alt Hacker News> 1) If a firm spends $99k on compute to replace a $100k engineer and produces 5x the output, how is that not a 5x increase in aggregate labor productivity?
I think they are saying that with 99k pure compute you are able replace 100k engineer with equal output. Or that is the goal of the AI companies. It is worse for them if you get more productivity.
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But the AI companies have no access or knowledge of how much value you produce, they would have to calibrate against some average SWE salary and some average productivity which is task-dependent. There is no way for them to control this. Even if they did, they would lose out to other companies who do not do this and let you "keep" surplus value, it feels like this again assumes a no-competition market.
It's so interesting that sometimes people throw these wild numbers around like 10x productivity, 100x greatness, etc. but when the rubber hits the road, we see so much ambiguity, unknowns and unrealistic assumptions.