Economist: skeptics were right about AI growth, bottlenecks still misunderstood
Afinetheorem · x · 2026-10-25
Economist Afinetheorem opens an 8-part thread on AI and growth bottlenecks: economists have been exactly right that fast tech change has yielded little extra growth. Over two years ago, when the group of economists he organized at AI labs said "1pp extra growth/yr through 2030," lab folks thought they were crazy—yet that forecast now looks aggressive. His core claim: AI circles still don't understand the bottlenecks between technology and measured growth. Later posts illustrate with a bricklaying-robot thought experiment and McKinsey's failed 2019 automation forecasts.
Related event: Economist Thread: AI Growth Bottleneck Arguments Hold Up(9 posts)→
More from AGI Musings
- Epoch AI: Memory Chips Shipped Through 2027 Could Run 33–171 Million Frontier AI Agents — PeterDiamandis · 2026-10-25
- 'Cope' meme thread mocks every common argument against AGI risk — tensorqt · 2026-10-25
- Leslie Lamport's "Claude, make no mistakes" hailed as predicting LLMs 30 years early — akbirthko · 2026-10-25
- A 3-year AI pause could buy 1000 years of safety work — or just 41, critics model — gleech · 2026-10-25
- Cambridge lecturer's decade-long poll: demand for 'Uber for personal security' near zero, now shifting — SamuelAlbanie · 2026-10-25
- With Claude writing code fast, where should engineers go next? — alejomos · 2026-10-25