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> AI isn't adding much productivity Would love to know where this comes from. I am not sure about that. Could you point to data/anecdata?

by wuschel 22d ago

throwaway85825 22d ago
https://fortune.com/2026/08/22/executives-ai-productivity-layoffs-study/ https://fortune.com/2026/08/22/executives-ai-productivity-la... There's been a few studies. Most find productivity gain from 'AI' to be negligible.
- ThePhysicist 22d ago
  Seems hard to believe, I mean I'm not an AI absolutist but as a programmer it allows me to automate simple things like writing small patches or config changes in a matter of minutes where before I would have invested hours, so hard to believe that it won't at least bump productivity up by 20-60 % overall, it's also tremendously better at finding relevant content and curating it than me so that's another time saver unrelated to programming but relevant for any type of knowledge work. Friends in research and medecine and law also tell me that AI has drastically accelerated their rate of processing and ingesting any type of information and helped them to automate aspects of their jobs. So not sure but negligible isn't the word I would use here.
  - swiftcoder 22d ago
    > it allows me to automate simple things like writing small patches or config changes in a matter of minutes where before I would have invested hours One of the problems here is that things like this only count as "increased productivity" in the economic sense if it results in more income at the end of the funnel. Are you actually making more product faster in all your new-found free time? Very few orgs I've worked in have actually been limited by the speed of programmers writing code. Usually it's communication overhead and management processes eating up most of the bandwidth - and those tend to expand to absorb any additional bandwidth.
    - ThePhysicist 22d ago
      I mean I can deliver the same software in one month that I delivered in maybe 3 months before and for many things I don't need a dedicated frontend developer, designer or writer anymore. So for me it's the case!
      - swiftcoder 22d ago
        > mean I can deliver the same software in one month that I delivered in maybe 3 months before Right, but are you delivering 3x more software now, and more importantly, are you selling 3x more software now?
    - jr3592 22d ago
      > One of the problems here is that things like this only count as "increased productivity" in the economic sense if it results in more income at the end of the funnel. Are you actually making more product faster in all your new-found free time? This strikes me as a problem with how we define productivity in this context. If I can do my job in 1 hour, when it took me 8 before, am I not more productive in a rate-based sense? Sure, I might only work 5 hours in a week instead of 40, so my net production is the same, but my rate of productivity was certainly much higher.
      - NateEag 22d ago
        Wealth created is still the same, and that's what an economist means by "productive" - you produced X amount of wealth (usually measured in dollar amounts). It's like "work" meaning one thing to a normal person, but something very specific and counterintuitive in Newtonian physics (if you carry a fifty-pound weight in a circle and stop at your starting point, you've done no work).
        jr3592 21d ago
        I suppose I can understand that perspective, but disagree with it? We should measure time returned to individuals as wealth, maybe even the highest form of wealth.
  - throw0101a 22d ago
    > Seems hard to believe […] This goes back before AI, with computers not being found to be improving productivity numbers: Solow's paradox. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox * https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-solow-productivity-paradox-what-do-computers-do-to-productivity/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-solow-productivity-pa...
  - baxtr 22d ago
    Even if it was true… does anyone really believe that companies will stop using AI?
  - polnoner 22d ago
    I am Claude fanboy but don't work in IT. For my job and basically everyone I know outside of programming, the productivity from AI is literally zero. I think what this says is the productivity is in specific silos and why the experience of the utility of AI is so vastly different for different people.
- bloppe 22d ago
  Ask any solo founder and they will have a very different story https://www.economist.com/business/2026/07/27/america-has-become-an-entrepreneurs-paradise?giftId=YzEzNDNlZDUtNjA4ZS00NjY1LWFkNTMtZDhhN2I2YzNjOTJi&utm_campaign=gifted_article https://www.economist.com/business/2026/07/27/america-has-be...

> AI isn't adding much productivity Would love to know where this comes from. I am not sure about that. Could you point to data/anecdata?

by wuschel 22d ago

> AI isn't adding much productivity Would love to know where this comes from. I am not sure about that. Could you point to data/anecdata?

throwaway85825 22d ago

https://fortune.com/2026/08/22/executives-ai-productivity-layoffs-study/ https://fortune.com/2026/08/22/executives-ai-productivity-la... There's been a few studies. Most find productivity gain from 'AI' to be negligible.

ThePhysicist 22d ago
Seems hard to believe, I mean I'm not an AI absolutist but as a programmer it allows me to automate simple things like writing small patches or config changes in a matter of minutes where before I would have invested hours, so hard to believe that it won't at least bump productivity up by 20-60 % overall, it's also tremendously better at finding relevant content and curating it than me so that's another time saver unrelated to programming but relevant for any type of knowledge work. Friends in research and medecine and law also tell me that AI has drastically accelerated their rate of processing and ingesting any type of information and helped them to automate aspects of their jobs. So not sure but negligible isn't the word I would use here.
- swiftcoder 22d ago
  > it allows me to automate simple things like writing small patches or config changes in a matter of minutes where before I would have invested hours One of the problems here is that things like this only count as "increased productivity" in the economic sense if it results in more income at the end of the funnel. Are you actually making more product faster in all your new-found free time? Very few orgs I've worked in have actually been limited by the speed of programmers writing code. Usually it's communication overhead and management processes eating up most of the bandwidth - and those tend to expand to absorb any additional bandwidth.
  - ThePhysicist 22d ago
    I mean I can deliver the same software in one month that I delivered in maybe 3 months before and for many things I don't need a dedicated frontend developer, designer or writer anymore. So for me it's the case!
    - swiftcoder 22d ago
      > mean I can deliver the same software in one month that I delivered in maybe 3 months before Right, but are you delivering 3x more software now, and more importantly, are you selling 3x more software now?
  - jr3592 22d ago
    > One of the problems here is that things like this only count as "increased productivity" in the economic sense if it results in more income at the end of the funnel. Are you actually making more product faster in all your new-found free time? This strikes me as a problem with how we define productivity in this context. If I can do my job in 1 hour, when it took me 8 before, am I not more productive in a rate-based sense? Sure, I might only work 5 hours in a week instead of 40, so my net production is the same, but my rate of productivity was certainly much higher.
    - NateEag 22d ago
      Wealth created is still the same, and that's what an economist means by "productive" - you produced X amount of wealth (usually measured in dollar amounts). It's like "work" meaning one thing to a normal person, but something very specific and counterintuitive in Newtonian physics (if you carry a fifty-pound weight in a circle and stop at your starting point, you've done no work).
      - jr3592 21d ago
        I suppose I can understand that perspective, but disagree with it? We should measure time returned to individuals as wealth, maybe even the highest form of wealth.
- throw0101a 22d ago
  > Seems hard to believe […] This goes back before AI, with computers not being found to be improving productivity numbers: Solow's paradox. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox * https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-solow-productivity-paradox-what-do-computers-do-to-productivity/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-solow-productivity-pa...
- baxtr 22d ago
  Even if it was true… does anyone really believe that companies will stop using AI?
- polnoner 22d ago
  I am Claude fanboy but don't work in IT. For my job and basically everyone I know outside of programming, the productivity from AI is literally zero. I think what this says is the productivity is in specific silos and why the experience of the utility of AI is so vastly different for different people.
bloppe 22d ago
Ask any solo founder and they will have a very different story https://www.economist.com/business/2026/07/27/america-has-become-an-entrepreneurs-paradise?giftId=YzEzNDNlZDUtNjA4ZS00NjY1LWFkNTMtZDhhN2I2YzNjOTJi&utm_campaign=gifted_article https://www.economist.com/business/2026/07/27/america-has-be...