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> Whenever I find a use for AI, it so drastically cuts the time to accomplish tasks that I’m left wanting to do more with my (finally copious) free time! I get

> Whenever I find a use for AI, it so drastically cuts the time to accomplish tasks that I’m left wanting to do more with my (finally copious) free time! I get what the author is trying to say but this does not match my experience nor does it match the employee productivity findings from AI adoption in enterprises.

jamesjhare 2mo ago
the goal of proselytism is always the same -- to help the proselytizer convince themselves they are not the mark
happytoexplain 2mo ago
Yeah, the hidden implication here is that they do not meaningfully review or design what the AI creates. Which is not actually an invalid AI use case, but it is highly misleading to leave it unstated. (And of course there is the uncharitable alternative - that they are simply incompetent. But we don't actually need to go there.)
sudb 2mo ago
I was going to say that this surely depends on the type of work being done with AI but then a small dive into your HN profile shows you're working on SWE agents at Google? I am struggling to reconcile your viewpoint with this but may have found the wrong profile!
- munk-a 2mo ago
  It's possible to be frank about the misuse of AI in a lot of corporate settings today and also view it as a tool (or a step in tool development) that has the potential to be quite valuable. Also, there are plenty of non-development related uses of AI that are genuinely valuable - document extraction and data repair are strong domains for application.
  - sudb 2mo ago
    Absolutely agreed - though the usual claim for coding agents in particular is that they are already very capable and fast, replacing and speeding up software development hugely (anecdotally reasonably true for me and my colleagues, though again depends on domain and complexity).
scott01 2mo ago
In my experience, using chats merely as stack overflow replacement, e.g. for providing obscure API usage examples, is a huge time saver — otherwise I would’ve had to lurk around game engine sources, examples, comments, sometimes forum posts, etc. AI code reviews definitely help finding issues, especially when I work on something for more than a week and inevitably forgetting things.
- Gigachad 2mo ago
  This is true but it's completely negated when someone wastes my time asking them to review their AI slop wall of code, or when it actually goes live and blows up production.
- conqrr 2mo ago
  Yeah, AI works great for everyone in vacuum, but works for no one in a group.
- happytoexplain 2mo ago
  This is my experience. It's a huge time saver for learning something that you would have had to previously Google or wade through multiple pages of documentation for, as long as you develop an intuition for when to fact-check it. It's a slightly less huge time saver for one-shotting simple functions/scripts ("write a function to download everything in a given time range from this paginated API and save it to files"), assuming you actually review what it outputs. But neither of those things are where most time is spent in software.
  - anilgulecha 2mo ago
    > assuming you actually review what it outputs You don't need to do this if you setup TDD. Over time, you develop confidence in the tests, and those ensure your code is solid. Linters/formatters ensure coding standards. It's a shift, but once you make it, is when agentic development clicks.
    - happytoexplain 2mo ago
vishalontheline 2mo ago
Author here. I don't use it for everything and I don't expect it to do everything. I've used it for image generation, code generation, and also iterated on prototypes / simple visual simulations in languages and frameworks that I (mostly) understand. And, of course, like everyone else, I've used it instead spending a lot more time searching and sifting through things online. I used to think replacing the search bar with an AI prompt was gimmicky, but then the replies improved. Those use-cases alone have been massive time savers for me.
- sublinear 2mo ago
  > Swimming against the rip will leave you exhausted and helpless. If you are though, then I hope you have a large life preserver. You use AI for search like everyone else because that's what it always was and all it was ever good for. What if I told you that your dramatic statement is totally misreading the vast majority of office workers and their work? If there are waves, it doesn't resemble a riptide, but stop-and-go traffic. Their work isn't hard for them to begin with. They're bored and stuck in endless meetings. The bottleneck is the rest of the organization. Just like a traffic jam, they cannot leave. Not even working from home will save them from the random calls, messages, or emails keeping them glued to the desk. For every nontrivial goal, all decisions up to that point will await approval from one person. The baton is then handed off to someone else and so it goes. As tempting as it is for some people to want to, one cannot jam the AI middleman pirate grift machine into this process without violating centuries of accountability laws. Anyone attempting to build an AI-first business will hit these same roadblocks and become the thing they attempted to be "better" than. Any attempt by AI companies to slip out of this situation with reform politics would be highly entertaining to watch though. I think the sharks smell blood.
  - vishalontheline 2mo ago
    I think you're right about companies and bottlenecks. I don't think it disagrees with what I'm saying. The rip is in the demand and adoption of the technology and its subsequent effects on everything else. You can choose to learn how to navigate it, go faster with it, or sit on the sidelines, but trying to stop it won't make the demand, the technology or its adoption go away. This thing is here to stay and , judging by all the meetups in my area, it's only getting bigger. Who knows, maybe companies will be forced to dramatically change to reduce bottlenecks. Maybe there will be a lot more smaller companies. I can't say for sure.
anuramat 2mo ago
> productivity findings are you referring to the early 2025 METR study?

