Comment by fuzzfactor

Not my downvote, just the opposite but I think you can do a lot in an office already if you start early enough . . .

At one time I would have said you should be able to have an efficient office operation using regular typewriters, copiers, filing cabinets, fax machines, etc.

And then you get Office 97, zip through everything and never worry about office work again.

I was pretty extreme having a paperless office when my only product is paperwork, but I got there. And I started my office with typewriters, nice ones too.

Before long Google gets going. Wow. No-ads information superhighway, if this holds it can only get better. And that's without broadband.

But that's besides the point.

Now it might make sense for you to at least be able to run an efficient office on the equivalent of Office 97 to begin with. Then throw in the AI or let it take over and see what you get in terms of output, and in comparison. Microsoft is probably already doing this in an advanced way. I think a factor that can vary over orders of magnitude is how does the machine leverage the abilities and/or tasks of the nominal human "attendant"?

One type of situation would be where a less-capable AI could augment a defined worker more effectively than even a fully automated alternative utilizing 10x more capable AI. There's always some attendant somewhere so you don't get a zero in this equation no matter how close you come.

Could be financial effectiveness or something else, the dividing line could be a moving target for a while.

You could even go full paleo and train the AI on the typewriters and stuff just to see what happens ;)

But would you really be able to get the most out of it without the momentum of many decades of continuous improvement before capturing it at the peak of its abilities?