AI Is a Commodity
How AI is commoditizing repetitive professional work and transforming traditional expertise into quality assurance roles
I saw a tweet today that made me think.
The writer stated they just bypassed $350/hr legal work with ChatGPT—and her lawyer signed off on it.
She needed a simple contract. Instead of paying for templated boilerplate, she used ChatGPT to draft it. Showed it to her attorney who replied: "Looks perfect. Nothing I'd change. Who wrote it?"
That's the inflection point.
The 80% That's Being Commoditized
LLMs aren't replacing legal expertise. They're commoditizing the repetitive 80%: drafting, formatting, and translating intent into structure.
Fact-heavy, rules-based work—legal docs, medical triage, customer intake, notary flows—is ripe for automation.
The New Stack
- Layer AI on top of contract templates
- Add schema validation + signature workflows
- Use blockchain for audit and verification
Suddenly, the human expert becomes QA, not the builder.
Margins collapse. Access scales.
What This Means
The next wave of productivity isn't just digital—it's generative + verifiable.
Lawyers aren't cooked. But their easy money is.
Curious what other professions you think are next?