jamesjhare 2mo ago

the goal of proselytism is always the same -- to help the proselytizer convince themselves they are not the mark

happytoexplain 2mo ago

Yeah, the hidden implication here is that they do not meaningfully review or design what the AI creates. Which is not actually an invalid AI use case, but it is highly misleading to leave it unstated. (And of course there is the uncharitable alternative - that they are simply incompetent. But we don't actually need to go there.)

sudb 2mo ago

I was going to say that this surely depends on the type of work being done with AI but then a small dive into your HN profile shows you're working on SWE agents at Google? I am struggling to reconcile your viewpoint with this but may have found the wrong profile!

munk-a 2mo ago
It's possible to be frank about the misuse of AI in a lot of corporate settings today and also view it as a tool (or a step in tool development) that has the potential to be quite valuable. Also, there are plenty of non-development related uses of AI that are genuinely valuable - document extraction and data repair are strong domains for application.
- sudb 2mo ago
  Absolutely agreed - though the usual claim for coding agents in particular is that they are already very capable and fast, replacing and speeding up software development hugely (anecdotally reasonably true for me and my colleagues, though again depends on domain and complexity).

scott01 2mo ago

In my experience, using chats merely as stack overflow replacement, e.g. for providing obscure API usage examples, is a huge time saver — otherwise I would’ve had to lurk around game engine sources, examples, comments, sometimes forum posts, etc. AI code reviews definitely help finding issues, especially when I work on something for more than a week and inevitably forgetting things.

Gigachad 2mo ago
This is true but it's completely negated when someone wastes my time asking them to review their AI slop wall of code, or when it actually goes live and blows up production.
conqrr 2mo ago
Yeah, AI works great for everyone in vacuum, but works for no one in a group.
happytoexplain 2mo ago
This is my experience. It's a huge time saver for learning something that you would have had to previously Google or wade through multiple pages of documentation for, as long as you develop an intuition for when to fact-check it. It's a slightly less huge time saver for one-shotting simple functions/scripts ("write a function to download everything in a given time range from this paginated API and save it to files"), assuming you actually review what it outputs. But neither of those things are where most time is spent in software.
- anilgulecha 2mo ago
  > assuming you actually review what it outputs You don't need to do this if you setup TDD. Over time, you develop confidence in the tests, and those ensure your code is solid. Linters/formatters ensure coding standards. It's a shift, but once you make it, is when agentic development clicks.
  - happytoexplain 2mo ago

vishalontheline 2mo ago

Author here. I don't use it for everything and I don't expect it to do everything. I've used it for image generation, code generation, and also iterated on prototypes / simple visual simulations in languages and frameworks that I (mostly) understand. And, of course, like everyone else, I've used it instead spending a lot more time searching and sifting through things online. I used to think replacing the search bar with an AI prompt was gimmicky, but then the replies improved. Those use-cases alone have been massive time savers for me.

sublinear 2mo ago
> Swimming against the rip will leave you exhausted and helpless. If you are though, then I hope you have a large life preserver. You use AI for search like everyone else because that's what it always was and all it was ever good for. What if I told you that your dramatic statement is totally misreading the vast majority of office workers and their work? If there are waves, it doesn't resemble a riptide, but stop-and-go traffic. Their work isn't hard for them to begin with. They're bored and stuck in endless meetings. The bottleneck is the rest of the organization. Just like a traffic jam, they cannot leave. Not even working from home will save them from the random calls, messages, or emails keeping them glued to the desk. For every nontrivial goal, all decisions up to that point will await approval from one person. The baton is then handed off to someone else and so it goes. As tempting as it is for some people to want to, one cannot jam the AI middleman pirate grift machine into this process without violating centuries of accountability laws. Anyone attempting to build an AI-first business will hit these same roadblocks and become the thing they attempted to be "better" than. Any attempt by AI companies to slip out of this situation with reform politics would be highly entertaining to watch though. I think the sharks smell blood.
- vishalontheline 2mo ago
  I think you're right about companies and bottlenecks. I don't think it disagrees with what I'm saying. The rip is in the demand and adoption of the technology and its subsequent effects on everything else. You can choose to learn how to navigate it, go faster with it, or sit on the sidelines, but trying to stop it won't make the demand, the technology or its adoption go away. This thing is here to stay and , judging by all the meetups in my area, it's only getting bigger. Who knows, maybe companies will be forced to dramatically change to reduce bottlenecks. Maybe there will be a lot more smaller companies. I can't say for sure.

anuramat 2mo ago

> productivity findings are you referring to the early 2025 METR study?