Why “Dark Output”, the AI-generated economic value that is currently invisible to national statistics, may be one of the hardest measurement problems in history
Why AI's increasing output is going to be one of the hardest economic measurement problems in history.
This is an interesting theory, but one may worry that the inefficient and broken sectors of the economy will simply eat up any dark economic surplus, the same way they did during the computer revolution. https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/ ... [image]
“We are at risk of having an event on the scale of the Industrial Revolution where most of the new output is invisible even as businesses spend increasingly large amounts on AI services.”
AI Dark Output: The Visible Cost of Invisible Output Why AI's increasing output is going to be one of the hardest economic measurement problems in history. AI “Dark Output” could end up being the majority of economic activity, but a challenge to measure. https://newsletter.semian…
GitHub Copilot's switch to token-based billing reveals the hidden economics of AI code completion. Flat monthly pricing was masking massive cost variance: power users consuming 10-100x more tokens than casual users. The new model makes unit economics visible but breaks the user […
Resting the entire economy on the rock-solid foundation of an imaginary metric that even its believers admit they can't substantiate. — Great idea. This one's going in the history books. Under “comically stupid boondoggles”.