AI for what?? (ppl like working w/ ppl!)

### TL;DR AI companies claim they will replace middle managers with AI, but costs may match those of human employees, and humans naturally prefer working with people over software, making large-scale replacement unrealistic. ### Two Core Flaws in AI Business Models #### The Cost Trap: AI Licensing Fees Will Match or Even Exceed Employee Salaries - AI companies currently attract customers with freemium or low-cost models, but massive investments (mostly debt-financed) will soon force them to start charging real licensing fees. - The estimated annual licensing fee for an AI service simulating one employee's workload could reach $80,000–$100,000—the same as a good employee's salary. - When businesses run cost-benefit analyses, they will find that using AI saves only a small amount of money or breaks even, but requires completely restructuring the entire business. This "rebuilding the plane while flying" approach is extremely risky and could harm existing customer, supplier, and partner relationships, even jeopardizing sales. - Most companies will say: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." They are unwilling to take on the huge risks of full-scale transformation for marginal profits. #### The Social Disconnect: People Need to Work with People - After the pandemic, companies have pushed hard for employees to return to the office, emphasizing teamwork, brainstorming, crisis management, and innovation—capabilities that current AI agents lack. - Social interaction at work is a primary source of socialization for many people. Completely removing it would worsen depression and loneliness, harming society, culture, and the nation. - Senior managers themselves dislike direct interaction with technology: they are accustomed to managing people and delegating tasks, not prompting AI all day. Expecting a CFO to rely entirely on AI for financial decisions would be "financial malpractice." - Humans are social animals. People gather with friends and family on weekends, consume real human content on social networks, and build connections with colleagues at work. AI promises human-machine interaction, which runs counter to human nature. ### Realistic Possibility: Partial Replacement, Not Full Substitution - A more realistic scenario is that companies cut 10%–20% of staff, using AI to fill the gap, or let remaining employees boost productivity with AI. This is already happening. - A few pure-code or pure-text jobs may approach full AI automation, but most industries won't reach that point. - Those pushing for full AI replacement, like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, show antisocial tendencies themselves (Musk wants to go to Mars, for example). Their views shouldn't be blindly followed. ### The Absurdity of Infrastructure - Building an AI data center the size of Manhattan (about 20 square miles, equal to the sum of all current global data centers) would require millions of CPUs, GPUs, and nuclear power. It's already difficult to build a nuclear power plant within 15 years in the US, let alone rapidly build such a massive facility, which may become obsolete before completion. ### Conclusion For companies to replace employees with AI on a large scale, the cost will equal or exceed maintaining human workers, and humans inherently need interpersonal interaction. These two major flaws mean that the prospect of AI fully replacing middle managers is not optimistic. --- **Source:** lji-1 - AI for what?? (ppl like working w/ ppl!) (https://youtu.be/Oe8pd4hIcBY)