AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox • Hacker News Board

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#661

Post by csa » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 5:07 PM UTC

Wilder7977 wrote: post #452

aurareturn wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future of work is fewer human team members and way more AI assistants. I think companies will need fewer engineers but there will be more companies. Now: 100 companies who employ 1,000 engineers each What we are transitioning to: 1000 companies who employ 10 engineers each What will happen in the future: 10,000 companies who employ 1 engineer each Same number of engineers. We are about to enter an era of explosiv…

And those companies will do what? Produce products in uber-saturated markets? Or magically 9900 more products or markets will be created, all of them successful?

> And those companies will do what? Produce products in uber-saturated markets?

> Or magically 9900 more products or markets will be created, all of them successful?

Yes. Products will become more tailored/bespoke rather than a lot of the one size fits all approach that is pervasive now.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#662

Post by johnnienaked » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

killingtime74 wrote: post #126

crazygringo wrote: post #21

Just to be clear, the article is NOT criticizing this. To the contrary, it's presenting it as expected , thanks to Solow's productivity paradox [1]. Which is that information technology similarly (and seemingly shockingly) didn't produce any net economic gains in the 1970's or 1980's despite all the computerization. It wasn't until the mid-to-late 1990's that information technology finally started to show clear benef…

productivity may rise with time, and costs may come down. The money is already spent

Some of the money is spent. What happens when better models, more efficient cooling techniques, and other technologies hit? Seems like the best strategy at this point isn't dumping your entire FCF into datacenters, but wait and see if there's even a viable business efficiency improvement first.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#663

Post by toldnotmywrath » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

graybeardhacker wrote: post #624

rkomorn wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the people who think more companies with fewer employees is a good thing. I already feel spammed to death by desperate requests for my consumption as is.

Because: 1. One person companies are better at giving the wealth to the worker. 2. With thousands of companies the products can be more targeted and each product can serve fewer people and still be profitable Then companies won't need to spam you to convince you that you need something you don't. Or that their product will help you in ways it can't. Once person companies will not have a 100 person marketing team tryi…

> One person companies will not have a 100 person marketing team to inject ads into every corner of your life.

But they could have a thousand-agent swarm connected via MCP to everything within our field of vision to bury us with ads.

It's been a long time since I read "The Third Wave" and up until 2026, not much has reminded me about its "Small is beautiful", and "rise of the prosumer" themes besides the content creator economy which is arguably the worst thing to ever happen to humanity's information environment, and LLM agent discussions.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#664

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 5:13 PM UTC

graybeardhacker wrote: post #624

rkomorn wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the people who think more companies with fewer employees is a good thing. I already feel spammed to death by desperate requests for my consumption as is.

Because: 1. One person companies are better at giving the wealth to the worker. 2. With thousands of companies the products can be more targeted and each product can serve fewer people and still be profitable Then companies won't need to spam you to convince you that you need something you don't. Or that their product will help you in ways it can't. Once person companies will not have a 100 person marketing team tryi…

[deleted]

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#665

Post by stephenr » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 5:14 PM UTC

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #633

stephenr wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My grade school math teachers were probably not well-versed in Calculus and Real Analysis, but they helped me learn my time tables just as well. Are you somehow equating basic multiplication to a "bad long term decision"?

No, I was focusing on this quote: > llms can get me started really fast. Basically it distills the time taken to research I was saying that it speeds up research by exposing you to the things you don’t know that you don’t know.

> exposing you to the things you don’t know that you don’t know

Or the things that it has hallucinated, or just referenced incorrectly.

That's my point. You're talking about learning basic maths from a school teacher who isn't a Calculus expert, but the thread is talking about learning maths from a kid with ADHD who completes the homework before the teacher has finished describing what needs to be done, but sometimes returns homework in an invented language with references to Cthulhu throughout it.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#666

Post by rkomorn » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

toldnotmywrath wrote: post #663

graybeardhacker wrote: post #624

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because: 1. One person companies are better at giving the wealth to the worker. 2. With thousands of companies the products can be more targeted and each product can serve fewer people and still be profitable Then companies won't need to spam you to convince you that you need something you don't. Or that their product will help you in ways it can't. Once person companies will not have a 100 person marketing team tryi…

> One person companies will not have a 100 person marketing team to inject ads into every corner of your life. But they could have a thousand-agent swarm connected via MCP to everything within our field of vision to bury us with ads. It's been a long time since I read "The Third Wave" and up until 2026, not much has reminded me about its "Small is beautiful", and "rise of the prosumer" themes besides the content crea…

> the content creator economy

This is exactly one of the things I find maddening at the moment. "Everyone" (except my actual friends) on social media is trying to sell me something.

Eg: I like dogs. It's becoming increasingly hard to follow dog accounts without someone trying to sell me their sponsor's stuff.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#667

Post by toldnotmywrath » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 5:17 PM UTC

aurareturn wrote: post #314

gzread wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Casey Muratori says that every programmer should understand how computers work and if you don't understand how computers work you can't be a good programmer.

I might not be a good programmer but I've been a very productive one. Someone who is good at writing code isn't always good at making money.

Problem with much of this talk is receipts are always nowhere to be found.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#668

Post by nkrisc » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 5:19 PM UTC

drnick1 wrote: post #604

nkrisc wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just highlights the absurdity of having your employer responsible for your health insurance and managing your taxes for you. These should be handled by the government, equally for all.

> These should be handled by the government, equally for all. This is certainly possible, but it's called communism.

No. Private insurance could still be an option.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#669

Post by HWR_14 » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 5:22 PM UTC

noddingham wrote: post #129

HWR_14 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very few people have pensions anymore. People now direct their own retirement funds.

That's what he was saying. Wall Street (the stock market) are people's "pensions" now because everyone has a 401k or equivalent so their retirement is tied to the market. Thus, these companies are betting America's collective retirement on AI...

I thought he was talking about actual pension funds, which still exist and invest large sums of money in Wall Street. But make sure your 401k doesn't include AI funds then. You should have a choice over what part of the market to invest in.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#670

Post by XenophileJKO » Wed, Feb 18, 2026, 5:27 PM UTC

danbolt wrote: post #494

XenophileJKO wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know good architecture and you are testing as you go, I would say, it is probably pretty damn close to being able to build a company without looking at the code. Not without "risk" but definitely doable and plausible. My current project that I started this weekend is a rust client server game with the client compiled into web assembly. I do these projects without reading the code at all as a way to gauge what…

What’s the game? Genuinely curious!

Simultaneous turn based top down car combat where you design the cars first. Inspired by Car Wars, but taking advantage of computers, so spline based path planing and much more complicated way of calculating armor penetration and damage.

I'm building to play with my friends online.