This whole notion seems to be based on a bunch of seemingly logical conclusions, but it’s also a very narrow view of the reality. Let’s just think for a minute

This whole notion seems to be based on a bunch of seemingly logical conclusions, but it’s also a very narrow view of the reality. Let’s just think for a minute about a single potentially confounding factor - every company has competitors. Those competitors are looking for every opportunity to climb past you, and they’ll be willing to hire humans to do anything a machine can’t. For example… a lot of people still prefer to talk to a human when they need help with something. (Not me and I’m guessing not many people on HN, but we’re the outliers here.) Yes, you can try to use automation to solve for that… but if your competitor offers a better experience through human intervention, you are essentially forced to match their move and hire a support team. Yes, automation is getting better, and who knows, maybe in a few years GPT3 will be having support conversations with customers. But the pressure to find a competitive advantage is often going to lead to hiring large numbers of people. That’s how we got to where we are today.