10x court

Elsewhere on the internet I was having a conversation about AI and someone claimed that it has made him 10x more productive at work. That was the precise claim: “10x more productive.” Largely because I was on my phone at the time, and a little bit because I didn’t want to get into a big fight, I didn’t say very much beyond that. But this is my blog, which he will never see and which does not have a comments section, so I can respond here in the way that I want to.

Essentially I have three related and cascading responses to someone who claims that using AI has made them 10x more productive at work. The first is that I simply do not believe it. I don’t believe it!

I don’t believe they were measuring their productivity before and I don’t believe they’re measuring it now. I don’t think they truly understand what is productive or valuable about the work they’re doing — either that which they’re still doing themselves or that which they’ve offloaded to AI. I don’t even think they understand when they say “10x” that they are making a quantitative, not qualitative, claim. Otherwise “10x” wouldn’t be the exact same multiplier every AI booster uses. Mostly, though, I think people who say this are either delusional or lying.

Second, I think someone making this claim may be mistaking increased output for increased productivity. Are they creating 10 times as many artifacts? 10x the reports, the decks, the spreadsheets? They may literally be producing “more,” but by no means does that mean they’re creating more value. That’s more things to check and double-check, more stuff landing on the next guy’s desk, and way more opportunity for error. For some reason, everyone who claims to find AI useful considers themselves to be careful users of it who aren’t introducing a bunch of noise into the system, but I’ve seen some of the shit they’re making. They’re wrong.

Finally, for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that someone making this claim is right. You’re getting all the good and none of the bad parts of using AI, and you’ve made yourself 10x more productive at work. That means you’re creating 10x the economic value you were before. Has your salary also increased 10x? Are you now working only 1/10 as many hours?

No?

Then what the fuck are you doing?