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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

#71

Post by negura »

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…

> the much promised impacts aren’t there and aren’t coming anytime soon

at least according to industry analysts, the thesis at the moment is that reasoning models (which loop over their own output and backtrack if necessary) will bring fidelity close to 100% and find novel solutions not present in the training dataset. but they consume more tokens, they require more computing and the infra for it is still being built. so the outlook for those impacts is ~2030

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

#72

Post by belZaah »

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…

Unlikely. There’s no change in operating profit per employee trends for major software companies like Alphabet since GenAI became a thing. But MS employees are now making 3 times more profit, than they were before Nadella took over. Clearly leadership can make a difference but there is no visible impact after several years of the technology being available. I can’t imagine a technology, that shows no economic impact at all while we figure it out. There ought to be _something_. Yes, big companies have inertia, but Nadella showed clear results in a year.

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

#74

Post by sph »

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.

No, it allows you to procrastinate on thinking, which is very different than laziness.

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

#75

Post by palmotea »

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…

> AI isn’t going away, but it’s also clear the much promised impacts aren’t there and aren’t coming anytime soon.

Even if it doesn't result in increased productivity, AI can still take the fun out of the job (goodbye coding, hello code reviews all day).

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

#76

Post by zihotki »

Productivity per dollar doesn't increase because for maturity levels 1&2 the costs for inference and extra team load (PRs quantity and size) eat up all gains. Only on level 3 one can see actual productivity impact. Most companies are between levels 1 and 2, that's where only costs are rising.

Levels: 0 - no AI, 1 - AI enabled (copilots), 2 - AI assisted (autonomous agent pipelines not on your PC) , 3 - AI measured.

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

#77

Post by plaguuuuuu »

cmiles8 wrote: post #19
wildrhythms wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outsourcing to India and the Philippines

There’s alway a bit of that going on, but ironically if AI does result in mass labor replacement India and the Philippines are likely going to be ground zero where workforces get wiped out first. They’re ripe with the kind of things that AI is, in theory, getting very good at.

I've always held the view that successfully using AI requires more knowledge and skill, as the burst radius of poor engineering decisions or lack of domain knowledge is way larger.

I just cannot see WITCH doing this without exponentiating the usual problems with outsourcing. I've seen some horrors. Can't wait for contractors wielding unprecedented chaos.

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

#79

Post by cyb_ »

Simulacra wrote: post #4

Then why the layoffs???

Capital reallocation.

In other words, moving money/spend from non-AI projects to AI projects/cost. This includes trimming the bottom X% of performers to reallocate that money too.

In most cases, it is not about current productivity or AI doing people's jobs.

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

#80

Post by EPWN3D »

belZaah wrote: post #72
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…

Unlikely. There’s no change in operating profit per employee trends for major software companies like Alphabet since GenAI became a thing. But MS employees are now making 3 times more profit, than they were before Nadella took over. Clearly leadership can make a difference but there is no visible impact after several years of the technology being available. I can’t imagine a technology, that shows no economic impact…

That's not apples to apples due to Microsoft's massive force reductions and Azure's massive growth.
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