Top all-time · #4702
Alex Imas
Personal blog · aleximas.substack.comeconomicsai
Alex Imas writes Ghosts of Electricity, a personal blog at aleximas.substack.com about economics and ai. Since 2025, 16 different Hacker News readers have linked it 20 times, most often “What Will Be Scarce?”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Alex Imas's Substack posts on AI's economic effects, including revenues, jobs and labour productivity. Commenters question which figures the posts select and how they are framed.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Essays on the economics of AI and technological change.
Most-linked posts?
- What Will Be Scarce?5 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2026-04-20
- What is the impact of AI on productivity?2 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2026-04-10
- Can a Transformer "Learn" Economic Relationships? Revisiting the Lucas Critique2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2025-12-23
- Will AI soon lead to double-digit growth?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-09-10
What Hacker News says?
There are numbers in TFA that explain the current CapEx craze, but they're not called out. (Also it's a big selective in which numbers it reports, see below.) > The Bundesbank finds that about half of German firms using AI do so for 5% of working hours or less. That seems to be from [1] and matches what the St Louis Fed reports here [2]: 50%+ of American use AI weekly, but only 6% of working hours. Google's report […
Comment linking /p/what-is-the-impact-of-ai-on-productivity
on “AI revenues are growing fast, but not fast enough”Submitted Will AI soon lead to double-digit growth? as a story · 5 points
HN discussion> Labor productivity was, in fact, slower in the first three years of our AI era than during the information technology boom that began in the mid 1990s. That's a bit of a misleading statement, as it uses inaccurate terminology and cherrypicked comparisons. The linked chart is about labor productivity growth in those time frames, and current labor productivity is actually growing faster than projected since early 20…
Comment linking /p/what-is-the-impact-of-ai-on-productivity
on “The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn't coming anytime soon”Submitted Will AI soon lead to double-digit growth? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionA couple of important points to note: 1. Most of the productivity studies in Figure 3 about are from the 2023-2024 era. (Which is why as some comments note, Copilot is actually way up there in the numbers. Note that this was from the era of spicy autocomplete and long before coding agents exploded on the scene.) 2. AI adoption at work is actually very low: even though 50%+ of Americans currently self-report (major c…
Comment linking /p/what-is-the-impact-of-ai-on-productivity
on “What is happening to jobs? Separating AI hype from reality”Submitted Has AI impacted the labor market yet? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Will Be Scarce? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted What is the impact of AI on productivity? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted Can AI lead to negative growth? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted The Tragedy of the Agentic Commons as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Will Be Scarce as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Will Be Scarce? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted What Will Be Scarce? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted What will be scarce? – by Alex Imas – Ghosts of Electricity as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Who Uses AI (and How)? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Does overwork make agents Marxist? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Can advanced AI lead to negative economic growth? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Why Can't Your AI Agent Book a Flight? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Can a Transformer "Learn" Economic Relationships? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Can a Transformer "Learn" Economic Relationships? Revisiting the Lucas Critique as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
