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AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

fortune.com

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Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#691

Post by aurareturn »

snarf21 wrote: post #594
aurareturn wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To follow this up, one of my favorite channels on Youtube is Outdoor Boys. It's just a father who made videos once a week doing outdoor things like camping with his family. He has amassed billions of views on his channel. Literally a one-man operation. He does all the filming, editing himself. No marketing. His channel got so popular that he had to quit to protect his family from fame. Many large production companies…

Serious question: but aren't there thousands of other guys doing almost the same thing and getting almost no views? Even if there are lots of new channels, there aren't going to be lots of winners

But there are many Youtubers making a decent living doing it as a one person shop or a small team. In the past, you needed to a large team with a large budget and buy in from TV/DVDs/VHS to get an audience.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#692

Post by franktankbank »

yubblegum wrote: post #625

I've sat in a room with a too big to tail banker's VP happily telling me and my boss that "we're getting rid of this whole floor". Dateline ~2010. Location: NYC Why:Indian outsourced shops. Now the zinger, dear hn, is this: He actually said to us (we ran a more boutique consulting firm) that "everything has to be done 3 times" and "their work is crap". But "we're getting rid of this floor". That, imho, was due to geo…

And India buys russian oil so what exactly is the goal there.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#693

Post by aurareturn »

toldnotmywrath wrote: post #667
aurareturn wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But I don't see any receipts from the opposite side either.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#694

Post by franktankbank »

jurschreuder wrote: post #124

Workers may see the LLM as a productivity boost because they can basically cheat a their homework. As a CEO I see it as a massive clog up of vast amounts of content that somebody will need to check. A DDoS of any text-based system. The other day I got a document of 155 pages in Whatsapp. Thanx. Same with pull requests. Who will check all this?

Who gave you the 155 page doc? How quickly were they fired?

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#695

Post by aurareturn »

trollbridge wrote: post #543
aurareturn wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be strange, because all other technology development in history has taken things the exact opposite direction; larger companies that can do things on scale and outcompete smaller ones. I don't think this has always been true. Youtube allowed many more small media production companies - sometimes just one person in their garage. Shopify allowed many more small retailers. Steam & cheap game engines allowed m…

That’s an argument for giant companies at scale like Google/YouTube.

I don't think so. Are there more media production entities now or in the 2000s?

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#696

Post by b40d-48b2-979e »

NoLinkToMe wrote: post #528
b40d-48b2-979e wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at job numbers That is a wild take given the recession we're basically in from bad US policy like tariffs.

Actually job numbers are depressed (hiring recession) and GDP numbers are still way up, both precisely due to the AI investment. More output with fewer people. Wild take to cite a recession when last quarter growth was 4.4%.

"The economy" is not GDP.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#697

Post by palmotea »

wiseowise wrote: post #683
palmotea wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hard miss. GP is right, and your assumptions say more about you than about me. :^) No. If that's the case, your statement was unclear: since you didn't specify who else thinks those people were cattle, the implication is that you think it. Especially since you prefaced your statement with "I’d argue." And the interpretation... > It seems more like they're implying it's those at the top think that about other people…

> No. If that's the case, your statement was unclear: since you didn't specify who else thinks those people were cattle, the implication is that you think it. Especially since you prefaced your statement with "I’d argue." I never said it was clear? Two commenters got it right, two wrong, so it wasn’t THAT unobvious. > What indication has "the top" given to show they have that kind of foresight and control? The closes…

>> What indication has "the top" given to show they have that kind of foresight and control? The closest is the AI-bros advocacy of UBI, which (for the record) has gone nowhere.

> Tech bros selling “no more software engineers” to cost optimizers, dictatorships in US, Russia, China pressing with their heels on our freedoms, Europe cracking down on encryption, Dutch trying to tax unrealized (!) gains, do I really need to continue?

All those things are non sequiturs, though, some directly contradicting the statement I was responding to, as you claim it should be interpreted. If "90% of modern jobs are bullshit to keep cattle occupied" that implies "the top" deliberately engineered (or at least maintains) an economy where 90% jobs are bullshit (unnecessary). But that's obviously not the case, as the priority of "the top" is to gather more money to themselves in the short to medium term, and they very frequently cut jobs to accomplish that. "Tech bros selling “no more software engineers” to cost optimizers," is a new iteration of that. If "the top" was really trying "to keep cattle occupied" they wouldn't be cutting jobs left and right.

We don't live in a command economy, there's no group of people with an incentive to create "bullshit" jobs "to keep cattle occupied."

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#699

Post by gjk3 »

K0balt wrote: post #537

This is because the vast majority of white collar activity in a large corporation produces no direct economic value. Making it easier/better just means more/higher quality “worthless” work is performed. The incentives in the not-directly -productive parts of organizations are to keep busy and maintain a stream of signals of productivity. For this , AI just raises the bar. The 25% of the work that -is- important to pr…

Principal-agent problem.

The manager wants a large team. The shareholder who ultimately employs the manager but does not control operations does not want that of course.

Hmm.

Re: AI adoption and Solow's productivity paradox

#700

Post by gjk3 »

ddtaylor wrote: post #651
K0balt wrote: post #537

This is because the vast majority of white collar activity in a large corporation produces no direct economic value. Making it easier/better just means more/higher quality “worthless” work is performed. The incentives in the not-directly -productive parts of organizations are to keep busy and maintain a stream of signals of productivity. For this , AI just raises the bar. The 25% of the work that -is- important to pr…

There are a lot of people who sit with their laptop open while streaming something, sleeping or messing with their phone while periodically waking up to join a new meeting or fiddle with something to make it look like they are active. These are the people "shocked" when they are displaced.

There are many reasons why such people might be employed. E.g. preventing a competitor from hoarding talent, so you decide to do it too.

Whats taught in economics textbooks doesnt always reflect reality - ha.

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