[xp84]

> dispute resolution, customer service, etc

There's a huge assumption in your comment -- that having 100,000 employees necessarily guarantees (or even makes likely) that you will have some human to help you.

More likely, those 100,000 humans are mostly working on sales and marketing, and the few allocated to support are all incentivized to avoid you, and to send you canned answers. A reasonably decent AI would be better at customer support than most companies give, since it'll have the same rules and policies to operate with, but will most likely be able to speak and write coherently in the language I speak.

[zvitiate]

There's a huge assumption in your comment -- that you know how insurance works. "Most" probably aren't working in sales and marketing; I'd heavily dispute anything above 50% and I feel like 33% might be pushing it? I don't want to get overconfident here, but this claim feels off-base.

Insurance isn't like a widget. People have actual legal rights that insurers must service. This involves processing clerks, adjusters, examiners, underwriters, etc. Which then requires actual humans, because AI with the pinpoint accuracy needed for these legally binding, high-stakes decisions aren't here yet.

E.g., issuing and continuing disability policies: Sifting through medical records, calling and emailing claimants and external doctors, constant follow-ups about their life and status. Sure, automate parts of it, but what happens when your AI:

a. incorrectly approves someone, then you need to kick them off the policy later?

b. incorrectly denies someone initial or continuing coverage?

Both scenarios almost guarantee legal action—multiple appeals, attorneys getting involved—especially when it's a denial of ongoing benefits.

And that's just scratching the surface. I get that many companies are bloated, and nobody loves insurance companies. No doubt, smarter regulations could probably trim headcount. But the idea that you could insure a billion people with just 100, or even 1000 (10x!), employees is just silly.

[throw10920]

> There's a huge assumption in your comment -- that having 100,000 employees necessarily guarantees (or even makes likely) that you will have some human to help you.

That's not an assumption.

I know that I, and many others, have been able to get a human on the phone every time we needed one. Regardless of the number of those humans actually working claims, in the current system, it is "enough".

I also know that it's impossible to give that level of service when you have 1 employee for every 10 million customers.

That's really all that you need in order to make the judgement that you're not going to get a human.

Side-note: I did a quick search, and found that Allstate has 23k reps that actually handle claims and 55k employees total, so almost half of their workforce does claims and disputes. They also have 10% market share of the US's ~340 million people, so that's, at most, 1 rep per 1500 employees. That's much better odds than 1 for every 10 million.

> A reasonably decent A

And there's the problem - that AI doesn't exist. You're speculating about a scenario that simply hasn't been realized in the real world, and every single person that I've talked to who has interacted with an AI-based "support representative" has had a bad experience.

[bee_rider]

Apparently 172,824 people die per day,

https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/deaths-per-day

So actually 100,000 employees put it surprisingly close to just having one case handled per day per employee.

Of course, a ton of people don’t have life insurance. And also, a lot of deaths are pretty straightforward.