Steady Progress, Sudden Displacement: From Horses and Chess to Claude

Progress is often steady on paper but feels sudden at the point of human equivalence. Engines and chess show linear gains that translated into abrupt displacement of horses and grandmasters, respectively. The author’s experience with Claude suggests the same pattern for AI, with rapid automation of his work and far lower costs driving swift replacement.

Key Points

• Technological capability often improves steadily, but equivalence to humans (or animals) and subsequent displacement tends to happen suddenly.
• Historical examples: horses were largely unaffected by centuries of engine progress until a rapid decline between 1930–1950; chess engines improved linearly yet flipped from human-underperformance to dominance within about a decade.
• AI investment is rising steadily (about 2% of U.S. GDP annually, doubling over recent years), setting the stage for capability jumps that feel abrupt at the point of human equivalence.
• At Anthropic, Claude quickly displaced most internal Q&A work: from humans handling ~4,000 questions/month to Claude handling ~30,000/month within six months, removing 80% of the human load.
• Automation economics favor rapid displacement: Claude’s per-word cost is roughly 1,000× lower than the author’s and cheaper than the lowest-cost human labor.

Sentiment

The overall Hacker News sentiment is mixed, leaning towards skepticism regarding the immediate, widespread, and universally beneficial displacement of human knowledge workers. While some acknowledge AI's rapid advancements and the potential for sudden shifts in specific tasks, many others point to significant practical limitations, unreliability, and the inadequacy of current AI for complex, creative, or critical roles, often contrasting 'hype' with 'boots-on-the-ground' experience. Concerns about socio-economic impacts and power concentration are also prominent.

In Agreement

• AI's utility for work can cross 'thresholds' very suddenly due to improved reliability and interfaces, even without 'breakthrough' capabilities, leading to rapid increases in usage and displacement of tasks.
• Recent AI models demonstrate astonishing improvements over just a few years, suggesting rapid, ongoing progress.
• AI is on track to automate significant portions of complex human skills, leading to 'future shock' and profound disruption, even for roles requiring extensive training.
• There is a clear trend of AI models getting 'better and better' on benchmarks and for specific coding tasks, indicating imminent displacement of lucrative software jobs and the 'hollowing out of Silicon Valley.'
• The author's specific concern about having less than two decades to adapt to AI-driven displacement, mirroring the horse analogy, is acknowledged and amplified by some users.

Opposed

• Humans are more complex than simple machines or animals; unless AI can provide *all* value for other humans better than humans + AI, there will remain valuable human roles beyond simple displacement.
• Technological progress, including automation, doesn't necessarily translate to widespread societal benefits like cheaper healthcare or housing, but rather can concentrate wealth and lead to job loss without consumer price reductions.
• Metrics like 'cost per word' are misleading for valuing human output, as they ignore context, quality, and the inherent value or complexity of the information, potentially inflating AI's perceived efficiency.
• The horse analogy is flawed because the primary driver of horse displacement was a fundamentally new technology (internal combustion engine), not just steady efficiency gains in existing ones, or AI progress is 'jagged' rather than steady.
• AI, particularly LLMs, still struggles with accuracy, reliability, and generating truly novel or complex outputs, making it inefficient or counterproductive for experienced developers in real-world, non-CRUD coding tasks; practical experience often shows minimal time savings.
• AI is a unique technology, and historical analogies or dramatic predictions based on current hype are unhelpful; a more concrete, less speculative approach is needed to understand its true impact.
• The rhetoric of widespread job displacement by AI is often a marketing tactic, and in practice, AI tools don't eliminate office busywork, can increase it (e.g., to avoid sounding AI-generated), and still hallucinate, making them limited for complex professional tasks.
• The societal implications of AI, such as power imbalances and concentration of control in a few companies, are more concerning than direct job displacement, and the benefits might not accrue broadly.