[mysterypie]

> With widespread AI adoption we plausibly could consume 10x or more of the service: Legal services, for example, plausibly fit this bill.

A ten-fold productivity gain in legal services sounds simply awful for society. Imagine the time and money sink if everyone can sue you for every frivolous thing because AI can prepare and file the paperwork instantly without needing a lawyer. You'll need your own AI to defend against the onslaught of legal disputes.

Every contract for jobs and every terms & conditions for services will be 10x longer because AI has a much higher complexity threshold compared to a human. My belief is that one reason tax returns became much more complicated in the last ~30 years is because of tax preparation software. In the era of paper tax returns, there was a limit to the complexity that an individual or even an accountant could handle, so there was a limit on how complicated the government could make it.

Most normal people rarely need a lawyer in their lives. With AI's productivity explosion in the legal services, you're going to need legal services every day. Your neighbor wants to borrow your chainsaw? Your AI legal agent will negotiate a liability waiver with his AI agent.

[nitwit005]

There are a lot of fields where efficiency gains tend to be illusory. No one expects some new innovation in marketing to cause spending to plummet because of the efficiency gains. People have been genuinely innovating in marketing for a long while, and it's never happened. If anything, it seems to inspire more spending.

[Havoc]

Id blame the complexity of tax returns more on lobbying. Everyone wants their own industry custom exemption and that in turn creates holes that need to be patched etc