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>And in coding specifically, the speedup is real and comes with its own bill. Oh so this article isn’t really about where AI spending is actually happening. I
by Gagarin1917 3mo ago
>And in coding specifically, the speedup is real and comes with its own bill.
Oh so this article isn’t really about where AI spending is actually happening.
I HOPE people aren’t spending money on AI writing emails. That’s definitely not worth it.
Companies are spending the most on coding tools, not email writing. That’s the main value proposition right now.
It also doesn’t get into media generation and industries that use video or music.
It’s just a really narrow look at probably the worst use case for AI. Useless.
- giancarlostoro 3mo agoI use AI to shorten my emails, I write as I talk, and I ramble a lot in my head.
- Gagarin1917 3mo agoBut surely the free version of any of the chatbots is enough to achieve that, right? You don’t need a Pro subscription for that.
- giancarlostoro 3mo agoIt's not the only use case for LLMs I have. I use local LLMs for some things.
- kenhwang 3mo ago> I HOPE people aren’t spending money on AI writing emails. That’s definitely not worth it. The engineers use the coding AI for everything they don't like to do that distracts them from doing what they like to do. So that's certainly a lot of writing emails, status updates, meeting notes, journaling, Slack messages, and prettifying slide presentations and so so so many docs. So if you're aghast that hundreds of dollars of AI tokens per engineer per month is being spent on writing emails, you should be even more offended that the more expensive human engineer time used to be wasted on those tasks.
- hn_throwaway_99 3mo agoThis comment is odd given that it's high on opinion without ever refuting the actual data given in the article. Like it or not, many business people spend hours a day writing emails. The article pointed out specific data showing AI could reduce these hours spent while raising quality. I'll take the article's actual data and research over your data-free spouts of "That's definitely not worth it" and "Useless".
- Gagarin1917 3mo agoI’m not saying “It’s crazy to ever write emails with AI.” I’m saying it shouldn’t hardly cost any money, emails are not token intensive and most people could likely use the free version of chatbots just fine.
- SoftTalker 3mo ago> I HOPE people aren’t spending money on AI writing emails. They very definitely are. I'm seeing more and more front-line responses to customer support emails that are very clearly written by AI. Here's an example from this week: Thank you for reaching out and providing all of those tracking and return details right away. I am currently checking in with our Returns Team to track down your package and see why there has been a delay in processing it since its delivery. As soon as I receive an update from our warehouse specialists, I will reach back out to you directly via this email thread with the status of your credit. Thank you so much for your patience in the meantime!
- Gagarin1917 3mo agoBut why if that costing anyone money? You can generate like 50 of that kind of thing using various chatbots throughout your day. You don’t need a pro account for emails.
- SoftTalker 3mo agoNot that I've ever looked into it but I would have thought that the "free" chatbot AI services would prohibit commercial/business use without a paid plan. Maybe not?
- Gagarin1917 3mo agoNo not at all
- insane_dreamer 3mo agoExcept that many companies are pushing "Use AI for everything" -- seriously. Because the CEO was told by KPMG or whoever that "AI is the future". And so yeah, they're pushing it regardless of whether it makes actual sense to use it or not.
- ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago> Companies are spending the most on coding tools, not email writing. They probably spend more on having LLMs just parse documents than writing emails than writing code. You maybe forget that most people are not programmers.
- Gagarin1917 3mo agoIt doesn’t matter what “most people” are, coding agents use an obscene amount of tokens, literally millions per day. Every request to an agent needs to parse at least several different documents/files.
- ShinyLeftPad 3mo agoAll LLMs use obscene tokens just programmers are more aware of it
- Gagarin1917 3mo agoThat’s not true. The different use cases of LLMs objectively use different amounts of tokens. AI coding agents can parse half a dozen or more files on each request, plus use a ton for thinking. Writing an email barely uses any in comparison.
- ShinyLeftPad 3mo ago> thinking LLM doesn't think > AI coding agents can parse half a dozen or more files on each request yeh people never ever ask LLMs to write emails based on a number of docs and spreadsheets and other emails and Slack chats plus some websites and definitely won't iterate on it multiple times... and parsing source code is peanuts compared to parsing a PDF
- Gagarin1917 3mo ago>LLM doesn't think You don’t realize I’m referring to the process of generating a ton of text in an attempt to better address the request - a process that these LLM companies call “thinking”? Are you out of the loop or are you taking some kind of pointless stand here? >yeh people never ever ask LLMs to write emails based on a number of docs and spreadsheets and other emails and Slack chats plus some websites and definitely won't iterate on it multiple times... A worker might have one or two of those large requests a day. That stop doesn’t come close to agentic AI token usage. I’ve been applying for jobs daily, uploading both my resume and the job posting upwards of 6-7 times per day to these chatbots. I still never hit the free limit. Agentic AI coding obviously uses far, far more. This really shouldn’t be surprising.