I agree with you for many use cases, but for the use case I'm focused on (Voice AI) speed is absolutely everything. Every millisecond counts for voice, and most voice use cases don't require anything close to "deep thinking. E.g., for inbound customer support use cases, we really just want the voice agent to be fast and follow the SOP.

If you have a SOP, most of the decision logic can be encoded and strictly enforced. There is zero intelligence involved in this process, it’s just if/else. The key part is understanding the customer request and mapping it to the cases encoded in the SOP - and for that part, intelligence is absolutely required or your customers will not feel „supported“ at all, but be better off with a simple form.