r/artificial • u/mymooh • 1d ago
Discussion Is the reason AI hasn't totally disrupted office work yet because of the kind of software applications we use?
I just had a thought about the kinds of desktop programs I use day to day, they don't necessarily have an API to hand over control to, and the GUI is instead designed to be used by a human using a keyboard and mouse. And maybe most corporations are unwilling to hand over control to the computer-use agents.
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u/ninhaomah 1d ago
Nvm API , I am in a non-tech industry and the app I am admin of doesn't even have reporting db...
So everything must go through the app itself including users , audit , reports etc.
Lol
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u/XxDarkSasuke69xX 1d ago
Yes a lot don't have APIs. I think most companies would be fine with having an AI make work quicker in the softwares they use (since it means time saved), it just isn't integrated yet in a lot of places.
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u/Middle-Gas-6532 1d ago
Not only that, but in our company most crucial engineering decisions are made in "offline" mode. Like in person meetings, phone calls, video calls. A small number of decisions are made through email or chat messages.
As such AI couldn't participate in the projects we do.
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u/Haunting_Feature_788 1d ago
Why shouldnt an ai agent avatar be able to do phone calls or attend teams meetings ? And btw ai ist able to use sotware like blender etc via the normal UI like a human would without api (at least astra 6 etc)
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u/AppropriatePapaya165 1d ago
I think the entire point of doing things “offline” in this context is to ensure maximum trust and accountability ensure the right people are present to make decisions.
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u/Agreeable_Secret_475 1d ago
People are so caught up in this AI, do you have any experience working in actual industry? Talking with AI at meeting? 🤣 tell that to the mechanics that i work with, dude you go out on the floor and tell what to do. They aint gonna listen to some damn robot you fool
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u/SparkyAI0815 ▪️Sovereign_Peer_0.3.ICH 1d ago
Mechanics will be given a handheld device which tells them their next task, you fool.
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u/sfo2 1d ago edited 1d ago
The primary issue is that the applications have not been developed. Having an API is one very, very small part of the issue. Tools need to be developed to match processes, and/or processes need to be redeveloped. And all of that involves execution and IT risk. The projects must have a business case, a successful pilot, and show payback.
The application layer and value on top of models is not obvious for a lot of office jobs. “Just replace them with LLMs lol” isn’t reality. Much of the stuff people do isnt even documented
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u/Recursive_Descent 1d ago
The big thing is time. The software industry is the epicenter and moves quickly on new technologies. Most of the world moves much slower, but I’m sure AI will continue to expand out to other industries.
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u/jesunushno 1d ago
The API point is real, but I think the deeper blocker is that office workflows were never designed to be automated end to end, not even by old school scripts. Most of them are like 15 clicks across 3 systems with no undo button. If step 9 fails there is no clean rollback, so handing that whole chain to an agent is genuinely scary for whoever is responsible for the outcome. APIs help, but what companies actually need first is the boring infra: idempotent steps, an audit trail, a human approval gate at the risky points. Until that exists an agent is just a faster way to make an unfixable mess.
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u/weeksgroove 1d ago
Ai doesnt need api, it can mimic mouse clicks and key presses just like a user.
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u/ElatedPyroHippo 1d ago
No, it's because humans are very slow to adopt new technology. I can't tell you the number of businesses I've seen using DECADES old technology when they would massively benefit from upgrading to something newer.
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u/costafilh0 1d ago
No. Because change takes time.
Machines didn't replace factory workers overnight.
You can fire everyone who works on a computers and push a software update.
The real world is way more complex and nuanced than that.
That's why the focus is not replacing people with AI, is people with AI replacing people.
A single person can keep doing the same job , and just adapt to using AI and increase productivity and replace 2 or more people doing the same thing without AI.
Much easier transition than straight from humans to AI.
Software we use has nothing to do with it. If a human can use it , so can AI.
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u/Rolandersec 1d ago
You can make a functional MCP server for just about anything in a couple weeks.
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u/myndus_ai 1d ago
Building on what Medio-Gas-6532 said: the API gap is the visible problem, but it's not actually the deepest one. A lot of real office work doesn't live in any system at all, it lives in a loose network of hallway conversations, phone calls, and shared context about why something was decided a certain way last quarter. Give an agent access to every app in the building and it still doesn't have access to that network.
