Hard to tell what the actual value is here since “Online contractors” is a bit vague. AI coding is error prone and pretty limited. It’s basically a requirement to have someone to babysit it and studies done on this exact arrangement have shows that practically speaking far more time is wasted implementing AI in this arrangement than just having people do it.

The customer responses thing is fairly simple but is one of those cases where it works until it doesn’t. Small hallucinations by AI can mean serious liability for companies.

When I say “AI can’t replace anyone’s job” I don’t mean that you physically can’t fire somebody and then turn on an AI, but that it is not and likely won’t ever be a worthwhile replacement. In your case you’ve “replaced people with AI” in the same sense as you can “replace” someone by firing them and not hiring a replacement at all.