4 ms·

Where's the business value? Right now it doesn't really exist, adoption is low to nonexistent outside of programming and even in programming it's inconclusive a

Where's the business value? Right now it doesn't really exist, adoption is low to nonexistent outside of programming and even in programming it's inconclusive as to how much better/worse it makes programmers. I have a friend who works at PwC doing M&A. This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. PwC has an internal AI chat implementation. Where does this notion that LLMs have no value outside of programming come from? ChatGPT released data showing that programming is just a tiny fraction of queries people do.

admissionsguy 1y ago
When your work consists of writing stuff disconnected from reality it surely helps to have it written automatically.
- patapong 1y ago
  On the other hand, it's a hundreds-of-billions of dollars market...
  - Gerardo1 1y ago
    What is?
    - NoGravitas 1y ago
      Writing stuff disconnected from reality, I assume.
Etheryte 1y ago
The recent MIT report on the state of AI in business feels relevant here [0]: > Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return. There's no doubt that you'll find anecdotal evidence both for and against in all variations, what's much more interesting than anecdotes is the aggregate. [0] https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Bus...
- crazygringo 1y ago
  No. The aggregate is useless. What matters is the 5% that have positive return. In the first few years of any new technology, most people investing it lose money because the transition and experimentation costs are higher than the initial returns. But as time goes on, best practices emerge, investments get paid off, and steady profits emerge.
  - Gerardo1 1y ago
    On the provider end, yes. Not on the consumer end. These are business customers buying a consumer-facing product.
    - crazygringo 1y ago
      No, on the consumer end. The whole point is that the 5% profitable is going to turn to 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% as companies work out how to use AI profitably. It always takes time to figure out how to profitably utilize any technological improvement and pay off the upfront costs. This is no exception.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    Can we both at least agree that 95% of comapnies investing and failing in a technology with 400b+ dollars of investment constitutes a bubble popping? I pretty much agree with you otherwise and that is what the article comes down to as well: >I believe both sides are right. Like the 19th century railroads and the 20th century broadband Internet build-out, AI will rise first, crash second, and eventually change the world.
- sigbottle 1y ago
  I think it's true that AI does deliver real value. It's helped me understand domains quickly, be a better google search, given me code snippets and found obscure bugs, etc. In that regard, it's a positive on the world. I also think it's true that AI is nowhere near AGI level. It's definitely not currently capable of doing my job, not by a long shot. I also think that, throwing trillions of dollars at AI for a "a better google search, code snippet generator, and obscure bug finder" is a contentious question, and a lot of people oppose it for that reason. I personally still think it's kind of crazy we have a technology to do things that we didn't have just ~2 years before, even if it just stagnates right here. Still going to be using it every day, even if I admittedly hate a lot of parts of it (for example, "thinking models" get stuck in local minima way too quickly). At the same time, don't know if it's worth trillions of dollars, at least right now. So all claims on this thread can be very much true at the same time, just depends on your perspective.
lowsong 1y ago
This says more about PwC and what M&A people do all day than it does about ChatGPT.
hshdhdhj4444 1y ago
> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. Is she more productive though? People who smoke cigarettes will be unable to work without their regular smoke breaks. Doesn’t mean smoking cigarettes is good for working. Personally I am an AI booster and I think even LLMs can take us much farther. But people on both sides need to stop accepting claims uncritically.
- aurareturn 1y ago
  No she’s less productive. She just use it because she wants to do less work, be less likely to get promoted, and have to stay in the office longer to finish her work. /s What kind of question is that? Seriously. Are some people here so naive to think that tens of millions out there don’t know when something they choose to use repeatedly multiple times a day every day is making their life harder? Like ChatGPT is some kind of addiction similar to drugs? Is it so hard to believe that ChatGPT is actually productive?
  - echelon 1y ago
    Serious thought. What if people are using LLMs to achieve the same productivity with more cost to the business and less time spent working? This, to me, feels incredibly plausible. Get an email? ChatGPT the response. Relax and browse socials for an hour. Repeat. "My boss thinks I'm using AI to be more productive. In reality, I'm using our ChatGPT subscription to slack off." That three day report still takes three days, wink wink. AI can be a tool for 10xers to go 12x, but more likely it's also that AI is the best slack off tool for slackers to go from 0.5x to 0.1x. And the businesses with AI mandates for employees probably have no idea. Anecdotally, I've seen it happen to good engineers. Good code turning into flocks of seagulls, stacks of scope 10-deep, variables that go nowhere. Tell me you've seen it too.
    - mrbungie 1y ago
      That's Jevons paradox for you.
    - johnnyanmac 1y ago
bakugo 1y ago
> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. This isn't a sign that ChatGPT has value as much as it is a sign that this person's work doesn't have value.
- deadbabe 1y ago
  I find it’s mostly a sign of how lazy people get once you introduce them to some new technology that requires less effort for them.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- manishsharan 1y ago
  Most developers can't do much work without an IDE and Chrome + Google. Would you say that their work has no value?
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago
    This is probably the only place I can properly say "Programmers should be brought up with vim and man pages", so I'll say it here. Anyways, IDE's don't try to offload the thinking for you, it's more like an abacus. You still need to work in it a while and learn the workflow before it's more efficient than a text editor + docs. Chrome is a trickier aspect, because the reality is that a lot of modern docs completely suck. So you rely less on official documentation and more about how others have navigated an IDE and if those options work for you. I'd rather we make proper documentation than offload it into a black box that may or may not understand what it's spouting out to you, though.
- aurareturn 1y ago
  What kind of logic is this? ChatGPT automates much of my friend's work at PwC making her more productive --> not a sign that ChatGPT has any value Farming machines automated much of what a farmer used to have to do by himself making him more productive --> not a sign that farming machines have any value
nizsle 1y ago
Greater output doesn't always equal greater productivity. In my days in the investing business we would have junior investment professionals putting together elaborate and detailed investment committee memos. When it came time to review a deal in the investment committee meetings we spent all our time trying to sift through the content of the memos and diligence done to date to identify the key risks and opportunities, with what felt like a 1:100 signal to noise ratio being typical. The productive element of the investment process was identifying the signal, not producing the content that too often buries the signal deeper. Imo, AI tools to date make it so much easier to create content which makes it harder to be productive.
thisisit 1y ago
> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore I am curious what kind of work is she using ChatGPT such that she cannot do without it? > ChatGPT released data showing that programming is just a tiny fraction of queries people do People are using it as search engine, getting dating advice and everything under the sun. That doesn't mean there is business value - so to speak. If these people had to pay say $20 a month for this access, are they willing to do so? The poster's point was that coding is an area which is paying consistently for LLM models so much that every model has a coding specific version. But we don't see same sort of specialized models for other areas and the adoption is low to nonexistent.
- FridgeSeal 1y ago
  > what kind of work is she using ChatGPT such that she cannot do without it? Given they said this person worked at PwC, I’m assuming it’s pointless generic consultant-slop. Concretely it’s probably godawful slide decks.
johnnyanmac 1y ago
>Where does this notion that LLMs have no value outside of programming come from? Well this article cites 400b of spending for 12b of revenue. That's not zero value, but it definitely showing overvalue. We're not paying that level of money back with consumer level goods. Now is B2B valuable? Maybe. But it's really tough valuating that with how businesses are operating c. 2025. > ChatGPT released data showing that programming is just a tiny fraction of queries people do. yes, but it's not 2010 anymore. Companies are already on ChatGPT's neck trying to get RoI's. They can't run insolvent for a decade at this level of spending like all the FAANG's did in yestr-decade.
player1234 1y ago
[dead]

