Ask HN: Is AI resulting in net revenue gain for non-tech companies? Is AI increasing sales or improving overall outlook for companies using it heavily? Not referring to just coding use cases but overall earnings/revenue improving due to added benefits from direct or indirect AI usage. |
Whether that cost cutting is beneficial for the business in the long term is another question. Context is Australia.
You don't really need many customer service workers anymore for example.
The other day I had a unique problem at Amazon and took me a while to get to a chat with human. They solved it in an instant. But the bot or AI previously was just asking questions that was irrelevant and making it difficult to get to the solution.
[1] It’s great for the corporations and the enshittifiers, I mean. Terrible for humans of course.
Plenty of stuff out there already about end users trusting it too much and leading to loss (of money, health, life, etc) and bias affecting minority groups (mostly from researchers and the public sector).
In a small market with a handful of competitors or non at all in some cases, what are you going to do exactly? It will be the same elsewhere. The large corporations know this and will obviously take advantage of the situation unless forced via regulation(in AU).
I do notice a small movement where people had to stop paying for a service and after a while realized that their life didn't change for the worse and so started re-prioritizing their needs and wants and thinking before spending. Like the typical daily $8 cup of coffee. That doesn't work for essential services like healthcare of course.
On the other hand, I've had some interactions with customer service reps that made me wish a chatbot was available. Like asking for a medical appointment.