect, it feels like what actually mattered was that capacitive multi-touch screens were the only non-garbage interface, and only Apple bought FingerWorks... Not clear that this is a helpful interpretation, other than "we're in the primordial ooze stage and the thing that matters will be something none of the current players have", but that's hard to take to the bank :-)
- recursive 7mo ago
  Also no particular reason to group it in with those two. There are plenty of things that never showed up at all. It's just not a signal It's kind of like "My kid is failing math, but he's just bored. Einstein failed a lot too you know". Regardless of whether Einstein actually failed anything, there are a lot more non-Einsteins that have failed.
- rainsford 7mo ago
  Sure, but you have to consider Carl Sagan's point, "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Some truly useful technologies start out slow and the question is asked if they are fads or bubbles even though they end up having huge impact. But plenty of things that at first appeared to be fads or bubbles truly were fads or bubbles. Personally I think AI is unlikely to go the way of NFTs and it shows actual promise. What I'm much less convinced of is that it will prove valuable in a way that's even remotely within the same order of magnitude as the investments being pumped into it. The Internet didn't begin as a massive black hole sucking all the light out of the room for anything else before it really started showing commensurate ROI.
  - arisAlexis 7mo ago
    Even that you mentioned NFTs in comparison hurts my mind
    - kibwen 7mo ago
      I mean, it's an apt comparison, given that the Venn diagram between the pro-NFT hucksters and the pro-AI crowd is a circle. When you listen to people who were so publicly and embarrassingly wrong about the future try to sell you on their next hustle, skepticism is the correct posture.
      - arisAlexis 7mo ago
        We can't agree on anything if you think AI is a hustle. You are in a world of surprise
  - jeltz 7mo ago
    Columbus was not a genius. He was an idiot who believed the earth was smaller than the scientists of his day, and the scientists were right. Columbus became successful through pure luck, genocide and cruelty. Most idiots like Columbus died in obscurity.
preommr 7mo ago
I am not saying this to be sarcastic - the problem is that people from OpenAI/Antrhopic are saying things like superintelligence in 3 years, or boris saying coding is solved and that 100% of his code is written by AI. It's not good enough to just say oreo ceos say we need to more oreos. There's a real grey area where these tools are useful in some capacity, and in that confusion we're spending billions. Too may people are saying too conflicting things and chaos is never good for clear long-term growth. Either that 20 years is completelly inapplicable to AI, or we're in for a world of hurt. There's no in between given the kinds of bets that have been made.
- co_king_5 7mo ago
  [dead]
  - EA-3167 7mo ago
    It’s amazing that economic analysis can be dismissed by “feeling the AGI”. You might as well be telling people to “HODL”
  - chrysoprace 7mo ago
    What does that mean? By what metric do you measure "AGI", whatever that means? Industry definitions are incredibly vague, perhaps intentionally so, with no benchmarks to define how a model, harness, or other technology might achieve "AGI". They have no intelligence, and can't even reason that you need to take your car to the car wash to have it washed[0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47031580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47031580
    - co_king_5 7mo ago
      [dead]
      - albatross79 7mo ago
        You seem to be doing a lot of feeling, have you tried thinking? It's pretty cool when you need a break from feeling.
yifanl 7mo ago
The difference being that AI's marketing has been significantly more prevalent than any early computing efforts.
- petcat 7mo ago
  This seems false to me. Commodore and Apple were blitzing every advertising medium and especially TV ads in the early 1980s.
  - galleywest200 7mo ago
    Atari too
  - ohrus 7mo ago
    Worryingly revisionist to compare 1980s media advertising budgets to what's going on now (even if they were 'high' for the time).
- jsheard 7mo ago
  Not to mention the investment is on another level. We've got companies with valuations in the hundred-billions talking about raising trillions to buy all of the computers in the world, before establishing whether they can even turn a profit, nevermind upend the economy.
  - bdangubic 7mo ago
    the investments are being made by massively profitable companies (our biggest and brightest ones, the ones that have been carrying the economy for quite some time now, even before "AI"). even just in recent history we have seen companies making large investments and being very unprofitable until they weren't anymore (e.g. Uber). and it is always the same story, everyone is up in arms "this is not sustainable etc..." whether or not these companies can turn a profit - time will tell. but I am betting that our massively profitable companies (which are biggest spenders of course) perhaps know what they are doing and just maybe they should get the benefit of the doubt until they are proven wrong. but if I had to make a wager and on one side I have google, microsoft, amazon, meta... and on the other side I have bunch of AI bubble people with a bunch of time to predict a "crash" I'd put my money on the former...
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
yowayb 7mo ago
I think this paragraph from the wikipedia article captures it nicely: >Many observers disagree that any meaningful "productivity paradox" exists and others, while acknowledging the disconnect between IT capacity and spending, view it less as a paradox than a series of unwarranted assumptions about the impact of technology on productivity. In the latter view, this disconnect is emblematic of our need to understand and do a better job of deploying the technology that becomes available to us rather than an arcane paradox that by its nature is difficult to unravel.
RigelKentaurus 7mo ago
For the U.S. economy, productivity is defined as (output measured in $)/(input measured in $). Typically, new technologies (computers, internet, AI) reduce input costs, and due to competition in the market, companies are required to reduce their prices, thereby having an overall deflationary effect on the economy. It's entirely possible that AI will have a small or no effect on productivity as measured above, but society will benefit by getting access to inexpensive products and services powered by inexpensive AI. Individual companies won't use AI to improve their productivity but will need to use AI just to stay competitive.
wangzhongwang 7mo ago
[dead]
pier25 7mo ago
Sure but the issue with AI is results vs money burned.

