Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Something seems expensive. The question is the same: is it worth it? Will that thing save money in the long run? How long is the long run?

I read this article recently. It is about Apple and one of their recent computers that is loaded with processor power and memory and all such wonderful wonderfulness. The computer would allow a person(s) to run AI locally on local files while completely disconnected from the Internet.

The price tag wasn’t yet announced, but let’s say $10,000. WOW! That’s a lot for a home computer. Okay, I won’t spend that much on a home computer. Or would I?

Move to a business or organization instead. The organization has records that it CANNOT expose to the Internet or to one of these chattering bot companies. The records must absolutely remain in house. Privacy demands it.

Should that organization’s managers spend $10,000 on a computer so they can write little English questions like, “How has participation changed in the last 18 months?”

The answer lies scattered across a couple thousand Microsoft Word documents and emails that sit on the SharePoint system or Slack records or some such thing. Assign a person to the task and come back in a few weeks. We may ask that question every month or so. Let’s automate the task. One programmer can write the software to pull the answers.

How much will that human effort cost? $2,000? $5,000? How often will we repeat the task and pay the person? A contract programmer may cost us $10,000 to write us one program to answer this one question. Well, the hardware pays for itself in one month. And what if we have follow-up questions? What if and what if and what if?

The hardware may pay for itself in a week or a day. That’s a pretty easy decision. Of course we buy the hardware and we stop wasting money.

And what if the question at hand is silly and we don’t need the answers? No need to spend a penny on nonsense.

The question is the same: is it worth it?

We can do better.