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Seems hard to believe, I mean I'm not an AI absolutist but as a programmer it allows me to automate simple things like writing small patches or config changes i

Seems hard to believe, I mean I'm not an AI absolutist but as a programmer it allows me to automate simple things like writing small patches or config changes in a matter of minutes where before I would have invested hours, so hard to believe that it won't at least bump productivity up by 20-60 % overall, it's also tremendously better at finding relevant content and curating it than me so that's another time saver unrelated to programming but relevant for any type of knowledge work. Friends in research and medecine and law also tell me that AI has drastically accelerated their rate of processing and ingesting any type of information and helped them to automate aspects of their jobs. So not sure but negligible isn't the word I would use here.

swiftcoder 1mo ago
> it allows me to automate simple things like writing small patches or config changes in a matter of minutes where before I would have invested hours One of the problems here is that things like this only count as "increased productivity" in the economic sense if it results in more income at the end of the funnel. Are you actually making more product faster in all your new-found free time? Very few orgs I've worked in have actually been limited by the speed of programmers writing code. Usually it's communication overhead and management processes eating up most of the bandwidth - and those tend to expand to absorb any additional bandwidth.
- ThePhysicist 1mo ago
  I mean I can deliver the same software in one month that I delivered in maybe 3 months before and for many things I don't need a dedicated frontend developer, designer or writer anymore. So for me it's the case!
  - swiftcoder 1mo ago
    > mean I can deliver the same software in one month that I delivered in maybe 3 months before Right, but are you delivering 3x more software now, and more importantly, are you selling 3x more software now?
- jr3592 1mo ago
  > One of the problems here is that things like this only count as "increased productivity" in the economic sense if it results in more income at the end of the funnel. Are you actually making more product faster in all your new-found free time? This strikes me as a problem with how we define productivity in this context. If I can do my job in 1 hour, when it took me 8 before, am I not more productive in a rate-based sense? Sure, I might only work 5 hours in a week instead of 40, so my net production is the same, but my rate of productivity was certainly much higher.
  - NateEag 1mo ago
    Wealth created is still the same, and that's what an economist means by "productive" - you produced X amount of wealth (usually measured in dollar amounts). It's like "work" meaning one thing to a normal person, but something very specific and counterintuitive in Newtonian physics (if you carry a fifty-pound weight in a circle and stop at your starting point, you've done no work).
    - jr3592 1mo ago
      I suppose I can understand that perspective, but disagree with it? We should measure time returned to individuals as wealth, maybe even the highest form of wealth.
  - simiones 1mo ago
    In the sense measured in economics, only if the product at the end of the day is sold for the same nominal amount of dollars as before. It doesn't matter how many features or lines of code or bugs or anything like this you produced - it matters how much revenue your work produced. So, if the product isn't selling any more expensive even though you're adding ~8 times more features, or if you're still getting paid for the full 40 hours even though you only really work 5, then economic productivity hasn't actually increased.
    - jr3592 1mo ago
      Yup, I understand. And through a very narrow definition of economics it makes sense. I just don't see the utility in viewing it this way. You've returned one of the most valuable resources (time) back to a human. In my mind there's simply nothing more valuable, and no sign of of efficiency more poignant than that.
- drTobiasFunke 1mo ago
  Yup. And in my experience, AI has made the communication and decision making overhead significantly worse thanks to 100x longer docs, code that noone understands and enormous pressure by executives to magically produce software that just works.
  - NamlchakKhandro 1mo ago
    That's just because most people are bad at communication to start with. Look at all the shit github README before llm. Most repos didn't bother because it was effort. those few that did, were because of autistic focus. Of those, very few were "great" user documentation. now llms are here, the effort barrier is gone, and now we're inundated with shit README that provide no value to users nor respect their time. Once you start applying SKILL.md that revolve around fixing HOW to communicate value to users in a way that respects their time, you'll see this story change in noticeable places. I doubt it will change everywhere because it also requires that you give a shit about doing this in the first place, so those people Ed Zitron talks about... business idiots won't care, because they're ultimately nihlist.
- polnoner 1mo ago
  It is really a deeper problem that "productivity" works in a factory producing widgets as output per labor-hour of widgets. The Principles of Scientific Management was just wrong that these ideas extend universally but we are still doing this stupid Barnesian performance as if they do. It clearly makes no sense with knowledge work. It is stupid. Then the efficient market hypothesis provides a type of circular proof because since the market is always right, if this didn't work we wouldn't be doing it. Another stupid idea we are not able to get past.
throw0101a 1mo ago
> Seems hard to believe […] This goes back before AI, with computers not being found to be improving productivity numbers: Solow's paradox. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox * https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-solow-productivity-paradox-what-do-computers-do-to-productivity/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-solow-productivity-pa...
baxtr 1mo ago
Even if it was true… does anyone really believe that companies will stop using AI?
polnoner 1mo ago
I am Claude fanboy but don't work in IT. For my job and basically everyone I know outside of programming, the productivity from AI is literally zero. I think what this says is the productivity is in specific silos and why the experience of the utility of AI is so vastly different for different people.

