How Does It Feel?
Abetted by technological and military might, finance capital has achieved its hegemony over the Earth by annexing the core of human desires
– Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics
Last week, METR released the results of a study into how "AI" affects the productivity of open-source software developers – results that certainly run counter to all the various claims that "AI" is going to make everything bigger better faster cleaner smoother jazz hands. The study found that "AI" actually decreased productivity (by 19%). And even more interestingly, this decline occurred alongside the developers reporting that they felt as though these tools were making them more productive (20% more productive, they estimated).
According to METR, this is a result of the "AI"-generated code being simply not that good; as such, programmers had to spend a lot of time reviewing, correcting, discarding code and then prompting the "AI" to try again. It's also a result that the proponents of "AI" can dismiss with their usual hand-waving that "this is the worst 'AI' will ever be" and that soon soon soon very soon these sorts of flaws will be resolved.
And of course, as with so much of the research that's emerging on "AI" usage, there is plenty of pushback about the experimental methodology and design here too. No doubt, the gulf between what the programmers felt about their productivity and what was actually measured should give us pause about lots of the claims of "AI" awesomeness and efficiencies that are based on surveys and self-reporting.
But here's what I keep thinking about: how those using "AI" felt productive. As I noted in Friday's newsletter, something is going on with how "AI" is making people feel – all that glazing and sycophancy, in no small part, I'm sure; all those good "vibes" in "vibe-coding"; but all that fear and FOMO too that the chatbots have been engineered to assuage – offering comfort and validation in a world that is falling apart around us, urging us, encouraging us to keep prompting, keep chatting.
"AI" isn't just being marketed as a product we need to use. Its interface has been specifically designed to make us feel like we need it, like we are bigger better faster cleaner smoother jazz hands for it.
