People are using « tokens used » as productivity metric ?!

[jeantranscene@mastodon.social]

@romeu Someome came to me the other day asking why my token count was so low. I didn't realize that was a productivity metric. WTF.

[sebastiansolidwork@mastodon.social]

@romeu Could be "air breathed".
Code lines are least an outcome, but tokens are a resource you spent to create outcome.
Like breathing, typing, Watts used by your computer, etc.

[lenotaire@mastodon.social]

@romeu I do remember when at work they were using the "committed lines of code" metric. One week I managed to do a SINGLE line change. Fixing a bug which haunted us for months. As they finally acknowledged, the main issue was not the change but knowing exactly where it was needed. The metric had been since buried

[rubdos@mastodon.social]

@romeu Hmm. What about kLOC/token?

[renardboy@mastodon.social]

@romeu I for one measure my car's quality by how much fuel it burns

[renardboy@mastodon.social]

@lenotaire @romeu $9995 for knowing where to tap.

[jmax@mastodon.social]

@romeu I'm gonna prompt me a new minivan!

[lu_leipzig@troet.cafe]

@romeu ...from the people who brought us megawatts as a unit of computing power and "compute" as a noun.

[wordshaper@weatherishappening.network]

@romeu It's been interesting watching people compete to see who can burn the most money, time, and resources. I expect this will come out about as well as you'd expect.

[procrvstinvtion@infosec.exchange]

@romeu I’ve read about token allotment being a contract negotiation. “Salary isn’t the big argument anymore, token allotment is” to quote an ai bro

[isaackuo@spacey.space]

@romeu I asked LLM AI to tell me what productivity metric we should use and it told me LLM AI tokens used.

I also asked my coke dealer what productivity metric we should use and he told me grams of coke used.

I don't trust my coke dealer but I sure do absolutely trust my LLM AI.

[johnofrobotz@mastodon.girolab.foo]

@romeu as soon as "Prompt Engineers" became a thing, this was bound to happen. Also terrible, but at least SLOC metrics had review and testing built in.

[inthehands@hachyderm.io]

@romeu @cammerman

Our whole society is rife with this: mistaking consumption for productivity

[doragasu@mastodon.sdf.org]

@romeu Generative AI makes people so dumb...

[mo@mastodon.ml]

@romeu technically it is reasonable, if you aim for it to be lower, not higher

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu A more useful and accurate analysis may be as follows: tokens used will be seen as an adoption metric, and implicitly as a loyalty metric.

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu Believing that AI is bringing about a productivity revolution, management will see AI as an opportunity yes, but primarily as a necessity, and an existential threat.

[viq@social.hackerspace.pl]

@romeu very relevant post from @fesshole
https://mastodon.social/@fesshole/116153883462428890

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu They will fear that unless everyone gets on board the AI juggernaut, the organization will be disrupted by new-fangled competitors who are reaping the insane productivity benefits that they have been convinced exist.

[einarwh@mastodon.social]

@romeu Hence the problem to be solved will be seen as one of adoption, and the obstacle to be overcome, the friction caused by recalcitrant, stubborn, backwards dinosaurs. And tokens used is an adoption metric, albeit one that is extremely vulnerable to Goodhart's law.