"You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics "
Robert Solow, Noble Prize winning economist, 1987.
Robert Solow, Noble Prize winning economist, 1987.
1)
What he means to say is, say you needed to get something done. You could ask AI to write you a Python script which does the job. Next time around you could use the same Python script. But that's not how people are using AI, they basically think of a prompt as the only source of input, and the output of the prompt as the job they want get done.
So instead of reusing the Python script, they basically re-prompt the same problem again and again.
While this gives an initial productivity boost, you now arrive at a new plateau.
2)
Second problem is ideally you must be using the Python script written once and improve it over time. An ever improving Python script over time should do most of your day job.
That's not happening. Instead since re-prompting is common, people are now executing a list of prompts to get complex work done, and then making it a workflow.
So ideally there should be a never ending productivity increase but when you sell a prompt as a product, people use it as a black box to get things done.
A lot of this has to do with lack of automation/programming mindset to begin with.
> Robert Solow, Noble Prize winning economist, 1987.
Some skeptic was wrong in the past, therefore we should disbelieve every skeptic, forever.
That's the argument, right?
A similar historical thing is when factories went from steam engines to electricity. Steam factories had one big engine connected mechanically to many tools and conveniences in the factory. So they replace the one big steam engine with an electric motor. Really not much better. It took time for them to realize they wire the factory and have each device have its own electric motor. That was more efficient and more flexible. Technology that changes how you work takes a long time to adopt.
I just had a meeting yesterday when someone from the customer support team vibe-coded a solution in a few hours. The boss said, "Let's just give this as a gift; this product is not our focus and I want to show them how AI makes us work fast."