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Comment by ThePhysicist | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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.

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!

> 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?

> 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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

It is actually a very relevant real-world definition - even though I agree with you on the intangible value of time.

The reason why it is very relevant is that, in the way we have unfortunately structured our economy, the amount of work you have to do to be able to eat and enjoy your time will always expand to grow to at least force you to maintain (if not increase) your economic productivity. That is, if AI enables engineers to deliver 10x more features in the same unit of time, then their employers will expect them to deliver 10x more features to continue earning their current pay.

So, while the AI did, in principle, allow you to just reduce your work schedule while getting the same pay, as you're providing the same results in 1/10th of the time, the economic system does not - your previous work is instead simply worth less than it used to be. Assuming you're not happy to take a 90% pay cut, you'll have to continue spending 40+ hour weeks, just using AI as well now.

The economics definition is the real definition that real people use in the real world.

Everything is ultimately a chosen definition, nothing is "real". I'd argue the definition is antiquated. In the modern world, free time being returned to individuals is perhaps one of the greatest examples of wealth.

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.

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.

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.

> 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://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-solow-productivity-pa...

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

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.

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