this post was submitted on 26 Feb 2025
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For a lot of years, computers added no measurable productivity improvements. They sure revolutionized the way things work in all segments of society for something that doesn’t increase productivity.
AI is an inflating bubble: excessive spending, unclear use case. But it won’t take long for the pop, clearing out the failures and making successful use cases clearer, the winning approaches to emerge. This is basically the definition of capitalism
What time span are you referring to when you say "for a lot of years"?
Vague memories of many articles over much of my adult life decrying the costs of whatever the current trend with computers is being higher than the benefits.
And I believe it, it’s technically true. There seems to be a pattern of bubbles where everyone jumps on the new hot thing, spend way too much money on it. It’s counterproductive, right up until the bubble pops, leaving the transformative successes.
Or I believe it was a long term thing with electronic forms and printers. As long as you were just adding steps to existing business processes, you don’t see productivity gains. It took many years for businesses to reinvent the way they worked to really see the productivity gains
If you want a reference there is a Rational Reminder Podcast (nerdy and factual personal finance podcast from a Canadian team) about this concept. It was the illustrated with trains or phone infrastructure 100 years ago : new technology looks nice -> people invest stupid amounts in a variety of projects-> some crash bring back stock valuations to reasonable level and at that point the technology is adopted and its infrastructure got subsidized by those who lost money on the stock market hot thing. Then a new hot thing emerge. The Internet got its cycle in 2000, maybe AI is the next one. Usually every few decade the top 10 in the s/p 500 changes.