[HN Gopher] Human in the Loop and the Missing Productivity Growth
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       Human in the Loop and the Missing Productivity Growth
        
       Author : intellectronica
       Score  : 7 points
       Date   : 2025-01-01 20:34 UTC (3 days ago)
        
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       | tuatoru wrote:
       | Productivity in knowledge work is not difficult to measure, just
       | very laborious. A few aspects need to be untangled to do it,
       | though.
       | 
       | We can use an analogue of the Kaya Identity for CO2
       | production[1], the production identity:-
       | 
       | Dollars of revenue per year equals dollars produced per
       | keystroke, times keystrokes per hour, times hours at work per
       | year.
       | 
       | Revenue equals productivity times work intensity times worker
       | utilisation.
       | 
       | Worker utilisation is commonly measured and called
       | "productivity". More rarely work intensity is also measured, and
       | the product of intensity and utilisation is called
       | "productivity". Processes are almost never analysed sufficiently
       | deeply to measure true productivity (dollars per keystroke),
       | though.
       | 
       | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaya_identity
        
         | willturman wrote:
         | _Productivity in knowledge work is not difficult to measure,
         | just very laborious. A few aspects need to be untangled to do
         | it, though._
         | 
         | Goodhart's law [1] is an adage often stated as, "When a measure
         | becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". It is named
         | after British economist Charles Goodhart, who is credited with
         | expressing the core idea of the adage in a 1975 article on
         | monetary policy in the United Kingdom: Any observed statistical
         | regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon
         | it for control purposes.
         | 
         | 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
        
       | cess11 wrote:
       | "Humans, by nature, do everything they can to avoid cognitive
       | effort."
       | 
       | This is why the prevalence of sudoku in human societies can only
       | be explained as a result of harsh coercion.
        
         | intellectronica wrote:
         | :D
        
       | voidhorse wrote:
       | I have a somewhat different take.
       | 
       | We do not spend time on something because it is the amount of
       | time to reach some _objective_ standard, rather, we spend the
       | amount of time that we feel is necessary for _our personal
       | subjective standard_. So, of course, even as tools improve, we
       | 'll spend the same amount of time. If it's something we didn't
       | care about in the first place, AI tools won't save us any time
       | because we probably already spent barely any time and effort. If
       | it's something we do care about, sure we might use AI to automate
       | so aspects of the job, but we'll still spend the same amount of
       | time examining and tweaking outputs until we feel it is up to
       | snuff.
       | 
       | The real "gains" will only be realized once management
       | _eliminates_ the human operators _and_ accepts the lower quality
       | output that is a consequence of that.
       | 
       | 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 "amount of oxygen". The
       | definition changes depending on what it is you are actually
       | trying to _do_. To give an example, I might be trying to
       | eliminate any and all use of AI in my workplace, under this goal,
       | _any_ use of AI is fundamentally counterproductive.
        
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       (page generated 2025-01-04 23:00 UTC)