I mean, to be fair, a lot of economic activity is like that. Why pay thousands of dollar for a plumber or an electrician? Most of what they do is going to Home Depot, buying a $15 part, and replacing it. But it's one less skill for a homeowner to learn, so you delegate.
The problem isn't that someone learns to prompt AI and is selling the output. The problem is that the customer thinks they're paying for human instruction and they're getting something else.
>> It's when you take that conversation you just had, make it into a PowerPoint, and try to sell it for 10000x what you spent on the credits that it really becomes lazy. Why expect anyone pay for that when they could have just asked the AI themselves?
> I mean, to be fair, a lot of economic activity is like that. Why pay thousands of dollar for a plumber or an electrician? Most of what they do is going to Home Depot, buying a $15 part, and replacing it. But it's one less skill for a homeowner to learn, so you delegate.
That's not what you pay the plumber for. You pay the plumber for the training and years of experience needed to 1) correctly diagnose the issue and identify the part to replace, 2) install it correctly so it won't fail in 10 years, and 3) do it all efficiently with a minimum of collateral damage. It's not practical for a homeowner to develop that level of skill without becoming a plumber themselves. A homeowner can do a lot, but even with YouTube there will be a lot of deficiencies in all those areas compared to someone who knows what they're doing.
You mostly don't. Household plumbing and wiring is nowhere the near of complexity of, say, a lawnmower engine. It's mostly "the p-trap is leaking", "the faucet is leaking", "the toilet's flush valve is broken", "the wiring nut is loose". The kind of stuff you don't need skill to fix properly.
There are situations where you do want to call a pro, but it's not what you usually call them for. Most of it is one notch above "my trash can is full, can you come over and empty it".
Besides, your argument applies to the AI case too. You're not paying for AI output. You're paying for my expertise in prompting and my ability to evaluate the output and say "yep, that's right".
The problem isn't that someone learns to prompt AI and is selling the output. The problem is that the customer thinks they're paying for human instruction and they're getting something else.