Agreed. I think it’s more likely to expect that most of it is pure waste.

My impression is that most software development work is not profitable. Either the project is abandoned, or it fails, or it gets shipped but doesn’t generate positive ROI. But, like how venture capital works, the minority of projects that are successful make enough money to cover the rest.

Some portion of this is because demand for software projects in general is less than perfectly elastic. So more software does not automatically mean more software sales.

It also seems plausible that, in general, companies tend to fund the projects that are most likely to be profitable. They aren’t perfect at it, but I doubt they’re just rolling dice.

Which would imply that the new work companies can take on thanks to developer productivity gains will tend to be ones that are less likely to generate positive ROI.

meaning AI may only produce a net increase in waste, which only serves to erode profits.

Add to that that it’s been years now and we still don’t have an example of someone army-of-oneing a killer app or anything like that. It’s beginning to feel like another iteration of the amazing blockchain revolution that was always & forever just around the corner.

The unlocked economic activity won’t come from a Google competitor writing code faster. A lot of it will come from “boring” businesses who could benefit from custom software but haven’t had the means to create it themselves. In some cases they may not even know their problem can be solved by software, but some AI they are using for repetitive tasks will notice and offer to build an app for them.

So far the place where I've seen "more code being written" having a postive effect, has been in paying down tech debt and reduction of overhead. We've rewritten services (bringing multiple microservices back under moduliths) and cut costs. But I'm talking about net-negative code. That's not the point you're making. I agree that puking out 20 new features likely wouldn't gain us more revenue.

A lower signal/noise ratio is never better for consumers.

If the quality of all apps remains high, but if there is an increase of low quality apps it may not necessarily be great for consumers as it becomes difficult to distinguish which are the good and bad quality apps, making it risky to purchase apps.

Not necessarily. European grocery shoppers report higher satisfaction with the shopping experience than American grocery shoppers do.

That value for advertising goes negative on a marginal basis.

The first time (or few times) you saw an advert, you were informed of the product's existence. I now know the Hyundai Elantra exists and could potentially be suitable for my vehicle needs. Mission accomplished.

The next 10,000 times it's just fighting over share of a finite market. I am not expecting to buy another car for another few years, so reminding me that I can choose an Elantra instead of a Corolla at all times is just vapourising cash. In fact, there's a chance that you do something obnoxious in your ad and actively burn brand reputation.

You could argue it's a take on the "everyone uses a different 5% of the features" problem-- that advertisement is going to be within the first "informational" window for someone, but maybe there are more efficient ways to not blast it at uninterested audiences.

One other angle might be asking if we still need some markets to be competitive in the first place. You don't need ads if it's a "when you need X, you'll know where to find it" sort of product. If we nationalized the insurance industry alone, we'd probably eliminate a detectable percentage of ad volume.