swiftcoder 1mo ago

> it allows me to automate simple things like writing small patches or config changes in a matter of minutes where before I would have invested hours One of the problems here is that things like this only count as "increased productivity" in the economic sense if it results in more income at the end of the funnel. Are you actually making more product faster in all your new-found free time? Very few orgs I've worked in have actually been limited by the speed of programmers writing code. Usually it's communication overhead and management processes eating up most of the bandwidth - and those tend to expand to absorb any additional bandwidth.

ThePhysicist 1mo ago
I mean I can deliver the same software in one month that I delivered in maybe 3 months before and for many things I don't need a dedicated frontend developer, designer or writer anymore. So for me it's the case!
- swiftcoder 1mo ago
  > mean I can deliver the same software in one month that I delivered in maybe 3 months before Right, but are you delivering 3x more software now, and more importantly, are you selling 3x more software now?
jr3592 1mo ago
> One of the problems here is that things like this only count as "increased productivity" in the economic sense if it results in more income at the end of the funnel. Are you actually making more product faster in all your new-found free time? This strikes me as a problem with how we define productivity in this context. If I can do my job in 1 hour, when it took me 8 before, am I not more productive in a rate-based sense? Sure, I might only work 5 hours in a week instead of 40, so my net production is the same, but my rate of productivity was certainly much higher.
- NateEag 1mo ago
  Wealth created is still the same, and that's what an economist means by "productive" - you produced X amount of wealth (usually measured in dollar amounts). It's like "work" meaning one thing to a normal person, but something very specific and counterintuitive in Newtonian physics (if you carry a fifty-pound weight in a circle and stop at your starting point, you've done no work).
  - jr3592 1mo ago
    I suppose I can understand that perspective, but disagree with it? We should measure time returned to individuals as wealth, maybe even the highest form of wealth.
- simiones 1mo ago
  In the sense measured in economics, only if the product at the end of the day is sold for the same nominal amount of dollars as before. It doesn't matter how many features or lines of code or bugs or anything like this you produced - it matters how much revenue your work produced. So, if the product isn't selling any more expensive even though you're adding ~8 times more features, or if you're still getting paid for the full 40 hours even though you only really work 5, then economic productivity hasn't actually increased.
  - jr3592 1mo ago
    Yup, I understand. And through a very narrow definition of economics it makes sense. I just don't see the utility in viewing it this way. You've returned one of the most valuable resources (time) back to a human. In my mind there's simply nothing more valuable, and no sign of of efficiency more poignant than that.
drTobiasFunke 1mo ago
Yup. And in my experience, AI has made the communication and decision making overhead significantly worse thanks to 100x longer docs, code that noone understands and enormous pressure by executives to magically produce software that just works.
- NamlchakKhandro 1mo ago
  That's just because most people are bad at communication to start with. Look at all the shit github README before llm. Most repos didn't bother because it was effort. those few that did, were because of autistic focus. Of those, very few were "great" user documentation. now llms are here, the effort barrier is gone, and now we're inundated with shit README that provide no value to users nor respect their time. Once you start applying SKILL.md that revolve around fixing HOW to communicate value to users in a way that respects their time, you'll see this story change in noticeable places. I doubt it will change everywhere because it also requires that you give a shit about doing this in the first place, so those people Ed Zitron talks about... business idiots won't care, because they're ultimately nihlist.
polnoner 1mo ago
It is really a deeper problem that "productivity" works in a factory producing widgets as output per labor-hour of widgets. The Principles of Scientific Management was just wrong that these ideas extend universally but we are still doing this stupid Barnesian performance as if they do. It clearly makes no sense with knowledge work. It is stupid. Then the efficient market hypothesis provides a type of circular proof because since the market is always right, if this didn't work we wouldn't be doing it. Another stupid idea we are not able to get past.

throw0101a 1mo ago

> Seems hard to believe […] This goes back before AI, with computers not being found to be improving productivity numbers: Solow's paradox. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox * https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-solow-productivity-paradox-what-do-computers-do-to-productivity/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-solow-productivity-pa...

baxtr 1mo ago

Even if it was true… does anyone really believe that companies will stop using AI?

polnoner 1mo ago

I am Claude fanboy but don't work in IT. For my job and basically everyone I know outside of programming, the productivity from AI is literally zero. I think what this says is the productivity is in specific silos and why the experience of the utility of AI is so vastly different for different people.