You are right that outside of the massive capex spending on training models, we don't see that much of an economic impact, yet. However, it's very far from zero:
Remember these outsourcing firms that essentially only offer warm bodies that speak English? They are certainly already feeling the impact. (And we see that in labour market statistics for eg the Philippines, where this is/was a big business.)
And this is just one example. You could ask your favourite LLM about a rundown of the major impacts we can already see.
But those warm body that speak English, they offer a service by being warm, and able to sort of be attuned to the distress you feel. A frigging robot solving your unsolvable problem ? You can try, but witness the backlash.
We are mixing up two meanings of the word 'warm' here.
There's no emotional warmth involved in manning a call centre and explicitly being confined to a script and having no power to make your own decisions to help the customer.
'Warm body' is just a term that has nothing to do with emotional warmth. I might just as well have called them 'body shops', even though it's of no consequence that the people involved have actual bodies.
> A frigging robot solving your unsolvable problem ? You can try, but witness the backlash.
Front line call centre workers aren't solving your unsolvable problems, either. Just the opposite.
And why are you talking in the hypothetical? The impact on call centres etc is already visible in the statistics.
Remember these outsourcing firms that essentially only offer warm bodies that speak English? They are certainly already feeling the impact. (And we see that in labour market statistics for eg the Philippines, where this is/was a big business.)
And this is just one example. You could ask your favourite LLM about a rundown of the major impacts we can already see.