I think this calculation is bad? I mean, they take sand and produce AI chips, and then the AI chips turn electricity into entertainment. So highly productive use of resources. Global entertainment industry is $3 trillion, easily justifies investment when combined with coding usage. So restructuring the economy etc. - those are moonshots that are like the cherry on top.
The AI Productivity Illusion
11–20 of 31 posts
Re: The AI Productivity Illusion
#12coding wasn't ever the bottleneck or even a large contributor to outcomes. same for lots of this other stuff LLMs do.
so even if you 10x your coding, you aren't gonna have an appreciable effect on total output
Re: The AI Productivity Illusion
#13This particular phrase captured my attention: > Productivity Is About (Much) More than Finishing Tasks Quickly I read something similar in the book The Goal from Eliyahu Goldratt more than 20 year ago. You can be highly productive and yet produce nothing of value.
yes!
as an aside: two books that made it almost impossible for me to deal with management "goals" at large corporations anymore:
1. the goal - by goldratt
2. out of the crisis - by deming
highly recommended!
Re: The AI Productivity Illusion
#14This particular phrase captured my attention: > Productivity Is About (Much) More than Finishing Tasks Quickly I read something similar in the book The Goal from Eliyahu Goldratt more than 20 year ago. You can be highly productive and yet produce nothing of value.
> You can be highly productive and yet produce nothing of value.
I'm sorry, but this is nonsense.
Yes, you can produce nothing of 'traditional' value whilst still being productive in some way , but you 100% can not be 'highly productive' when you don't produce anything of value.
Sitting around and jacking off all day is not as productive as working on some unmonetizable project. The value can be in many aspects of that project.
Re: The AI Productivity Illusion
#15This particular phrase captured my attention: > Productivity Is About (Much) More than Finishing Tasks Quickly I read something similar in the book The Goal from Eliyahu Goldratt more than 20 year ago. You can be highly productive and yet produce nothing of value.
> You can be highly productive and yet produce nothing of value. I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. Yes, you can produce nothing of 'traditional' value whilst still being productive in some way , but you 100% can not be 'highly productive' when you don't produce anything of value. Sitting around and jacking off all day is not as productive as working on some unmonetizable project. The value can be in many aspects of th…
In a mind boggling number of companies, “productive” measures output, not value.
Re: The AI Productivity Illusion
#16My guess is AI mostly increases the throughput of low-quality output, and the cleanup burden lands on the people with better judgment
Re: The AI Productivity Illusion
#17AI productivity only works if you were the only person in the world using it and no-one else was aware of it. You will look like a wizard, passing off slop to others who are too amazed and ignorant to know any better. The fact that that is exactly what is happening (everyone passing off slop to everyone else and pretending either they didn't use AI or it isn't slop actually) is telling. The mistake was giving it to e…
I prefer working alone, and even more so now with AI. When I work alone and own the whole project, I make the judgment call when and where slop is fine and where it's not. When working on a team there is always this battle to get code through the tests and review, often for code that is temporary or simply does not matter that much. Reviews rarely result in any meaningful changes anyway, unless the changes are < 50 LoC, in which case it's nitpicked to death instead of the "LGTM" you get for larger PRs. It all reminds me of airport security theater. Similarly, a 2 hour flight is now a 4 hour time waste of time, and a simple change that should take 10 minutes now takes up most of your day.
Re: The AI Productivity Illusion
#18> the mere fact that AI allows people to work faster It doesn't. It just lets them work less.
Those mean the same thing.
Re: The AI Productivity Illusion
#19This particular phrase captured my attention: > Productivity Is About (Much) More than Finishing Tasks Quickly I read something similar in the book The Goal from Eliyahu Goldratt more than 20 year ago. You can be highly productive and yet produce nothing of value.
> You can be highly productive and yet produce nothing of value. I'm sorry, but this is nonsense. Yes, you can produce nothing of 'traditional' value whilst still being productive in some way , but you 100% can not be 'highly productive' when you don't produce anything of value. Sitting around and jacking off all day is not as productive as working on some unmonetizable project. The value can be in many aspects of th…
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Re: The AI Productivity Illusion
#20I think this calculation is bad? I mean, they take sand and produce AI chips, and then the AI chips turn electricity into entertainment. So highly productive use of resources. Global entertainment industry is $3 trillion, easily justifies investment when combined with coding usage. So restructuring the economy etc. - those are moonshots that are like the cherry on top.
AI companies just need to capture more than half of the entire global entertainment market to avoid insolvency.
Seems unlikely, especially before the investment money runs out.