> Borrowing Disesdi's logic in their arithmetic (which is hard to argue against), after four years of open source LLMs, we should have three AirBnBs,1 two Stripes,2 and three Dropboxes3 thanks to the power of AI. > > So. Where the fuck are they?

I think this is a great question, and I have a completely unqualified theory.

I work in a fairly specialised field, I've notice when I use AI to try to generate code in fields where I'm very experienced, it produces a worse output at a slower rate than I can produce manually[0].

When I use it in fields I'm not an expert in by any stretch, like webdev, genAI massively improves my output by a huge factor.

I think this makes the productivity gains a little fuzzy. Claude code makes me 10x faster at webdev, but I'd be a very slow webdev. Ultimately, the next innovation in a field, will probably be from an expert in that field, and they therefore won't see the kind of "10x productivity boost" that non-experts do.

[0] I still find AI helpful for exploring code etc, just not so much producing output.