How much compute costs is it for the AI to do Brenda's job? Not total AI spend, but the fraction that replaced Brenda. That's why they'd fire a human but keep using the AI.
Brenda's job involves being accountable for the output. In many types of jobs, posting false numbers would render her liable for a dismissal, lawsuit, or even jail.
I'd like to see the cost of a model where the model provider (Anthropic etc) can assume that kind of financial and legal accountability.
To the extent that this output is possible only when Anthropic is not held to the same standard as Brenda, we will need to conclude that the cost savings accrue due to the reduced liability standards than on the technical capabilities of the model
It's not just compute, its also the setup costs - How much did you have to pay someone to feed the AI Brenda's decades of knowledge specific to her company and all the little special cases of how it does business.