Live data from Hacker News

The Leverage Paradox in AI

indiehackers.com

31–40 of 56 posts

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#31
post #28

To win big financially you have to be able to use AI better than others. Even if you use it merely as well as the next person, your productivity has increased, reducing costs, which is a good thing. The bad news for some is that they are not enjoying the parts of the work left over from automation.

I don't see how that can be. There is no exponential return on "investing" in using AI real good. Investing in your understanding and skill, on the other hand, has nearly limitless returns.

I did not speak of "exponential" returns, but it is now feasible for one person to compete with a team, or a small team with a big one, due to co-ordination costs and the difficulty of assembling the right people.

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#32
post #12

> This is the leverage paradox. New technologies give us greater leverage to do more tasks better. But because this leverage is usually introduced into competitive environments, the result is that we end up having to work just as hard as before (if not harder) to remain competitive and keep up with the joneses. Off-topic, but in biology circles I've heard this type of situation (where "it takes all the running you ca…

This circumstance is more commonly known as the Jevons Paradox

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#34
post #17
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also known as induced demand, and why adding a lane on the highway doesn’t help for long https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

I feel that I understand the leverage paradox concept, and the induced demand concept, but I don't understand how they are the same concept. Can you explain the connection a little more?

More leverage = more productivity = more supply of good and services

The induced remand for more goods and services therefore fills the gap, and causes people to work just as hard as before -- similarly to how a highway remains full after adding a lane

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#36

    "Then, within twenty minutes, we started ignoring the cows. … Cows, after you’ve seen them for a while, are boring"
Skill issue. I've been looking at cows for 40 years and am still enchanted by them. Maybe it helps that I think of cows as animals instead of story book illustrations; you'd get lynched if you claimed you got bored of your pet cat after 20 minutes.

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#37

With my current project (a game project), I full-vibed as hard as I could to test out the concept, as well as get some of the data files in place and write a tool for managing the data. This went great, and I have made technology choices for AI-coding and have gained enough skill with AI-coding that I can get prettttty far this way. But it does produce a ball-of-mud pattern and a lot of cruft that will cause it to hi…

Where does the product description sit in your project so the ai can reference it? Is it like a summary form that describes what the project basically should do or be used for, asking for a friend

It's right in CLAUDE.md

For take #1 I said what tech to use and a high level description of the game and it's features. I guess I failed to mention this part, but when I threw take #1 away, I first used Claude + hand editing to update it to have a detailed description of each screen and feature in the game. So take #2 had a much more detailed description of exactly what was going to be built, but still, right in CLAUDE.md

I did also create a DEVELOPMENT-PLAN.md first with Claude and have been having it update it with what's been done before every commit. I don't know yet have a good idea of how impactful that part has been.

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#38

Ghibli images are not "cows", they're /an artists style/, and a particular shop that has expressly asked that you *not copy their work*, because it cheapens what humans do.

The article is defining cows as something we see too much of. Copying Ghiblis work turns the images into cows, regardless of how the artist feels about it. Obviously it would be ideal if that wasn't happening.

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#39
It's crazy to me that people will reference Keynes' prediction of leisure without acknowledging that we chose not to do that. The dystopian way in which work has become more competitive, intensive, and ill-compensated even as economies have supposedly continued to become more productive is the result of policy choices, not some inevitable fact of the universe

Re: The Leverage Paradox in AI

#40

If we give runners motorcycles, they reach finish lines faster. But the motor sport is still competitive and takes effort; everyone else has a bike, too. And since the bike parameters are tightly controlled (basically everyone is on the same bike), the competition is intense.

Analogy holds because its way more expensive, stressful, and the stakes are higher. Also it's harder to get in to without already having an advantage (like rich parents).
Post reply on HN