Much work is not "text in, text out", and much work is not digital at all. But even in the digital world, inserting an LLM into a workflow is just not always that useful.

In fact much automation, code or otherwise, benefits from or even requires explicit, concise rules.

It is far quicker for me to already know, and write, an SQL statement, than it is to explain what I need to an LLM.

It is also quite difficult to get LLMs into a lot of processes, and I think big enterprises are going to really struggle with this. I would absolutely love AI to manage some Windows servers that are in my care, but they are three VMs deep in a remote desktop stack that gets me into a DMZ/intranet. There's no interface, and how would an LLM help anyway. What I need is concise, discreet automations. Not a chat bot interface to try and instruct every day.

To be clear I do try to use AI most days, I have Claude and I am a software developer so ideally it could be very helpful, but I have far less use for it than say people in the strategy or marketing departments for example. I do a lot of things, but not really all that much writing.