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CEOs admit AI had no impact on employment or productivity

fortune.com

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Re: CEOs admit AI had no impact on employment or productivity

#41

Post by throwaway422432 »

ofjcihen wrote: post #25
ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don’t get me wrong, I use these tools daily. That being said I’m having a very hard time finding where the productivity gains are. So why are you using the tools? Personal curiosity? Workplace mandate? I've made measurably more and faster progress on both professional and personal projects since adopting these tools. Sometimes assisted is less productive than unassisted, but the net gain is pretty obvious to me.

Honestly? It allows me to be lazy.

This.

An AI is like delegating it to the junior programmer you don't have. You spend 5 minutes writing the spec rather than an hour coding.

It's usually something you could do yourself, and just can't get motivated to type out the code in the moment.

Re: CEOs admit AI had no impact on employment or productivity

#43

Post by slopinthebag »

ofjcihen wrote: post #25
ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don’t get me wrong, I use these tools daily. That being said I’m having a very hard time finding where the productivity gains are. So why are you using the tools? Personal curiosity? Workplace mandate? I've made measurably more and faster progress on both professional and personal projects since adopting these tools. Sometimes assisted is less productive than unassisted, but the net gain is pretty obvious to me.

Honestly? It allows me to be lazy.

Yep...same

I use the tools, but I'm under no delusions that I'm not just being lazy. I could just do it myself, and in some cases it would take roughly the same amount of time, but I can scroll TikTok while it dutifully churns out code.

Re: CEOs admit AI had no impact on employment or productivity

#44

Post by slopinthebag »

smalltorch wrote: post #14
nothinkjustai wrote: post #7

Did the hype cycle not have an impact on employment with the various layoffs? Or is this and admission that the layoffs were for other reasons and were just attributed to AI? I’m not surprised about productivity though. Efficiency gains are limited by the actual bottlenecks. And truthfully, I think people are deluding themselves a bit about how effective vibe coding is and how much faster they are actually moving whe…

I've found the best way for me to wield it is the tool to build tools. I would have never in a million years been able to code. But I've used it to replace things I was paying hefty monthly subscriptions for.... So I'm not actually being more productive, but I've cut my costs significantly to do the same things I could do before.

I thought I would do this, but of all the vibe coded tools I've built, I think I still use...one. The rest are just not worth the upkeep relative to the utility, or are either broken functionally or in their UX and I can't be arsed to put the effort into making them good. Which brings up why these tools didn't really exist in the first place.

Of course ymmv, and if you find yourself paying subscriptions for stuff you can replace with vibe coded apps, all power to you.

Re: CEOs admit AI had no impact on employment or productivity

#45

Post by afavour »

newyankee wrote: post #21
cmiles8 wrote: post #16

AI isn’t going away, but it’s also clear the much promised impacts aren’t there and aren’t coming anytime soon. A bit like the claims a few years back that we’d all have self driving cars by now. The most likely outcome is an AI bubble correction that will be somewhat painful and wipe out many/most AI startups, followed by AI settling into day to day in a way that’s useful and found in many places, but not world-as-w…

WE do have self driving cars with Waymo data showing it is clearly better than human drivers in certain markets like Phoenix. It is human regulations, laws and the general societal unease that is preventing a total rapid change. In fact a Robotaxis only urban area which is continuously mapped might be feasible today and probably could even reduce the no of cars needed for the population making it accessible to many m…

As a counterpoint, Waymo conducted a pilot in NYC then abandoned the permit for it:

https://www.thecity.nyc/2026/04/06/waymo-driverless-cars-tes...

Phoenix is probably about as good a location as you could get for a self driving car. It’s not yet clear how wide their success will be outside of that niche.

Re: CEOs admit AI had no impact on employment or productivity

#46

Post by dehrmann »

prh8 wrote: post #20

My company has pushed engineering all-in for AI in the last few months Our stock price has also gone down 70% in the last few months Naturally, we're pivoting our platform to put AI front and center

These aren't related in the way you think they are. Stock price reacts quickly to broader market trends, but more slowly for company-specific trends where revenue is likely stable. The impact of AI in engineering work will take months to show up in the product, probably a year after that for customers and the market to take notice. An AI product is a different thing entirely.

Re: CEOs admit AI had no impact on employment or productivity

#47

Post by beloch »

There's an interesting race happening here.

On one side, there is the usual process of figuring out how to properly use this new tech. It is to be expected that some experimentation is necessary to figure out what applications AI boosts productivity for and what applications it doesn't. There is unusually strong evangelism pushing AI into everything, so the negatives are going to be salient and may make it hard to spot some of the successes.

On the other side is something a little bit new: Deliberate enshittification. OpenAI and others no doubt saw the power crunch coming years in advance, yet it's still happening and is, ostensibly, the reason why prices are starting to go up. This was not unexpected. It's the business model. Build to the capacity that is cheaply available while offering your customers a sweetheart deal to get them addicted, and then jack up the prices when the competition has no cheap power to build upon. The result is locked in customers and locked out competition.

On one side, you have people learning when AI is appropriate and how to use it efficiently. On the other side, you have a small number of AI companies trying to extract every last bit of value so that any productivity gains wind up in their owners' pockets. Will the gains of more appropriately applying AI be entirely wiped out by enshittification?

Re: CEOs admit AI had no impact on employment or productivity

#48

Post by hsuduebc2 »

cmiles8 wrote: post #16

AI isn’t going away, but it’s also clear the much promised impacts aren’t there and aren’t coming anytime soon. A bit like the claims a few years back that we’d all have self driving cars by now. The most likely outcome is an AI bubble correction that will be somewhat painful and wipe out many/most AI startups, followed by AI settling into day to day in a way that’s useful and found in many places, but not world-as-w…

Was there any recent technology that really delivered what was the general promise?

Re: CEOs admit AI had no impact on employment or productivity

#49

Post by slopinthebag »

gozucito wrote: post #27

I believe the lack of quick evident profit increases are partly a failure of imagination or a failure of understanding that AI agents are different from people. More impressive or faster in some ways, but much much less reliable in others. The evolution of harnesses like claude code or open cause, and metaharnesses like Ralph loops, gas town, claws, etc. Will progressively allow for gradually better results and abili…

Actually I think the opposite - we will learn that the most important thing is the ability to manage context & steer these models instead of using a rube goldberg machine. Some of the top performing agent harnesses on Terminal Bench provide literally one tool: tmux, which outperforms Claude Code et al. To me, the most important thing by far when getting reasonable output from these machines are what you put into it.

Re: CEOs admit AI had no impact on employment or productivity

#50

Post by ua709 »

cmiles8 wrote: post #16

AI isn’t going away, but it’s also clear the much promised impacts aren’t there and aren’t coming anytime soon. A bit like the claims a few years back that we’d all have self driving cars by now. The most likely outcome is an AI bubble correction that will be somewhat painful and wipe out many/most AI startups, followed by AI settling into day to day in a way that’s useful and found in many places, but not world-as-w…

If AI just means automation, then sure. We absolutely need more automation and if LLMs are not the mechanism then something else better be. More automation is the life blood of our industry. But are LLMs a game changer or today's fuzzy logic? [1] Time will tell...

[1] https://www.electronicdesign.com/technologies/embedded/digit...

P.S. I'm not saying fuzzy logic doesn't have applications, I know rice cookers are a thing, but I think it's safe to say we have other options for controlling non-linear systems these days.

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