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points by fluidcruft 3 days ago | 0 comments

As I understand it, AI is only really getting traction in IT and software development. It's been mostly irrelevant elsewhere overall, all things considered. That could change, but basically there's only one product that is selling. Dunno whether there is $500b/year of IT and programming to replace.

[–] surajrmal 3 days ago

People are using it to do contract negotiation without a lawyer, argue with their doctors over health matters, complain to teachers about their methods, etc. On the flip side, lawyers are using it in supplement to paralegals, doctors transcribing patient notes with it, and teachers are using it to generate worksheets. It's being used fairly widely already

[–] sensanaty 3 days ago

Maybe, but most people aren't paying for their chatbots at all, yet alone the 100$+ plans. Out of the non-technical acquaintances of mine who do use some form of AI (which is a tiny amount of people), they just use the free tiers on claude and ChatGPT, none of them ever have or ever will pay a single cent for any of this. Even the technical folk are barely paying, and they're certainly not wasting 200 bucks on it.

[–] lbreakjai 3 days ago

That's true, I do all of that, but I'm using the free Claude version. It's been more than enough to handle the few home renovation projects I'm currently working on.

That's quite a leap to assume there's a ton of money to be made with the casual users sending perhaps a couple of messages a day to real an email and draft a response.

[–] throwawayffffas 3 days ago

The money is not on the casual users, the money is on the lawyers and accountants, and consulting specialists that have actual business use cases.

If you are spending 50 - 60 grand a year on a paralegal will you balk at another 5 or 10 that will allow them to do double the work?

[–] lbreakjai 3 days ago

Sure, but the message I was responding to was describing casual uses: people using AI to argue with their doctor or review some contract, or what have you.

The problem with the "double the work" narrative is it ignores the second order effect. You can do twice the work, but so does everyone else. You doubled the supply, was there a massive pent-up demand for lawyers or accountants at the current price point?

[–] fluidcruft 3 days ago

I recommend listening to the LegalTech Week podcast. Generally lawyers are finding it's not delivering efficiency overall. They spend more time reviewing the output. The courts are drowning in slop and deepfake evidence is a growing concern. The jury is still out on all of this.

[–] mattm 3 days ago

Do you have a specific episode to recommend? I would love to hear about the challenges of checking AI work in another industry.

[–] potatototoo99 3 days ago

Yes, they are using the free versions of it.