AI can make you feel more productive… while slowing you down

A programmer’s productivity is not measured only by lines written or by how quickly a screen appears in the browser. It is also measured by the errors that never reach production, how easily another person can understand the system, security, stability, and the cost of changing something six months from now. A controlled METR experiment with veteran developers working on open-source projects they already knew found something uncomfortable: using the AI tools available in early 2025, they took longer to complete their tasks, even though many believed they had worked faster. This does not prove that AI always wastes time. The study was small and focused on expert developers and mature repositories. But it does dismantle an overly convenient promise: that any use of AI automatically brings a measurable improvement.

Full episode: https://youtu.be/9ax65KLzzME

🤖 AI-generated content: the script, voices, and images in this episode were produced with artificial intelligence tools.

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