There are real productivity gains by using these tools right now. Instead of doing 1x your normal work, you can do 5x while still maintaining quality. This is like an accountant sticking to pen and paper because calculators are big and clunky.
If that were the case I’d hire pen guy.
Also, if your AI has a 20% error rate, you're not holding it right. You need to spend more time keeping it on rails - unit tests, integration tests, e2e tests, local dev + browser use, preview deployments, staging environments, phased rollouts, AI PR reviews, rolling releases. The error rate will be much closer to 0%.
I think the point the author is making is not that it's all useless, but against the very overly simplistic idea the plot of Amount of AI vs Productivity in All Situations is a hockey stick chart.
Being told to be excited about something when clearly all they're saying is "it works sometimes, other times not so much. I'll keep checking and when it's good enough for me I'll get on board" is aggravating.
Yet my pay stays the same, all my coworkers get fired, and Sam Altman gets all of their paychecks. Hrm.
That's a gross overestimate. 2x I would maybe believe.
Someone has to sign off your work and unless it's hard to write but easy to read, this is where the bottleneck currently lies.