This Industry Might Be Revolutionized Forever

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If you are reading this newsletter, you are probably a tech person. You are good with computers. You have no problems writing a Word document, unzipping a file, logging into a VM, fetching an API key, etc.

But there’s a whole other side of the world, the non-tech people. And, believe it or not, they comprise the majority of humanity.

To monetize the ‘non-tech-savviness’ of these folks, the tech people have created something called tech support.

We create complex systems or we do not simplify our complex systems even when better solutions are available for multiple different reasons (mainly financial). Instead, we provide the non-tech commoners, the muggles, with an army of proficient 24×7 (supposedly) tech support folks.

Tech support people are specialized in the software of a particular company. They know the ins and outs of all kinds of issues. And, they are an email, support ticket, chatbot, or call, away from you - probably in India or Vietnam or Philippines.

There are simple reasons why tech support jobs exist:

• You cannot expect every user to know everything about a software.

• It’s cheaper to hire individuals from developing countries than to revamp legacy software, ship it out, and face brand-new issues that would require even more documentation.

• Companies can monetize support requests.

The only costs for the software company here are the salaries, training, and work benefits of the support employees.

What if this cost can be reduced too?

The Computer Use API by Anthropic

In October, Anthropic opened up the computer use API’s beta program.

You might have used a video calling app like Zoom or Microsoft Teams where you can share the screen. These apps also offer a feature called “Take Control,” where someone on a call with you can request control of your screen and do things for you.

This is what different tech support professionals also do using different applications.

The computer use API grants this ability to Claude (an LLM by Anthropic, competitor of ChatGPT).

This means that you can chat with Claude in your computer and Claude will control your cursor and do the actions for you.

Well, you might say - what’s the use of this? Why wouldn’t I just move my computer mouse and do what I want to do?

Fair enough. That’s the purpose of GUI. To make it easy for humans.

But what if you don’t know how to do what you want to do?

Or, what if you know how to do something but it involves a lot of steps?

Let’s keep it simple. You want to buy new shoes. They are newly launched and a costly affair so you want to compare prices across 10 top e-commerce sites.

You can Google and open the top 10 links. Or, you can probably just use your mic and tell Claude - “Get me the best deal for the newest Jordans.”

Or maybe, “Can you edit this image to have fire in the background?” and Claude launches Photoshop, does the initial job for you and you add the finishing touches (if you know Photoshop).

(The first two were simpler tasks, here’s another scenario…)

Or maybe, “Can you find out why this software is not getting installed, fix the issue, and install it?” and Claude finds out the error log of the software in some corner of your system, reads through the thousands of log lines, finds out that your DirectX version is outdated, downloads the latest DirectX version and installs the original software within seconds.

All this without the hassle of you Googling the issue, mailing customer support, getting on a call 24 hours later, paying a fee (at times), and risking the chance of getting scammed if you click a wrong link somewhere.

Now you understand what I’m talking about.

Not There Yet

We are not there yet but we are closer than you think.

We also need to keep in mind that the existence of a solution does not guarantee the adoption.

Here’s where we are right now in Anthropic’s own words:

Several companies including Asana, Canva, Cognition, DoorDash, Replit, and The Browser Company have already begun using the computer use API.

Since it is open for public beta, you can use it too. Here’s the official documentation.

Here’s the official demo by Anthropic (another industry that might be changed forever - data entry and annotation):

Reddit users are always early adopters. Someone posted this 18 days ago. The comment section is very interesting too.

Disclaimer: As of now, the computer use API is costly. Fairly simple tasks, that might require 3-5 clicks might cost you a dollar. There’s no easy and general way to calculate it. This cost will dramatically go down in the coming months and years.

Here’s my prediction: 5 years from now, the best companies in the world will replace 90% of their tech support and data entry staff with AI.

(Some startups have already done it. Different story.)

I say 5 years not because of the incapability of technology but various resistances such as financial impact, laying off workers, politics, etc.

An equally fascinating and terrifying future lies ahead of us.

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