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Bit of an odd decision to build an entire article around a clickbait headline from July 2025. Talk about a strawman. That aside, this piece is interesting and
by simonw 5mo ago
Bit of an odd decision to build an entire article around a clickbait headline from July 2025. Talk about a strawman.
That aside, this piece is interesting and ties together some useful numbers and studies.
I hadn't seen the recent Microsoft paper showing:
> 30 percent of the US working-age population is using AI [...] with at least 90 minutes of usage time in a given month.
I'm honestly impressed at how high that number is! That's a lot of adoption for a technology (LLM chatbots) that didn't exist four years ago.
- JCTheDenthog 5mo agoHow much of that use is driven by corporate mandates to use AI anywhere and everywhere (even when it's a terrible fit)?
- simonw 5mo agoI'd love to see credible numbers on that. I find it hard to believe that stupid corporate mandates are responsible for more than a small fraction of usage, but without data I have just my own instincts to go on there.
- JCTheDenthog 5mo agoAt my employer (megacorp with tens of thousands of employees) daily use is mandated. Our annual bonuses and pay raises for our performance reviews were explicitly tied to this.
- CagedCoder 5mo agoIf the corporate mandates weren't the reason for the number being so high, I would expect the outside of work data to be more aligned.
- z3c0 5mo agoIt's a retrospective analysis of an assertion made by NYTimes. The original headline wasn't clickbait, just presumptive, and even so, it's a pretty significant publication that spends a lot of time on the HN front page (alongside you, I'll add). I think it's perfectly fair, and nowhere close to a strawman, to deconstruct that claim a year later.
- simonw 5mo agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/magazine/using-ai-hard-fork.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/16/magazine/using-ai-hard-fo... "Everyone Is Using A.I. for Everything. Is That Bad?" - subheading: "Either way, let’s not be in denial about it." It's clearly intended as rhetorical hyperbole - like "everyone's on their phone at the movie theater" or "everyone's fed up with AI hype". If you read the actual transcript it makes it very clear that it's not claiming "Everyone is using AI" almost immediately: > ChatGPT is the sixth-biggest website on Earth. Something like 43 percent of Americans in the work force use generative A.I.