Re:Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
by bandrami on Friday March 06, 2026 @12:47AM
(#47271341)
Right, I'm sympathetic to the idea that LLMs facilitate the creation of software that people previously weren't willing to pay for, but then kind of by definition that's not going to have a big topline economic impact.
Re:Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
by hombre_fatal on Friday March 06, 2026 @08:47AM
(#47274838)
Why did you add that "weren't willing to pay for" condition?
Most of the software I replaced was software I was paying for (iStat Menus, Wispr Flow, Synology/Unraid). That I was paying for a project I could trivially take on with AI was one of the main incentives to do it.
Re:Labor market impacts of AI: A new measure and early evidence
by littlexsparkee on Friday March 06, 2026 @05:07PM
(#47281762)
Well, we don't know - that's capturing 2 scenarios: software that whose impact is low as reflected by lack of investment and legitimately useful improvements that just weren't valued (fix slow code, reduce errors and increase uptime, address security concerns) because the cost was not appreciated / papered over by patches / company hasn't been bitten yet
Why would you think you have your finger on the pulse of general software trends like that when you use the same, what, dozen apps every week?
Just looking at my own productivity, as mere sideprojects this month, I've shipped my own terminal app (replaced iTerm2), btrfs+luks NAS system manager, overhauled my macOS gamepad mapper for the app store, and more. All fully tested and really polished, yet I didn't write any code by hand. I would have done none of that this month without AI.
You'd need some real empirics to pick up productivity stories like mine across the software world, not vibes.