AI is getting cheaper every year and the output is becoming better. Look at token prices. The so called frontier models are not that far ahead of the open source models that you or I can run essentially for free, either.

The reality is that you can sit down and automate significant tasks with AI in an afternoon, today. I work in an industry where a significant amount of time is spent auditing and QAing output. A properly trained skill for Claude is able to do the same QA task to 90% of my (senior) level in 2% of the time. Similarly, it is able to coach the junior staff to produce work that is a much higher level than would be otherwise expected of them, reducing the actual audit length on that side too.

I am hugely positive for the future of AI. I am hugely negative about what it means for people.

Companies are competing for the same market share.

As an example, what are you going to do with four times more accountants than the total market needs? There are only a limited number of companies to do the accounts for. If one accountant can do four times the work as before, he might be able to expand. If every accountant can do four times the work as before, they cannot all expand. On a company level, why would you keep all the staff doing only 25% of the work as before? Their labour has been significantly reduced in value.

In my view it is. It’s a race to the bottom. What is a company going to do when they are in a competition with other firms that have less staff but the same output (i.e., a much lower cost base)? The options are either to go out of business or to restructure to the market reality. This is a problem that needs to be solved at the government level.