I feel you, I really do. I’ve worked with architects. Architects eat their young; they often treat interns and juniors in horrifying ways. Good on you for trying to find a better way.

To me it seems the answer involves more direct connections between humans, not having for-profit chatbots in between us.

I agree, but its a balancing act. We are 2 person firm juggling our experience with limited resources. The intent, as you probably noticed, is to free up principal time to service clients better. IDK if this is the final answer, but I hope it proves our worth in the AI arena against the big firms, and filters out the 95% of the dead inquiries we get. Time will tell me this works.