Source on 200 million knowledge workers worldwide? My understanding is that it's just above 1 billion. I dont think a billion subscriptions at $1000/yr is out of the question but it might take a decade to get roiling

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swatcoder 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You're suggesting that 1 in 8 people worldwide, including every one from infants and the elderly, are knowledge workers. Are you sure that's what you mean?

I'm not even sure that 1 in 8 people I know would qualify as a knowledge worker, let alone a knowledge worker that might profoundly benefit from on-the-horizon AI. And I'm in a highly skewed population.

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WarmWash 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I think the underestimation is how many people want a personal knowledge worker in their pocket, and are willing to pay ~$65/mo for it.

	▲	swatcoder 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Personally, I've only encountered any of those people on line, and almost exclusively here on HN. Most people I've met -- and again, in a pretty darn skewed sample globally -- see $65/mo as a lot of money to spend on technology of any kind and can't think of anything much they need from "a personal knowledge worker in their pocket". I don't know a single person in real life who remains excited about AI at all, and only a few software engineers who feel it'd be worth that much. Everybody seems to be mostly confident with the "knowledge productivity" in their personal and professional life and a pretty skittish about spending in today's economy. Most would be excited about a magic new robot that affordably saved them from unwanted physical labor and drudgery, but nobody needs much real help making appointments or filling out forms or whatever. That's not to say I won't be proved wrong some day, with some further innovations in AI products, but global-scale demand isn't waiting for anything that's been released so far.
	▲	gloryjulio an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		The competitors of $65/mo subscriptions are the free models and services that are good enough. It will only get worse as open models or free tiers catch up. For most people, they just use whatever that's free

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HDThoreaun 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well around 40% of people work. I dont think its crazy to say around a third of jobs are knowledge jobs, but what do I know

	▲	matthewowen 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		85% of the world population lives outside of developed nations. 27% of the world's workforce is in agriculture (contrast to the US where it is 1-2%). 15% in manufacturing. A lot of people work in "services" (especially in high income nations, where it's roughly three quarters) and some of those are knowledge workers... but a huge number of them are nail technicians or hairdressers or bartenders (etc etc).

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hibgymnb an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A billion subs at 1k a year????

I see a lot of out of touch takes here but this might take the cake

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rootusrootus 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A billion? Really? At 200M you’re already including a lot of people that stretch the definition of knowledge worker.

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naravara 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A lot of those ‘edge cases’ in the definition of “knowledge worker” are probably the stuff that’s most likely to have significant parts of the work augmented or replaced by AI agents. Like, call-centers are almost certainly going to get turned over in a big way. It’s not like the median tier-1 support operator just reading off a script is much better than an LLM anyway.

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esseph 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, just looked into this. Knowledge workers is a big group and probably much larger than you think it is.

Basically if you're not doing manual labor, it's probably knowledge work.

Roughly 1/3rd of the working population.

Some data tucked in here: https://gist.github.com/danielmiessler/2dc039762a202b083753b...

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HDThoreaun 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> At 200M you’re already including a lot of people that stretch the definition of knowledge worker.

How do you know this? Im certainly open to recalibrating my numbers which is why I asked for the source

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windexh8er 3 hours ago | parent [-]

What's your source, because it looks wildly out of proportion compared to numbers we have now.

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Andoryuuta 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

To add an actual source to this thread, a brief paper by researchers at the International Labour Organization (ILO) states that for knowledge workers globally "... there are between 644 and 997 million jobs, which represents between 19.6 per cent and 30.4 per cent of global employment respectively." [1]

[1]: Berg, Janine and Gmyrek, Pawel, Automation Hits the Knowledge Worker: ChatGPT and the Future of Work (April 21, 2023). UN Multi-Stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for the SDGs (STI Forum) 2023, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4458221

	▲	windexh8er 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Globally, sure. The assumption here is all users are on the same economic footing, they are not. Only about a 1/3rd (at most) of that count can afford $1000+ monthly, and even then that is wildly out of line with what most will.

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elliotec 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Here's a source from 2019 that says: "By 2023, the number of knowledge workers in the world will increase to 1.14 billion, with more than four-fifths of that growth coming from the emerging world."

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/09-24-201...

	▲	windexh8er 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you for validating my point. > "...with more than four-fifths of that growth coming from the emerging world." If anyone thinks this is a part of the global TAM that's got $1000 a month to blow, well then I've got a stable of flying unicorns to sell you.

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HDThoreaun 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I googled "number of knowledge workers worldwide" and read the top results. If you read it as I was confident in a billion I apologize, Im just trying to get an accurate count. What numbers do you have now and where did you find them?

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windexh8er 3 hours ago | parent [-]

That's not the TAM of 1B knowledge workers globally. If that were the case many industries would have a 2-3x target market.

To simplify break that 1B up into 3 levels of purchasing:

1) High-tier (US, Western EU, ANZ, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, UAE, etc) - 200-250M knowledge workers.

2) Mid-tier (Eastern EU, Latin America, urban China, India tech sector, etc) - 300-400M

3) Low-tier (Rest of the world) - 300-400M

Low-tier users are mostly free tier or heavily subsidized pricing.

Mid-tier are going to account for USD sub-$100 tiers. Probably averaging less than $50/seat.

High-tier are who you are assuming is the 1B. Users are not equal in that knowledge worker count, so there aren't 1B knowledge workers to charge money.

And when you consider Low-tier users a majority of those are free users which need to be subsidized by the High-tier users. So either free tiers get much more restrictive or the providers lose additional training data. A bulk of Low-tier users cost money and provide little to no revenue.

Edit: And think about Mid-tier and Low-tier for 5 seconds. Why would they pay Anthropic or OAI when they get get 100x+ inference from DeepSeek or Xiaomi? Mid-tier may be the only area that is willing to spend money on a US provider, but I would wager significantly on the fact that users in the Low-tier almost universally do not care.

	▲	HDThoreaun 35 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Thank you. So with these numbers it seems like half a billion subscriptions at $500/yr is on the table. Obviously theres going to be competition in this market and self hosting cheap models may become the dominant use case. Assuming the labs are able to get most of the market though, the market size is something like a quarter trillion a year within the next decade. It's hard for me to imagine the whole sector failing if that happens. I do think free accounts are going to end pretty soon, and some of the workers in your tier 3 will pay, but even without them this seems like a pretty healthy market size. I also wouldnt be surprised if mid tier workers are able to afford the $1000/yr vs $500. I use yearly rates because I find it easier to compare them to GDP/salary numbers