Another explanation that I find persuasive, put forward by Ezra Klein, is that productivity-sapping uses of technology grew along with the productivity-boosting ones: social media, for example, is a powerful mechanism for distracting people and destroying their attention spans.

If this is a good explanation, it begs the question of what AI might do to destroy productivity as well. If you’re constantly sexting with your AI girlfriend, who just happens to be extraordinary adept at tapping into your sexual proclivities, maybe you won’t get as many support tickets resolved as your boss was hoping.

More hypothetically, I would also expect that a world in which people spend a lot of time with screens strapped to their head, consuming an infinite stream of entertainment provided by generative AI, is not going to produce higher GDP.

> More hypothetically, I would also expect that a world in which people spend a lot of time with screens strapped to their head, consuming an infinite stream of entertainment provided by generative AI, is not going to produce higher GDP.

Yeah, I think this dovetails with the idea that IT may be satisfying preference allocations without increasing overall production. Watching 10 movies a month on a streaming service adds much less to the GDP than going to the cinema 10x, but if the selection is better it might satisfy you more. Economists sometimes attempt to measure this with "utility adjustments" which recognize increasing quality in the same goods, but it's very hard for those adjustments to account for the hidden preferences of the consumers as opposed to objective qualities of a good or service.

Information goods like social media and streaming, financial services like pay-me-later, and conveniences like next-day delivery are all examples of activities that might suit preferences without showing up in GDP. They also may enable distraction, waste, reclusiveness and impulsiveness in ways we'd like to avoid as a society. At the same time they might also help some people feel more included and less lonely or trapped by circumstance.

> put forward by Ezra Klein

The explanation sounds pretty familiar, so I might have already read/heard this from Klein, but would you mind sharing a link?

I believe he has mentioned it more than once, but one podcast that includes that discussion IIRC, and many other AI-related topics, is the April 7 episode “Why A.I. Might Not Take Your Job or Supercharge the Economy”. If you’re on iOS:

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/the-ezra-klein-show/id...

I really don't like Ezra Klein so I'm probably biased but is there any evidence to this?

This is the reason I don't like him. His analysis is some reactive "big brain" speculation, imo.

How do those distinct lifestyles" match with rising inequality and people having a hard time buying a house or paying rent?

Inequality is a red herring. Poverty is down.

Have you looked for housing in Columbus, Ohio?

I’m sure there are plenty of ghost towns with housing sitting empty that could be had for a song too. That probably doesn’t help if your job, family, and friends are somewhere else.

And remote work is more common than ever. Regardless, Columbus, Ohio has a very reasonable cost of living for the salaries available in the region.

Shhhh...don't need any more people here.

Ghost town?

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-...

Is homelessness trending down or up? Why?

It's easier than ever to be homeless and it's generally frowned upon to forcefully institutionalize the mentally ill these days.

Wish I'd known that it was difficult to become homeless back when I was. It seemed really easy at the time, all you had to do was get evicted. Not sure how it could be easier now.

I think what they meant was that it's easier than ever to be homeless.

In many places you can't be thrown in jail for being homeless anymore. Many cities have more housing and shelters and free kitchens than ever before. Some places even give you a smartphone and basic plan. Etc.

Nope. How am I supposed to get a job there? How about getting the money together to afford to move? I already live in a "low cost of living" area with less than half the population of Columbus, Ohio. It's still expensive as hell and there isn't a great housing situation.

Well, people are working everyday in Columbus OH.

I'm not from the US nor do I wish to live there, Columbus, Ohio or otherwise.

> having a hard time buying a house

It's also much harder to get servants in that house. I wonder why...

I don't understand your comment.

if everything is so bad then it should be easier to find someone willing to work. But that's not the case today. Which means life today is probably not that bad.

As far as I know, neither the rate of homelessness has gone up nor homeownership has gone down over the past decade.

The first one wouldn't cover rents increasing but people paying them, albeit struggling.

The second one is a lagging indicator. If lots of people bought their homes when they were cheap and are still alive, it will take time for the real impact to be visible.

Agreed. Though I think that the 'struggling' part creates a lag in both aspects. I think the 'gotta have a side-hustle' trend is a strong indicator of this. I would be interested in seeing the trends in number of people working 2+ jobs (or income streams), population shifts to more affordable areas, and number of disconnects of non-essential services. From experience growing up in a poor family, I know the definition of 'non-essential' can expand greatly as desperation grows.

Edit: Tracking real numbers in homelessness is also just extremely difficult.

https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless... It's increased.

It is less about productivity and more that AIs have the potential as the ideal employees.

No time off. No health care. Operate 24/7. No unions. No work safety concerns. No lawsuits over being unfairly fired. Control over exactly how something gets done or said.

If only the AIs will stop hallucinating or can consistently comply with policies …

> If only the AIs will stop hallucinating or can consistently comply with policies

I'm starting to wonder how much this matters.

People do crazy shit on the clock all the time. Company reps do not always adhere to policy 100% of the time either. People engage in office politics, coworkers accuse others of whatever, mistakes get made. LLMs happen to emulate all of this behavior.

In theory, we could replace everybody with AI and not much would be different. Productivity increase is debatable but cost savings would be immense. The question is how much insanity we're willing to tolerate as a result.

(...and seeing what fun ensues when there are more people than available jobs.)

>The question is how much insanity we're willing to tolerate as a result.

Given our elected representatives, I don't think that's a problem. No offense to any party or person. But we've consistently proven that we can tolerate and welcome way more insanity than seems reasonable.

My thought has been that most of the IT revolution hasn't been able to produce much extra goods, its all about Information, all it can do is help us optimize existing goods producing processes. As a result much of the productivity within the Information Technology advancement, has done little in the way of actual wealth creation, apart from optimizing existing processes, which hits a limit pretty fast.

> IT revolution hasn't been able to produce much extra goods

Measuring "Goods" in units or tons is bit simplistic. Almost everything is much better that it was 15-20 years back. TV, cars, phones, computers. This difference probably should be counted as 'extra', shouldn't it?

Your second paragraph makes intuitive sense to me. For every knowledge worker that got 2x as productive in the past decade thanks to new tech alone, there's a person who left their job where they were doing productive (perhaps grindy) things to do gig work because of the flexibility it provides. It might be nice burning VC money so someone can drive you home when you've had one too many (instead of taking public transit), and having someone shop for your groceries and walk your dog and do your laundry, but the individuals doing these tasks would probably accomplish more in terms of raw productive output if they were doing more traditional jobs.

Those are all traditional jobs though.

Driving, picking/packing, animal care, doing laundry - Absolutely nothing you mention is in any way some new 21st century job that didn't exist before. They're all just normal traditional jobs.