Hacker News Reader

The 80/20 rule doesn’t go away. I am an AI true believer and I appreciate how fast we can get from nothing to 80% but the last “20%” still takes 80%+ of the time.

The old rules still apply mainly.

View on HN

Yes, so 80% of 100 hours is considerably less than 80% of 600 hours

You get 80% done in 20% of the time. The LLM shrinks that 20%. So a 100 task maybe takes 5 hours instead of 20 which is great. But the remaining 80 hours are not as improved. So a 100hr job takes ~85 hours which is very good.

This is in-line with Googles study showing about a 10% productivity increase and other research I’ve read. I suspect this will increase with more integrations and workflow adaptations.

But even after power tools changed how quickly carpenters can frame and rough-in a house, the finishing work (which uses power tools too) still takes the majority of the time.

In my experience, the last 20% tends to be the stuff that's less obvious, too, by it's very nature.

The details and pitfalls that are unique to your specific scenario, that you only discover by running into them.

And yet this less obvious, more uncommon stuff is also what AI will be weakest at.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com