Comment by nonameiguess
5 days ago
How does this obviate the need for software? In order for what you asked to be possible, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Figma all still need to exist and you need licenses for them.
If you can figure out the next step and say "Claude, go find me buyers and sell shit for me without using any pre-existing software," have at it. It can't be social media, I guess, since social media is software and Claude is supposed to get rid of software.
At a certain point, why do we even need computers? Can't we just call Claude's hotline and ask "Claude, please find a way to dump $40 million in cash into my living room. Don't put it in my bank account because banks use software."
It doesn't remove the need for software, but it greatly reduces the number of tools needed or doesn't mandate building custom tools that might not be viable due to very specific needs many users have.
OP gave a good example how their workflow was changed, you could argue there are tools that could've done that, but they managed to achieve their goals without them, have something that fits their workflow perfectly, is fine tuned in case of changes, and with a few other tools (Word, Excel, Figma) they can do all sorts of things which would've required a small team or far more (expensive) tools to execute.
To me that is a great example of non-developers using tools to enhance their workflows and with initiatives like from this topic, I can only see that increasing.
> How does this obviate the need for software?
It doesn't obviate the need for software, but it greatly devalues software products, as they become reduced to tool calls for LLMs.
This is good for users, because software products are defined by boundaries - borders drawn around the code to focus and package functionality, yes, but also to limit interoperability and create a sales channel (UX being the perfect marketing platform for captive audience).
After all, I don't usually want to play with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Figma - they're just standing between me and the artifact I want to create, so if I can get LLM to operate them for me, I don't have to deal with all the UX and marketing bullshit those products throw at me.
I mean, that's what I'd do if I could afford to hire a person to operate those tools for me. That, again, is the best mental model for LLMs - they're little people on a chip, cheaper to employ than actual people.
> I mean, that's what I'd do if I could afford to hire a person to operate those tools for me. That, again, is the best mental model for LLMs - they're little people on a chip, cheaper to employ than actual people.
Sounds like more of a threat to people than software then.
I get the point that if an agent could generate a presentation by directly writing to some open format with a free viewer then PowerPoint would be out of the picture.
However the tool has to be pretty close to 100% for that to work. If I have a presentation that's 90% there it's probably going to be a lot easier to finish it off manually in Powerpoint than try different variants of prompts. In which case I'll still need that Powerpoint license.
> In order for what you asked to be possible, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Figma all still need to exist and you need licenses for them.
Or not. Besides, the better AI models can effortlessly generate Latex/Beamer, a far superior solution for typesetting and presentations. Anything than can be done in Excel can be done in Python. Those proprietary tools are a thing of the past, no one should use them anymore.