Human in the Loop and the Missing Productivity Growth

I have a somewhat different take.<p>We do not spend time on something because it is the amount of time to reach some <i>objective</i> standard, rather, we spend the amount of time that we feel is necessary for <i>our personal subjective standard</i>. So, of course, even as tools improve, we&#x27;ll spend the same amount of time. If it&#x27;s something we didn&#x27;t care about in the first place, AI tools won&#x27;t save us any time because we probably already spent barely any time and effort. If it&#x27;s something we do care about, sure we might use AI to automate so aspects of the job, but we&#x27;ll still spend the same amount of time examining and tweaking outputs until we feel it is up to snuff.<p>The real &quot;gains&quot; will only be realized once management <i>eliminates</i> the human operators <i>and</i> accepts the lower quality output that is a consequence of that.<p>Also, writing about productivity in abstract terms is and will forever remain an example of complete stupidity. It is not an objective measurable universal like &quot;amount of oxygen&quot;. The definition changes depending on what it is you are actually trying to <i>do</i>. To give an example, I might be trying to eliminate any and all use of AI in my workplace, under this goal, <i>any</i> use of AI is fundamentally counterproductive.

&quot;Humans, by nature, do everything they can to avoid cognitive effort.&quot;<p>This is why the prevalence of sudoku in human societies can only be explained as a result of harsh coercion.

Productivity in knowledge work is not difficult to measure, just very laborious. A few aspects need to be untangled to do it, though.<p>We can use an analogue of the Kaya Identity for CO2 production[1], the production identity:-<p>Dollars of revenue per year equals dollars produced per keystroke, times keystrokes per hour, times hours at work per year.<p>Revenue equals productivity times work intensity times worker utilisation.<p>Worker utilisation is commonly measured and called &quot;productivity&quot;. More rarely work intensity is also measured, and the product of intensity and utilisation is called &quot;productivity&quot;. Processes are almost never analysed sufficiently deeply to measure true productivity (dollars per keystroke), though.<p>1. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kaya_identity" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Kaya_identity</a>

Any post about productivity, AI, and humans that does not put responsibility at the center is a waste of bandwidth.<p>Responsibility is the ballgame. Irresponsible productivity is not productivity at all. Irresponsible productivity is how disasters like Bhopal and the 737 Max happened.<p>Am I being responsible when I trust my Python interpreter? For most purposes, yes. Am I being responsible when I trust any LLM to do anything remotely important? For most purposes, no.<p>Fanboys make outrageous and untested claims about what AI can do. My productivity hasn’t budged because I am behaving responsibility.