[ernst_klim]

Exactly. I believe that growth caused by the rise of IT, be it Internet or LLM, will be marginal, because the benefits for humanity are very marginal compared to that caused by steam engine, wing, antibiotics or telegraph.

Everything IT does is slightly simplifying things we already could do. We could already telegraph someone across Atlantic, we could extract knowledge in library, we could do accounting. The speedup is small compared to horses vs steam power for transportation for example.

[blfr]

I think the speedups and conveniences of modern IT and the Internet have been massive: I can bank from my pocket, review the best photos out of 100k+ just when riding a tram, get virtually any good produced anywhere delivered to my doorstep in 1-3 business days (and it will be the exact kind and make I chose, not something that happened to be available), read virtually any book ever published while my appointment is delayed.

However, almost all of these are purely private benefits that do not show in any ledger. This is at least in part why the Internet seems to have had such small impact on gdp.

How about AI? So far, even more private benefits than the Internet.

[zapkyeskrill]

And most of the time savings gained from all this is blown on grind clicking "social media" so net effect is, yes, close to zero (or in more modern terms, not 100x, not 10x, but 1x at most).

[HPsquared]

Value is subjective, though. If you actually gave people an ultimatum to stop using AI tools for a year, with a negotiable price, I wonder what that would come out at. Many other personal goods are like this, they are valued highly but do not appear as commercial transactions.

[mahkeiro]

I mean that’s to you as well as spending your time at the swimming pool.

[ernst_klim]

> I can bank from my pocket

My opinion on that is, it's not such a big gain compared to legacy banking with checks, phone calls etc. All the operations you can do now you could do with legacy banks, just a bit slower. Given banking is not something you do every second, the overall speedup is tiny.

[azan_]

That's very myopic view. The gains by the rise of IT have been staggering in e.g. medicine. Modern drug discovery would be impossible without advances in computation, and we are getting breakthrough drugs all the time thanks to that.

> We could already telegraph someone across Atlantic, we could extract knowledge in library, we could do accounting. The speedup is small compared to horses vs steam power for transportation for example.

The speedup is much larger than horses vs steam power. How much time would it take you to find some scientific article if your library did not stock journal it was published in? You'd have to write request to get that issue and then wait few weeks before it arrives. Now you can get it basically instantly.

[TacticalCoder]

> That's very myopic view. The gains by the rise of IT have been staggering ...

You can't make people who have basically been, their entire lives, coding variations of JavaScript "punch the monkey" abusive ads understand the impact the Internet had on the world.

[mahkeiro]

I wonder if people saying this really had an active life before Internet because if you do the change is so massive that it’s difficult to comprehend.

[ernst_klim]

I did live before internet bc widespread internet came quite late to my country, and I must say it wasn't all that different. Dating, job search and social interactions were actually easier and more pleasant.

[darkerside]

Clearly written by someone who's never lived without steam power (semi tongue in cheek).

But seriously, your ability to expediently research just doesn't compare to the ability to ship a metric ton of freight across the country without marshalling an army of people for months on end. As one example.

[sususuuss]

There is more to pushing freight than just turning the ignition key.

The complexity of supply-chains is overwhelming. Your fancy boat or train needs a boatload (!) of grease, oils, spare parts, maintenance, logs, not to mention fuel, accounting, insurance, the list is endless and it’s all either fully enabled by or extraordinarily simplified by digital networks.

[Ekaros]

I do believe efficiency gains have been significant. Not as big as with industrial revolution but still effective.

Does not mean that some of these gains have not been wasted or there has not been in sense waste introduced to waste excess productivity and efficiency. IT certainly has made this waste lot more easy to do.

[lukan]

Speedup in communication is fast, but the real physical work still needed to be done. Machines were very powerful with this, but not flexible.

AI powered robots will be flexible (once they work reliable) ..

[inigyou]

Most robots are better without AI.

[lukan]

A robot without AI ... is not a robot, but a (remote controlled) drone/machine.