I think it's 5.

I was very impressed when I first started using AI tools. Felt like I could get so much more done.

A couple of embarrassing production incidents later, I no longer feel that way. I always tell myself that I will check the AI's output carefully, but then end up making mistakes that wouldn't have happened if I wrote the code myself.

"People use AI to do the same tasks with less effort" maps onto what we've seen with other types of workplace automation - like Excel formulas or VBA scripts.

Why report to your boss that you managed to get a script to do 80% of your work, when you can just use that script quietly, and get 100% of your wage with 20% of the effort?

6. It’s now easier to get something off the ground but structural debt accumulates invisibly. The inevitable cleanup operation happens outside of the initial assessed productivity window. If you expand the window across time and team boundaries the measured productivity reverts to the mean.

This options is insidious in that not only people initially asked about the effect are initially oblivious, it is very beneficial for them to deny the outcome altogether. Individual integrity may or may not overcome this.

What's the difference between 1 & 5?

I've personally witnessed every one of these, but those two seem like different ways to say the same thing. I would fully agree if one of them specified a negative impact to productivity, and the other was net neutral but artificially felt like a gain.

(1) seems very plausible, if only because that is what happens with ~everything which promises to improve productivity. People are really bad at self-evaluating how productive they are, and productivity is really pretty hard to externally measure.

Why not all? I've seen them all play out. There's also the people that are downstream of AI slop that feel less productive because now they have to clean up the shit other people produced.

>1. AI doesn't improve productivity and people just have cognitive biases. (logical, but I also don't think it's true from what I know...)

It is from what Ive seen. It has the same visible effect on devs as a slot machine giving out coins when it spits out something correct. Their faces light up with delight when it finally nails something.

This would explain the study that showed a 20% decline in actual productivity where people "felt" 20% more productive.

2,3,4. While my agent refactors code, I do housework: fold laundry, wash dishes, stack firewood, prep food, paint the deck. I love this new life of offering occasional advice, then walking around and using my hands.

(3) and (4) are likely true.

In theory competition is supposed to address this.

However, our evaluation processes generally occur on human and predictable timelines, which is quite slow compared to this impulse function.

There was a theory that inter firm competition could speed this clock up, but that doesn't seem plausible currently.

Almost certainly AI will be used, extensively, for reviews going forward. Perhaps that will accelerate the clock rate.

The METR study showed even though people feel more productive they weren’t https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089

Well I feel and I am more productive, now on coding activities, I am not convinced, it basically replaced SO and google, but at the end of the day, I always need and want to check reference material that I may have known or not existed. Plenty of time, Google couldn't even find them.

So in my case, yes but not on activities these sellers are usually claiming.