AI is a tool for buying time

*For experimental purposes
I have converted this into audio for those who do not have the time

AI is convenient.

After using it for a year, this is now beyond doubt. From research to creating slides, tasks that used to take time can now be finished in an instant. Thanks to AI, I realized that among the tasks where I was aiming for a perfect score, there were many where a 70% score was actually sufficient.

Just the other day, I was talking about AI with the president of a former company I worked for.
He joked that since machines can do everything now, I am no longer needed, but as I listened, he mentioned with a laugh that he had been using a certain AI service and ended up with a final monthly bill of about 500,000 yen.

Well, he is not someone who struggles with money, so it ends as a funny story, but from my perspective, it is not a laughing matter. It might sound like an exaggeration, but it is the kind of thing he would do.
Of course, it was not a case of "500,000 yen without knowing it," but rather that he received notifications for additional charges along the way and kept clicking "approve" buttons, causing the amount to balloon, so it is more of a personal responsibility than an accident.

Even so, I thought that people like this would likely increase in the future.

This incident is not about AI being dangerous.
For example, there were often stories in the past about mobile phones incurring high charges because they were not using their own network in certain areas.

In the sense that it performs necessary calculations, processes what is used, and generates charges as a result, AI is honest. It provides an answer in one go when you press the button. Moreover, its scope is omnidirectional. In other words, it feels like the cost of decision-making has almost disappeared in every direction.
Things I would have worried about for days in the past, I can now decide to "give it a try" in a few seconds. Indeed, this is happening in various places at the company as well. I suppose humans are just not keeping up with how quickly results are appearing.

However, the circumstances in this case seem a bit different.

With electricity or mobile phone bills, you have some idea of how much you are using, but AI is different. When you entrust work to AI, humans get the feeling of "having made one request." But in reality, the AI is performing a massive amount of calculation behind the scenes.
With agents, for instance, hundreds of processes can be executed internally. And this gap manifests not as time, but as cost.

I believe that is what resulted in this 500,000 yen bill.

I suppose this president also bought time. I forgot to ask how much he originally planned to spend on AI per month, but perhaps he felt like he was hiring a talented person.

Persistence pays off

I am always concerned about it