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ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

davidoks.blog

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Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#211

Post by mullingitover »

bwestergard wrote: post #199
mullingitover wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My prediction is no, because productivity gains must benefit the lower classes to see a multiplier in the economy. Baumol's cost disease hurts the lower classes by restricting their access to services like health care and education, and LLMs/agents make it possible to increase productivity in these areas in ways which were once unimaginable. The problem with services is that they're typically resistant to productiv…

"Baumol's cost disease hurts the lower classes by restricting their access to services like health care and education, and LLMs/agents make it possible to increase productivity in these areas in ways which were once unimaginable." You've expressed very clearly what LLMs would have to do in order to be economically transformative. "If you can get high quality medical advice for effectively nothing, if you can get high…

> Why should one child get an LLM teacher or doctor while others get individualized attention by a skilled human being?

Is the value in the outcome of receiving medical advice and care, and becoming educated, or is the value just in the co-opting of another human being's attention?

If the value is in the outcome, the means to achieving that aren't of much consequence.

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#212

Post by jdauriemma »

jldugger wrote: post #208
ahartmetz wrote: post #7

I do not get what's special about banking apps as opposed to online banking. I've been doing online banking in the browser on a PC since before apps and I'm still doing it because dealing with data on a phone is painful compared to a PC. Is an app really that much easier to use?

Ever deposit a check via PC browser?

+1, this is my use case as well

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#213

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

karol wrote: post #124
idiotsecant wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This and other fairytales. The only solution here is to stop tying people's value to their productivity. That makes a lot of sense in the 1900s but it makes a lot less sense when the primary faucet of productivity is automation. If you insist on tying a person's fundamental right to a decent and secure life to their productivity and then take away their ability to be productive you're left with a permenant and growin…

They key is to do it by setting up the right structure or end up with it naturally, not by laws and control, because then you end up in a oppressive nanny state at the very best.

> They key is to do it by setting up the right structure or end up with it naturally

This is extremely hand-wavy.

Can you be more concrete in what you think this looks like?

The way I see it, we're only 5-10 years away from having general purpose robots and AI that can basically do anything. If the prices for that automation is low enough, there will be massive layoffs as workers are replaced.

There's no way to "naturally" solve the problem of skyrocketing unemployment without government involvement.

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#214

Post by mullingitover »

somekyle2 wrote: post #206
bwestergard wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Baumol's cost disease hurts the lower classes by restricting their access to services like health care and education, and LLMs/agents make it possible to increase productivity in these areas in ways which were once unimaginable." You've expressed very clearly what LLMs would have to do in order to be economically transformative. "If you can get high quality medical advice for effectively nothing, if you can get high…

It also seems like the value of quality tutoring that doesn't primarily function as social/class signaling goes down as tools capable of automating high quality intellectual work are more widely available.

It depends on outcome again: is the value of tutoring the social class elevation, or is it in the outcome of becoming more skilled and knowledgable?

There's also the deeper philosophical question of what is the meaning of life, and if there's inherent value in learning outside of what remunerative advantages you reap from it.

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#216

Post by alwa »

mullingitover wrote: post #211
bwestergard wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Baumol's cost disease hurts the lower classes by restricting their access to services like health care and education, and LLMs/agents make it possible to increase productivity in these areas in ways which were once unimaginable." You've expressed very clearly what LLMs would have to do in order to be economically transformative. "If you can get high quality medical advice for effectively nothing, if you can get high…

> Why should one child get an LLM teacher or doctor while others get individualized attention by a skilled human being? Is the value in the outcome of receiving medical advice and care, and becoming educated, or is the value just in the co-opting of another human being's attention? If the value is in the outcome, the means to achieving that aren't of much consequence.

More subtly, what is an education? What is care? As you point out, the LLMs are (or probably will become) perfectly good at the measurable parts of those services; but I think the residual edge of “good” education/care is more than just the other human’s co-opted attention.

How many of us have a reminiscence that starts “looking back, the most life-changing part of my primary or secondary education was ________,” where the blank is a person, not a curriculum module? How many doctors operate, at least in part, on hunches—on totalities of perception-filtered-through-experience that they can’t fully put into words?

I’m reminded of the recent account of homebound elderly Japanese people relying on the Yakult delivery lady partly for tiny yoghurt drinks, but mainly for a glimmer of human contact [0]. Although I guess that cuts to your point: the value in that example really is just co-opting another human’s attention.

In most of these caring professions, some of the value is in the measurable outcome (bacterial infection? Antibiotic!), but different means really do create different collections of value that don’t fully overlap (fine, I’ll actually lay off the wine because the doctor put the fear of the lord in me).

I guess the optimistic case is, with the rote mechanical aspects automated away, maybe humans have more time to give each other the residual human element…

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47287344

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#217

Post by DonsDiscountGas »

ahartmetz wrote: post #7

I do not get what's special about banking apps as opposed to online banking. I've been doing online banking in the browser on a PC since before apps and I'm still doing it because dealing with data on a phone is painful compared to a PC. Is an app really that much easier to use?

I've had the same thought. The only major difference that I can think of is the built-in camera making check deposits easier. It may also be that people were just generally using computers more and using the internet more over this same time period, although a lot is that because of smartphones

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#218

Post by jygg4 »

bwestergard wrote: post #202
jama211 wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An AI’s ability to meaningfully write software autonomously has changed hugely even in the last 6 months. They might still require a human in the loop, but for how long?

Quantitative measures of this are very poor, and even those are mixed. My subjective assessment is that agents like Copilot got better because of better harnesses and fine tuning of models to use those harnesses. But they are not improving in the direction of labor substitution, but rather in the direction of significant, but not earth-shaking, complementarity. That complementarity is stronger for more experienced de…

Agree. Nice to see a post with proper economic thought on the topic.

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#219

Post by DonsDiscountGas »

ahartmetz wrote: post #82
1123581321 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the apps perform better/faster and generally have more UI thought put into them. Overall, lower friction. Often when people need to use their banking app, they're in a hurry, maybe stressed (e.g. in line at a grocery store) so everything the bank can do quickly and with visual assurance helps. On the premium end of banking, where users generally aren't stressed about money, offering an app is more about catering…

A small screen and shitty keyboard are friction to me shrug

I'm the same way but we're both posting on hacker news. Many people prefer phones

Re: ATMs didn’t kill bank teller jobs, but the iPhone did

#220

Post by retired »

ahartmetz wrote: post #7

I do not get what's special about banking apps as opposed to online banking. I've been doing online banking in the browser on a PC since before apps and I'm still doing it because dealing with data on a phone is painful compared to a PC. Is an app really that much easier to use?

An app on your phone can be more secure as you are using the device itself as a hardware token.
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