Is it like the stereotypical dad who rents a power washer, powerwashes every exposed surface on his property, and then doesn't need to do any powerwashing for a few years; his neighbor who gets an Instant Pot and uses it for every meal for a month, then sees it gathering dust when the family gets tired of pressure-cooked stews; or like their neighbor who gets a microwave oven and uses it multiple times a day for decades?
I guess only time will tell.
A few mundane things got automated, but these were just back office admin type work. Nothing that's going to show on the P&L. Yeah those people now have a little more time for other things, but those other things are also not revenue generating. No FTE got replaced by it so in the end they just paid for a bunch of administrative positions to be a little less busy. Great for the workers who are now less stressed, but almost no impact on the business financials except there's now yet another subscription.
That’s the explanation how you can have both the anecdotes of amazing AI productivity and rigorous studies showing anything from actual loss of productivity to single-digit gains.
When you try to replace your entire brain with AI things are going to go wrong.
For the product my friend works on, it's definitely the latter. I definitely don't expect this party to last forever.