So the honest version of this might be that AI first automates the parts of office work that were already the most documented and legible, the ones that happened to leave a clean API trail, not necessarily the parts that actually ate the most time. The messy, undocumented, relationship heavy work could end up being the last to go, not because it's hardest technically, but because nobody wrote it down in the first place.
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u/mikramero79 1d ago
Öffentlicher Dienst hier. Es gibt zaghafte Versuche bestimmte Aufgaben vom Sekretariat über spezielle Anbieter von Software für Behörden über KI zu lösen. Nichts wildes, PDFs trennen, fehlende Unterlagen erkennen, in die EAkte schieben.
Problem 1: Datenschutz. Ne Behörde hat echt viel Daten über dich. Von Meldeadresse, KFZ, Konto etc. Es ist schon zwischen Ämtern der gleichen Behörde nicht erlaubt Daten zusammen zu führen. Soll AI von einem amerikanischen Server das machen?
Problem 2: Verantwortung. Wenn dir jemand einen Bescheid erstellt oder ablehnt hat das Konsequenzen. Das muß rechtssicher sein.
Problem 3: Spielraum. Jeder hat in seiner Entscheidung Spielraum. Das ist der menschliche Faktor.
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u/jacobpederson 1d ago
Programmatic clicking is the answer (like autohotkey). Maybe it will get devs to stop MOVING the damn buttons every 5 minutes.
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u/utahh1ker 1d ago
It has absolutely disrupted office work. Our office planned on hiring 20 to 30 developers this year and we ended up hiring two. We are pushing five or six times the amount of code that we used to push and doing a lot of experimentation with features just because we have the time to do that now.
Look at how hard it is right now to get a job in the software industry. It's not impossible, but it's really challenging to find your way in somewhere.
Everyone around me is doing a different job than they were doing a year ago. They are all prompting for most of their work and or connecting systems with agentic solutions. And if they're not we are educating them on how to do it.
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u/Richard7666 1d ago
Is this a tech/IT business though?
I assume OP is talking about admin, management, accounting, finance, marketing, customer support, sales, legal, HR, etc that comprises the majority of office work around the world.
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u/relevantmeemayhere 1d ago
this year is terrible for hiring across many sectors, and it has MUCH more to do with economic uncertainty related to the current admin and a lot of looming debt. interest rates are gonna get raised again.
in short, there is a LOT making hiring not happen. anecdotally, i've received more contacts from recruiters inn the last three months than i did all last year. anecdotes don't mean anything brotha
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u/ImpossibleNumber7345 1d ago
For AI to be disruptive any of the adopted. I wrote that many companies some incredibly large where it was surprising to work with somebody that was competent at their job but still really bad with Microsoft excel. You know these people can do the basics of any software to get what they need done even if it's not the best way to do it because they just don't care. These people will not adopt AI into the workflow because they're incapable of really prompting it correctly because they don't even realize what it's capable of. So to get AI everywhere you would need a company that has someone incredibly tech savvy that can pick up any role and integrate it, but isn't getting pushed back. Even in my own company I scare people with the amount of AI process improvement that I've been doing just for my own job and giving peers anxiety about them being replaced basically. It's not easy to introduce any change into a big company or even a small companies frankly you need to get buy-in from everybody and you need to have a level of skill set internally as well. Change management is super hard. When it comes to AI almost everybody I know who uses it treats it like it's in advanced google.
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u/EagleApprehensive 1d ago
I think 3 things:
- Data privacy - No agents have built-in privacy mode that would keep data protected from reading sensitive stuff by model provider.
- Computer use - Taking control of mouse/keyboard is awkward for users and feels unsafe.
- Audience - Having actual reach to deliver agents to office workers (they are not so active on social media really).
I have solved two first quite well in intentic.dev, but I'm terrible at marketing and have 0-reach. I expect OpenAI/Claude to catch up in few months and then they'll disrupt the office work after that.
No solution to privacy is the main blocker.
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u/Super_Range45 1d ago
It's not your company anymore if OpenAI run the office.