[ivanstojic]

I started reading the article and immediately got hit by the incorrect statement in the opening:

> If AI agents help each support employee handle 30% more tickets, that's like adding 30 new hires to a 100-person team, without the cost.

I think this is an oversimplification designed to make LLMs seem more profitable than they actually are.

[altcognito]

This is an article written by a company/llm trying to justify huge increases to the pricing structure.

Oh! Yknow that thing we were charging you $200 a month for now? We're going to start charging you for the value we provide, and it will now be $5,000 a month.

Meanwhile, the metrics for "value" are completely gamed.

[rajvarkala]

The price will be what you are willing to pay. No justification required, excepting for fairness (info asymmetry and what else?). It is written by me. Unfunded bootstrapped !!call it dire straits.

[spwa4]

> Meanwhile, the metrics for "value" are completely gamed.

Well, of course. One of the huge advantages of agents is that they will actually help you to almost any extent game metrics.

Unlike people, who have ...

[rajvarkala]

:)

[ivanstojic]

At the same time, I actually wouldn’t mind a world in which AI agents cost $5000 a month if that’s what companies want to charge.

I feel like at some level that would remove the possibility of making a “just as good as humans but basically free” arguments and move discussion in the direction that feels more productive: discussing real benefits and shortcomings of both. Eg, loss of context with agents vs HR costs with humans, etc…

[_DeadFred_]

If the AI does all the easy tickets, there's no easing in new hires, so that process is going to be more expensive, so I better get discounted for that hit.

If there is zero slack, and only the hardest parts, this is no longer the job it was before. Salaries will have to go up, or retention will go down. In addition these jobs could already be awful when there was some slack, removing all slack tasks to AI is going to make them miserable so average customer interaction once they get to a human agent is probably going to be worse so your customer satisfaction will take a hit. So I better get discounted with that reputational hit.

It's like the 'have AI pick the tomatoes it can, and the field worker the rest'. Picking the easy tomatoes is factored into the job. Having the ai pick the easy ones could break the whole model. Of having zero slack for the workers could break them and result in no one showing up to jobs where AI has done the easy picking.

[rajvarkala]

One reason slack exists is because of capacity and utilization, less slack -> higher wait times in peak times.

Is slack intended for Employee welfare? Come on, we are talking corporate here.

The support services are already regimented - L1, L2 etc. I am not a fan of AI either, but it may be a new reality.

[_DeadFred_]

You sound incredibly short sighted. Yeah slack and making sure people don't just get unwinnable tickets all day is important for retention. And if your company needs more than warm bodies reading a script, yeah, you account for it.

Most machinery you can't run 100% capacity. Most machinery you can't run 24/7. You schedule load. You schedule downtime. And the higher the capacity, the more the machine costs. If you aren't aware of this for your people you are failing at your job.

[rajvarkala]

Not sure I follow. But, the first paragraph is interesting.

You are saying, employees stick around if they are given easy tickets, and companies care about passing along easy tickets so warm bodies do not churn.

That will be a big claim.

[rajvarkala]

oversimplified surely, sweeping assumptions....

As much as I hate the assumptions, the worst case scenario is that AI is surely affecting some jobs.

[melagonster]

But I'm sure that 30% employee is more valuable than just calling API in one month. So the price is too high.

[LPisGood]

Productivity continues to increase but we are employing more people, not less

[rajvarkala]

Of course, there is displacement. Jobs evolve.