It took 20 years for computers to "add" to the economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox

by d_watt 7mo ago

It took 20 years for computers to "add" to the economy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox

h0dlnHorses 7mo ago

[dead]

kakapo5672 7mo ago

Yep, and the same with the internet. During the 1990s and 2000s, people kept wondering why the internet wasn't showing up in productivity numbers. Many asked if the internet was therefore just a fad or bubble. Same as some now do with AI. It takes time for technology to show measurable impact in enormous economies. No reason why AI will be any different.

sillyfluke 7mo ago
It didn't take mobile apps with the launch of the iPhone 20 years to add to the economy though, did it?
- m4rtink 7mo ago
  The iPhone was not the first mobile device or even the first smartphone. Not to mention it did not support mobile applications as we know them today.
  - sillyfluke 7mo ago
    That seems a tad reductionist. Why not just say the iPhone was completely inconsequential because afterall it's simply another "computer". Why not go even back further and start the timer at the first physical implementation of a Turing machine? The iPhone killer UX + App store release can be directly traced to the growth in tech in the subsequent years its release.
    - m4rtink 7mo ago
      I think it would have happened regardless - late Symbian from Nokia was pretty close and Maemo was already a thing with N900 not that far off in the future, not to mention Android. We might have been possibly better of actually, with the Apple walled garden abominations and user device lockdowns not being dragged into the mainstream.
      - eichin 7mo ago
        As someone who worked for Nokia around the iPhone launch (on map search, not phones directly) - I also wanted to believe this at the time. But in retrospect, it feels like what actually mattered was that capacitive multi-touch screens were the only non-garbage interface, and only Apple bought FingerWorks... Not clear that this is a helpful interpretation, other than "we're in the primordial ooze stage and the thing that matters will be something none of the current players have", but that's hard to take to the bank :-)
recursive 7mo ago
Also no particular reason to group it in with those two. There are plenty of things that never showed up at all. It's just not a signal It's kind of like "My kid is failing math, but he's just bored. Einstein failed a lot too you know". Regardless of whether Einstein actually failed anything, there are a lot more non-Einsteins that have failed.
rainsford 7mo ago
Sure, but you have to consider Carl Sagan's point, "The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." Some truly useful technologies start out slow and the question is asked if they are fads or bubbles even though they end up having huge impact. But plenty of things that at first appeared to be fads or bubbles truly were fads or bubbles. Personally I think AI is unlikely to go the way of NFTs and it shows actual promise. What I'm much less convinced of is that it will prove valuable in a way that's even remotely within the same order of magnitude as the investments being pumped into it. The Internet didn't begin as a massive black hole sucking all the light out of the room for anything else before it really started showing commensurate ROI.
- arisAlexis 7mo ago
  Even that you mentioned NFTs in comparison hurts my mind
  - kibwen 7mo ago
    I mean, it's an apt comparison, given that the Venn diagram between the pro-NFT hucksters and the pro-AI crowd is a circle. When you listen to people who were so publicly and embarrassingly wrong about the future try to sell you on their next hustle, skepticism is the correct posture.
    - arisAlexis 7mo ago
      We can't agree on anything if you think AI is a hustle. You are in a world of surprise
- jeltz 7mo ago
  Columbus was not a genius. He was an idiot who believed the earth was smaller than the scientists of his day, and the scientists were right. Columbus became successful through pure luck, genocide and cruelty. Most idiots like Columbus died in obscurity.

