Computer Use is 45x more expensive than structured APIs

I have a similar finding for a website I made that collates college town bar specials and live music. Using agents with vision models works but it's not as straightforward as one would initially think. U can check out the results here. https://www.nittanynights.com

Only 45x?

Bh

The interface designed for humans is poor for AI needs? And the interface designed for programmatic use is easier for the AI to use? In other news, the sky is blue and water is wet.

Browser agents / vision agents are a menace and ISPs should outright ban subscribers who run them on the public internet.

Confusing title? "Computer Use" is actually "Browser vision"?

This is missing the point that AI training probably costed boatloads more to achieve to get here.

For now.

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I saw Codex was screenshotting, then clicking around. I just stopped it and never used that again.

Using CLI tools is much faster and token-efficient. I developed ten apps in the last two months. One reached 10,000+ monthly active users.

I ask Codex to generate SVG line by line and backtrack edit, ask it to use Inkscape to generate icons, etc...

I developed all this on $20 codex sub.

There's no way this is true. I would argue in some cases computer use is less expensive. First for APIs that don't even exist, it's a non starter. Second most APIs are not designed for agents and are verbose as hell - returning the entire DTO and tons of unnecessary properties burns tokens. Second computer use is not as token hungry as you think it is - a single screenshot may be just 1000 tokens, it's actually competitive and beats API workflows in many cases.

So, to make this concrete, Akasa uses computer vision to read medical records to replace medical coders because there aren't enough medical coders to get all the billing right and medical systems leave like $1T a year on the table.

The EHRs could give companies like Akasa API access so Akasa could then just run NLP, but the EHR vendors don't grant various third parties API access for various reasons, so instead Akasa gets a seat license for each medical system they service and uses computer vision to read the screen (a cadre of Akasa medical coders review errors to stay up to date with unannounced changes from the EHR vendors) and then runs the NLP to figure out which CPT codes to assign to actually put in a bill and send the payer so the hospitals can stay afloat.

So this 45x delta is how much more the medical systems pay Akasa because Epic won't work with Akasa.

This is but one example of why US medical bills are outrageously high.