admissionsguy 1y ago

When your work consists of writing stuff disconnected from reality it surely helps to have it written automatically.

patapong 1y ago
On the other hand, it's a hundreds-of-billions of dollars market...
- Gerardo1 1y ago
  What is?
  - NoGravitas 1y ago
    Writing stuff disconnected from reality, I assume.

Etheryte 1y ago

The recent MIT report on the state of AI in business feels relevant here [0]: > Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return. There's no doubt that you'll find anecdotal evidence both for and against in all variations, what's much more interesting than anecdotes is the aggregate. [0] https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Business_2025_Report.pdf https://mlq.ai/media/quarterly_decks/v0.1_State_of_AI_in_Bus...

crazygringo 1y ago
No. The aggregate is useless. What matters is the 5% that have positive return. In the first few years of any new technology, most people investing it lose money because the transition and experimentation costs are higher than the initial returns. But as time goes on, best practices emerge, investments get paid off, and steady profits emerge.
- Gerardo1 1y ago
  On the provider end, yes. Not on the consumer end. These are business customers buying a consumer-facing product.
  - crazygringo 1y ago
    No, on the consumer end. The whole point is that the 5% profitable is going to turn to 10%, 25%, 50%, 75% as companies work out how to use AI profitably. It always takes time to figure out how to profitably utilize any technological improvement and pay off the upfront costs. This is no exception.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  Can we both at least agree that 95% of comapnies investing and failing in a technology with 400b+ dollars of investment constitutes a bubble popping? I pretty much agree with you otherwise and that is what the article comes down to as well: >I believe both sides are right. Like the 19th century railroads and the 20th century broadband Internet build-out, AI will rise first, crash second, and eventually change the world.
sigbottle 1y ago
I think it's true that AI does deliver real value. It's helped me understand domains quickly, be a better google search, given me code snippets and found obscure bugs, etc. In that regard, it's a positive on the world. I also think it's true that AI is nowhere near AGI level. It's definitely not currently capable of doing my job, not by a long shot. I also think that, throwing trillions of dollars at AI for a "a better google search, code snippet generator, and obscure bug finder" is a contentious question, and a lot of people oppose it for that reason. I personally still think it's kind of crazy we have a technology to do things that we didn't have just ~2 years before, even if it just stagnates right here. Still going to be using it every day, even if I admittedly hate a lot of parts of it (for example, "thinking models" get stuck in local minima way too quickly). At the same time, don't know if it's worth trillions of dollars, at least right now. So all claims on this thread can be very much true at the same time, just depends on your perspective.

