> productively used

This chart is extremely damning: https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...

The industry consistently predicts people will do the task quicker with AI. The people who are doing the task predict they'll do it quicker if they can use AI. After doing the task with AI, they predict they did it quicker because they used AI. People who did it without AI predict they could have done it quicker with AI. But they actually measured how long it takes. It turns out, they do it slower if they use AI. This is damning.

It's a dopamine machine. It makes you feel good, but with no reality behind it and no work to achieve it. It's no different in this regard from (some) hard drugs. A rat with a lever wired to the pleasure center in its brain keeps pressing that lever until it dies of starvation.

(Yes, it's very surprising that you can create this effect without putting chemicals or electrodes in your brain. Social media achieved it first, though.)