preommr 7mo ago

I am not saying this to be sarcastic - the problem is that people from OpenAI/Antrhopic are saying things like superintelligence in 3 years, or boris saying coding is solved and that 100% of his code is written by AI. It's not good enough to just say oreo ceos say we need to more oreos. There's a real grey area where these tools are useful in some capacity, and in that confusion we're spending billions. Too may people are saying too conflicting things and chaos is never good for clear long-term growth. Either that 20 years is completelly inapplicable to AI, or we're in for a world of hurt. There's no in between given the kinds of bets that have been made.

co_king_5 7mo ago
[dead]
- EA-3167 7mo ago
  It’s amazing that economic analysis can be dismissed by “feeling the AGI”. You might as well be telling people to “HODL”
- chrysoprace 7mo ago
  What does that mean? By what metric do you measure "AGI", whatever that means? Industry definitions are incredibly vague, perhaps intentionally so, with no benchmarks to define how a model, harness, or other technology might achieve "AGI". They have no intelligence, and can't even reason that you need to take your car to the car wash to have it washed[0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47031580 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47031580
  - co_king_5 7mo ago
    [dead]
    - albatross79 7mo ago
      You seem to be doing a lot of feeling, have you tried thinking? It's pretty cool when you need a break from feeling.

yifanl 7mo ago

The difference being that AI's marketing has been significantly more prevalent than any early computing efforts.

petcat 7mo ago
This seems false to me. Commodore and Apple were blitzing every advertising medium and especially TV ads in the early 1980s.
- galleywest200 7mo ago
  Atari too
- ohrus 7mo ago
  Worryingly revisionist to compare 1980s media advertising budgets to what's going on now (even if they were 'high' for the time).
jsheard 7mo ago
Not to mention the investment is on another level. We've got companies with valuations in the hundred-billions talking about raising trillions to buy all of the computers in the world, before establishing whether they can even turn a profit, nevermind upend the economy.
- bdangubic 7mo ago
  the investments are being made by massively profitable companies (our biggest and brightest ones, the ones that have been carrying the economy for quite some time now, even before "AI"). even just in recent history we have seen companies making large investments and being very unprofitable until they weren't anymore (e.g. Uber). and it is always the same story, everyone is up in arms "this is not sustainable etc..." whether or not these companies can turn a profit - time will tell. but I am betting that our massively profitable companies (which are biggest spenders of course) perhaps know what they are doing and just maybe they should get the benefit of the doubt until they are proven wrong. but if I had to make a wager and on one side I have google, microsoft, amazon, meta... and on the other side I have bunch of AI bubble people with a bunch of time to predict a "crash" I'd put my money on the former...

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

yowayb 7mo ago

I think this paragraph from the wikipedia article captures it nicely: >Many observers disagree that any meaningful "productivity paradox" exists and others, while acknowledging the disconnect between IT capacity and spending, view it less as a paradox than a series of unwarranted assumptions about the impact of technology on productivity. In the latter view, this disconnect is emblematic of our need to understand and do a better job of deploying the technology that becomes available to us rather than an arcane paradox that by its nature is difficult to unravel.

RigelKentaurus 7mo ago

For the U.S. economy, productivity is defined as (output measured in $)/(input measured in $). Typically, new technologies (computers, internet, AI) reduce input costs, and due to competition in the market, companies are required to reduce their prices, thereby having an overall deflationary effect on the economy. It's entirely possible that AI will have a small or no effect on productivity as measured above, but society will benefit by getting access to inexpensive products and services powered by inexpensive AI. Individual companies won't use AI to improve their productivity but will need to use AI just to stay competitive.

wangzhongwang 7mo ago

[dead]

pier25 7mo ago

Sure but the issue with AI is results vs money burned.