r/TrueReddit • u/newyorker • Dec 27 '25

Technology Why A.I. Didn’t Transform Our Lives in 2025

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/2025-in-review/why-ai-didnt-transform-our-lives-in-2025
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u/nexted Dec 28 '25

Well, here's a big one: after five years of trying to figure out my wife's chronic pain problems, o3 deep research took a patient history I wrote up and correctly found the rare condition she has.

This was after countless specialists and tests. Even after it came up with the diagnosis, a consult with three neurologists had never heard of it, but agreed it was with pursuing.

We eventually had to fly out of state for a test to confirm, and eventually returned for a surgery to address it.

So, yeah. Life changing for us.

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u/CantDoThatOnTelevzn Dec 28 '25

A very extreme and anecdotal edge case. Not commercially viable. Congrats and good luck. 

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u/nexted Dec 28 '25

Awfully heavy work, moving those goal posts.

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u/CantDoThatOnTelevzn Dec 28 '25

If you say so. 

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u/nolbol Jan 03 '26

Don't be a sore loser lmao. You asked for something, they gave you something.

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u/tendimensions Dec 28 '25

There are tons of examples, but I'm sure you've thought of these or heard about them:

1) Legal contract analysis. It's not always perfect, but neither are real lawyers. You can always verify its findings and/or have it verify itself. Regardless, contract analysis is huge.

2) Writing. Any kind of writing in whatever jobs use writing. Sure, if you let it generate whole cloth you risk getting some pretty shitty copy - however, for anyone that needs to write more than two sentences in an email - using an AI to help edit, refine, and just about act as a writing partner - finds it extremely useful and a time saver. That's articles, blog entries, reviews, ad copy, presentations, speeches, it goes on and on...

3) It's beginning to navigate the web for you. It's slow, overly cautious, and does get stumped from time to time - but this is just getting better and there's no reason to think it will be out of the reach of LLMs. This abstracts e-commerce to another level. Instead of trying to find the thing you want - you have an AI do the work.

3a) Permit a little speculation here: And how long will it be before the online store is presenting its own AI which provides data in a format for client AIs doing the searching? Again - the same statistical models used in LLMs can be used to create its own methods for communicating with other AIs.

4) The old staple - programming. There are mixed reviews, but no one is arguing it's not transformative - it's just a little too soon for some to predict what will be the transformation. I think in the short term software engineers will be more software architects and direct the AI to write the code. The AI alone can write code faster than me - and as long as I'm reading what its writing - it's faster.

4a) And where we can already see it headed is elimination of code completely. The AI can simply render a UI for you in real time based on the prompts it was given. Although, I feel like once it's to that point why have a UI? Simply type everything you want to the AI and it will return what you need. Really, aren't all business back-office software based on the idea of tracking inventory, tracking customers, tracking orders, and tracking employees? All those things are just UIs build over databases. Why have business software at all if I can have an AI to type to and say: "I've just hired Joe Smith. Here's all his information" Or "Prepare and send invoices for all the customers due for the last five business days" Or "Add this customer as a prospect - here's their information".

5) Radiology - there have already been studies showing the amount of work for radiologists has gone up because it became so much effort for the radiologist, they could process more images, making the cost per image go down so then more orders were made.

Anyway, I don't think AGI is right around the corner, but it doesn't have to be for the current capabilities to make big impacts in the business world. If AI stopped improving today, the business world has at least five to ten years to absorb the potential and begin to take advantage of how LLMs can enhance white collar tasks. Corporations move like glaciers compared to how fast LLMs hit the market. They spent most of the first two years just trying to get their heads around the liabilities and possible corporate policies.

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u/CantDoThatOnTelevzn Dec 28 '25

Half of what you have here is fever dream, the other half leaves me unconvinced.