Three peer-reviewed studies provide the hardest evidence on AI's economic impact for individual workers — not firms, not economies, but the person sitting at the desk:
Noy & Zhang (2023) found that integrating ChatGPT into college-educated professional work reduced task completion time by 40% and improved output quality by 18%. The productivity gains were largest for workers who were previously below average — AI acted as an equalizer.
Dell'Acqua et al. (2023) — a Harvard/BCG study of 758 consultants — found that AI-assisted consultants were 25.1% faster, produced 40% higher quality work, and completed significantly more tasks. Below-average performers improved by 43%. Above-average performers still improved by 17%.
Hettrich, Krings & Kock (2025) demonstrated that GenAI elevates novices' performance to a level equivalent to unassisted professionals — effectively bridging the expertise gap in project management tasks.
If you're an accountant, analyst, or any knowledge worker: AI doesn't replace your expertise — it makes you faster and raises the floor on quality. The 40% time reduction means a 20-hour project becomes a 12-hour project. That's either more projects per month or the same projects at higher rates.
| Product | Founder | Revenue | What It Does | Team |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cursor | Anysphere | $1B ARR | AI code editor | Small team |
| Lovable | — | $200M ARR | AI app builder | Small team |
| Photo AI | Pieter Levels | $1.6M/yr | AI photo generation | 1 person |
| HeadshotPro | Danny Postma | $1M+ ARR | AI headshots | 1 person |
| Base44 | Maor Shlomo | $80M exit | AI app builder | 1 person |
| PDF.ai | — | $600K/yr | Document intelligence | 1-2 people |
| AutoShorts.ai | Eric Smith | $1.2M+/yr | Video automation | 1 person |
| TypingMind | — | $396K/yr | Custom AI interface | 1 person |
Distribution reality: Of 326 indie AI projects analyzed, 46% earn $500-$1,000/month. Only 1.2% exceed $50,000/month. The top performers are domain-specific tools, not generic wrappers. (Source: Freemius State of Micro-SaaS 2025)
AI-powered products run on API calls. Here's what they actually cost:
| Model | Input / 1M tokens | Output / 1M tokens | Avg Cost / Request | 10K req/day Monthly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Haiku (fast) | $1.00 | $5.00 | $0.003 | $900 |
| Claude Sonnet (balanced) | $3.00 | $15.00 | $0.009 | $2,700 |
| Claude Opus (premium) | $5.00 | $25.00 | $0.015 | $4,500 |
Batch processing cuts costs 50%. Prompt caching cuts input costs 90%. A small product on Haiku handling 10,000 daily requests costs $50-$150/month in API fees. The structural challenge: AI product gross margins average 50-65% vs. 80-90% for traditional software. Price at 3-5x API costs minimum.
Monthly retainers: $2K-$5K (advisory) · $5K-$15K (standard) · $15K-$50K (comprehensive). 73% of consulting clients now prefer outcome-tied pricing — paying 10-40% of measurable cost savings or revenue increases.
90% of AI startups projected to fail (vs. 70% traditional tech) · 95% of enterprise AI pilots fail to deliver measurable ROI (MIT NANDA, Aug 2025) · 42% fail due to insufficient market demand — the #1 cause · Up to 70% of AI initiatives yield no or minimal impact (SAS/Accenture/Intel survey) · 1 in 4 enterprises redesigned or overrode AI systems due to unsatisfactory results
Oversaturated: Generic AI writing tools (crushed by built-in features from Google/Microsoft). AI chatbot wrappers. "AI-powered" anything where AI is a label, not a capability. The thin wrapper problem: if someone can replicate your product by calling the same API with a different interface, you don't have a business.
AI is a leverage tool, not a product category for most individuals. It doesn't replace having a skill — it multiplies the output of a skill you already have. The peer-reviewed evidence is unambiguous: AI makes knowledge workers 25-40% faster and significantly improves output quality, with the largest gains for people who are still building expertise. The question isn't "can I make money with AI?" — it's "what do I know that most people don't, and can AI make that more valuable?"