There's two things.

LLMs can use PowerPoint, but also LLMs can write the raw document file directly without the software. One time I asked for a letter and what came out was it doing that.

What really matters with this though is reading other people's documents, whatever format they happen to be in. PowerPoint isn't the only game in town for creating slide decks, but if you want to be sure you can read all the ones sent to you, it used to be the case you'd need a copy.

Used to be. Now the AI can read and summarise the slides for you.

("AI, expand these bullet points into a slide deck" -> "AI, condense this slide deck into bullet points", as the meme goes).

If there are no humans looking at the excel anymore, why is it needed? My guess is all of this office software gets replaced by stuff that looks a lot more low level and controlled by agents, and just converted to a nice view when a human wants to look for some reason.

You can't imagine AI keeping the format and replacing the software? Or making it possible to create cheap clones with some customised features?

I very much can.

That applies to most software.

This doesn't solve the problem of "Who gets paid now, and for what?" at all. If anything it makes it worse.

I’d argue productivity is declining in this context.

The PowerPoint object is meant to be a package of one’s insights. If those insights are of zero value (the less time you spend the less value - correlation) - that time expended is a net negative for he firm’s productivity.

> You think its implausible for AI to replace some fraction of white collar workers?

Yes, it is. Software already did it. Better software (AI) can only marginally change what's already automated.

If that white collar work disappears, so does most of the demand in the entire economy.

Agreed. The literal CEOs of these companies, and their acolytes, have been proudly proclaiming that you can replace all types of workers with AI. We know they have their anti-human sentiments but this is nothing new, as you said.