Comment by peder
1 month ago
> a UI that makes claude code or codex accessible to the average user.
It'll just be power users. We're moving toward a world of significantly fewer analysts and more into "Super SMEs" that can actually learn tools like Claude and manage enormous complexity with them.
Just giving average users these tools will produce garbage. This example from Claude is so contrived and any business analyst can see how a process that requires uploading additional data will fail. You can't expect users that don't even know their own data to be able to make this thing work.
There will be no "average" user in the future. It'll be multi-disciplinary SMEs that are extremely creative and knowledgeable about their businesses.
Sadly I feel the Excel analogy holds still, where maybe 80% of its users can't write a SUMIF() formula or make a pivot table to save their lives, yet they will happily use Excel every day as digital grid paper. Meanwhile Microsoft made a lot of money selling Excel licenses.
It’s my favorite analogy against the cliche LLM will revolutionize all white collar work. Excel is probably the most powerful business application most people have used, but as you said, people only scratch the surface. No LLM magic will make people more fluent with software. Sadly it’s a combination of not knowing what you don’t know, and time pressure from the employer. My analogy usually ends by saying that if the government mandated 200 hours of Excel courses, it would probably be a faster and cheaper productivity leap than adding an LLM into everything.
Yes but
I think you’re underestimating “average users”. If we talk about the median, then probably you’re right, but if we talk about “the group of people clustered around the average” I think there’s a lot of untapped potential, especially in people who assumed data and programming were unknowable/impossible and have therefore been held back by “good” tools like excel