lowsong 1y ago

This says more about PwC and what M&A people do all day than it does about ChatGPT.

hshdhdhj4444 1y ago

> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. Is she more productive though? People who smoke cigarettes will be unable to work without their regular smoke breaks. Doesn’t mean smoking cigarettes is good for working. Personally I am an AI booster and I think even LLMs can take us much farther. But people on both sides need to stop accepting claims uncritically.

aurareturn 1y ago
No she’s less productive. She just use it because she wants to do less work, be less likely to get promoted, and have to stay in the office longer to finish her work. /s What kind of question is that? Seriously. Are some people here so naive to think that tens of millions out there don’t know when something they choose to use repeatedly multiple times a day every day is making their life harder? Like ChatGPT is some kind of addiction similar to drugs? Is it so hard to believe that ChatGPT is actually productive?
- echelon 1y ago
  Serious thought. What if people are using LLMs to achieve the same productivity with more cost to the business and less time spent working? This, to me, feels incredibly plausible. Get an email? ChatGPT the response. Relax and browse socials for an hour. Repeat. "My boss thinks I'm using AI to be more productive. In reality, I'm using our ChatGPT subscription to slack off." That three day report still takes three days, wink wink. AI can be a tool for 10xers to go 12x, but more likely it's also that AI is the best slack off tool for slackers to go from 0.5x to 0.1x. And the businesses with AI mandates for employees probably have no idea. Anecdotally, I've seen it happen to good engineers. Good code turning into flocks of seagulls, stacks of scope 10-deep, variables that go nowhere. Tell me you've seen it too.
  - mrbungie 1y ago
    That's Jevons paradox for you.
  - johnnyanmac 1y ago

bakugo 1y ago

> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore. This isn't a sign that ChatGPT has value as much as it is a sign that this person's work doesn't have value.

deadbabe 1y ago
I find it’s mostly a sign of how lazy people get once you introduce them to some new technology that requires less effort for them.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
manishsharan 1y ago
Most developers can't do much work without an IDE and Chrome + Google. Would you say that their work has no value?
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  This is probably the only place I can properly say "Programmers should be brought up with vim and man pages", so I'll say it here. Anyways, IDE's don't try to offload the thinking for you, it's more like an abacus. You still need to work in it a while and learn the workflow before it's more efficient than a text editor + docs. Chrome is a trickier aspect, because the reality is that a lot of modern docs completely suck. So you rely less on official documentation and more about how others have navigated an IDE and if those options work for you. I'd rather we make proper documentation than offload it into a black box that may or may not understand what it's spouting out to you, though.
aurareturn 1y ago
What kind of logic is this? ChatGPT automates much of my friend's work at PwC making her more productive --> not a sign that ChatGPT has any value Farming machines automated much of what a farmer used to have to do by himself making him more productive --> not a sign that farming machines have any value

nizsle 1y ago

Greater output doesn't always equal greater productivity. In my days in the investing business we would have junior investment professionals putting together elaborate and detailed investment committee memos. When it came time to review a deal in the investment committee meetings we spent all our time trying to sift through the content of the memos and diligence done to date to identify the key risks and opportunities, with what felt like a 1:100 signal to noise ratio being typical. The productive element of the investment process was identifying the signal, not producing the content that too often buries the signal deeper. Imo, AI tools to date make it so much easier to create content which makes it harder to be productive.

thisisit 1y ago

> This friend told me she can't work without ChatGPT anymore I am curious what kind of work is she using ChatGPT such that she cannot do without it? > ChatGPT released data showing that programming is just a tiny fraction of queries people do People are using it as search engine, getting dating advice and everything under the sun. That doesn't mean there is business value - so to speak. If these people had to pay say $20 a month for this access, are they willing to do so? The poster's point was that coding is an area which is paying consistently for LLM models so much that every model has a coding specific version. But we don't see same sort of specialized models for other areas and the adoption is low to nonexistent.

FridgeSeal 1y ago
> what kind of work is she using ChatGPT such that she cannot do without it? Given they said this person worked at PwC, I’m assuming it’s pointless generic consultant-slop. Concretely it’s probably godawful slide decks.

johnnyanmac 1y ago

>Where does this notion that LLMs have no value outside of programming come from? Well this article cites 400b of spending for 12b of revenue. That's not zero value, but it definitely showing overvalue. We're not paying that level of money back with consumer level goods. Now is B2B valuable? Maybe. But it's really tough valuating that with how businesses are operating c. 2025. > ChatGPT released data showing that programming is just a tiny fraction of queries people do. yes, but it's not 2010 anymore. Companies are already on ChatGPT's neck trying to get RoI's. They can't run insolvent for a decade at this level of spending like all the FAANG's did in yestr-decade.

player1234 1y ago

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