Comment by q3k
10 hours ago
I do believe there's a tiny subset of people who are more productive with AI, in the same way that Erdős was more productive with amphetamine.
But most who keep on going about their 10x productivity gain are indistinguishable from that one obnoxious guy at a party who won't shut up about his Ayahuasca retreat last spring. And they think they're Erdős.
this is a great metaphor precisely because (outside those with paradoxical stimulant response) everyone thinks they're more productive on amphetamines and there's some naive evidence to that effect. the number of things you've actually done is significantly higher. the change in value created, as measured by the decrease in distance between where you are and the the goal you're shooting for, is unpredictable at best and slowly degrades as reliance increases.
AI is like having a junior dev with an adderall addiction and an encyclopedic knowledge of coding syntax at your beck and call.