The New Wave of AI Is Here

"A recent meme captures the gnawing artificial-intelligence backlash: A worker says, "AI turns this single bullet point into a long email I can pretend I wrote." In the next panel, "AI makes a single bullet point out of a long email I can pretend I read."

Funny. But in reality, there's a lot more going on. Right on cue with the backlash are questions about AI's business model. This month, a Journal headline stated, "No One Knows How to Price AI Tools." How true. Do you bundle it like Microsoft Copilot or like Google's AI Overview to show up above web search results (which apparently can be turned off only by cursing at it)? Should you charge $20 a month? Or $200 like ChatGPT Pro? Or offer the open-source Chinese DeepSeek for cheap? It makes a difference as bills keep piling up for announced data centers and expensive Nvidia chips.

As we warned early last month about DeepSeek, competition is fierce. On open-source AI, even OpenAI's Sam Altman thinks "we have been on the wrong side of history." But DeepSeek doesn't mark the end of U.S. dominance. No, no. Instead, it's a sign that the next wave of AI is starting. Lower usage costs are great for those developing applications. Real productivity will define the next era as corporate America pays up for anything that saves money.

-- Call centers and agents. You scour the web for answers, but sometimes you just have to talk to a real person, which can cost companies up to $1 a minute, a huge pain point. Often the experience is in broken English, with long pauses as the agents look up the same stuff you did.

Salesforce now sells a service called Agentforce, a platform that deploys AI agents. After these new agents go through your data, the number of questions that required human intervention declined by half. While that's mostly text-based, imagine soon an 800 phone number and the voice you speak with is AI-generated instead of human -- you won't even know. Maybe add a smattering of broken English for realism? The answers will be better, and the savings will be staggering. Yes, it's ironic that Salesforce is hiring 2,000 new salespeople -- humans -- to sell these AI tools.

-- Doctor summaries. Tired of your doctor distractedly typing during your expensive five-minute appointment? Healthcare privacy laws aside, every doctor interaction could be recorded, transcribed and an appointment summary generated for your health record. Bullet points even. Don't tell doctors, but this could be the first step toward automated generative diagnostics driving real savings.

-- Legal beagles. Several legal AI tools have hit the market to augment lawyers as they peruse databases of contracts and legal code. Will we get a discount on legal fees? I doubt it, but it isn't hard to envision new AI services that can draw up contracts or dispense advice, for one-tenth of the cost.

-- Companions. Maybe you've seen the commercials for Google's Gemini Live, folks holding a conversation with their phones. Pretty cool. It's what Alexa and Siri should have been. As with most technology (VCRs, digital video), erotic applications tend to drive the early market. There are already plenty of companion chatbots, including Replika AI, Character AI and even ChatGPT that, despite their rules against it, are used as virtual lovers. Creepy, but real. Next, envision companions for all the lonely people, especially the elderly. Heck, they can even use your voice. Then generative therapy sessions are coming, though therapists will kick and scream.

-- Software coders. Google claims that more than 25% of its internal source code is now AI-generated. Salesforce has announced a hiring freeze for software engineers. Facebook hopes to automate "midlevel" software engineers. There will soon be a proliferation of startups stocked with more high-level software architects vs. coders. That's progress.

-- Education. Generative AI is already proving to be a great and inexpensive tutor and teacher. Let's roll this out fast.

-- Graphic designers. A text prompt can result in a pretty good picture within seconds. Today, AI can even generate a few frames of pretty realistic video. Maybe that turns into 22-minute sitcoms and eventually movies. The value proposition shifts to creative minds from studios.

As happened with operators, tellers, travel agents and so on, jobs lost are replaced by new and better-paying jobs in emerging industries. Every time. Yes, AI is now going after white-collar jobs with a vengeance, but that means freeing up capital to fund new technologies that don't yet exist (laundry folding robots, please). McKinsey projects that "8 to 9 percent of 2030 labor demand will be in new types of occupations that have not existed before." Eventually, AI will enable 25% and then 50% of productive but never-existed-before new jobs. Beats $20 a month for email bullet points." [1]

1. Inside View: The New Wave of AI Is Here. Kessler, Andy.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 10 Feb 2025: A17.