> You can't easily estimate how much an operation is going to cost before you kick off that operation

I recently had a debate with a colleague on this topic but concerning estimating the costs of AI agent work. For example, if you prompt an AI to refactor your codebase, the final cost can't be estimated perfectly, but I'm sure it can at least be estimated with some amount of precision! Like simply knowing that it will cost < $100 is actually great information even if the final work only ends up costing $5.

I think there actually might be a business opportunity (or at least the opportunity to build something cool here) if anyone wants to work in the AI cost estimation space. It's not exactly an idea I want to pursue, but just thought I'd put it out there. AI cost estimation (even with wide confidence bands) would be very useful to a lot of people.