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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

#221

Post by retired »

contracertainty wrote: post #57
1980phipsi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can deposit checks via the app pretty easily.

What's a check? As the saying goes, 'I'm too European for this'. On a more serious note, the last time I saw a cheque in the UK was my grandfather balancing his cheque book in the mid 80s. It really has been that long since they were in general use in the UK, at least. Just like with the prevalance of Apple/iPhones, the US banking system is global outlier. Things you can't do with my banking app you can do with the w…

Europeans have checks as well, so that doesn’t really makes sense.

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

#222

Post by mcmcmc »

mullingitover wrote: post #193
whatisthiseven wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But will it? My prediction is no, because productivity gains must benefit the lower classes to see a multiplier in the economy. For example, ATMs being automated did cause a negative drop in teller jobs, but fast money any time does increase the velocity of money in the economy. It decreases savings rate and encourages spending among the class of people whose money imparts the highest multiplier. AI does not. All t…

> 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…

I’m sick of this idea that “free” services are beneficial to society. There is no such thing as a free lunch; users are essentially bartering their time, attention, IP (contributed content) and personal/behavioral data in exchange for access to the service.

By selling those services at a cost of “free”, hyperscalers eliminate competition by forcing market entrants to compete against a unit price of 0. They have to have a secondary business to subsidize the losses from servicing the “free” users, which of course is usually targeted advertising to capitalize on the resources paid by users for access. Or simply selling to data brokers.

With the importance of training data and network effects, “free” services even further concentrate market power. Everyone talks about how AI is going to take away jobs, but no one wants to confront how badly the anticompetitive practices in big tech are hurting the economy. Less competition means less opportunity for everyone else, regardless of consumer benefit.

The only way it works if the “free” service for tutoring or healthcare is through government subsidies or an actual non-profit. Otherwise it’s just going to concentrate market power with the megacorps.

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

#223

Post by rkomorn »

ghaff wrote: post #205
rkomorn wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there's also a difference between "can use checks" vs "have to use checks" because, aside from rent, I can't recall having to write checks. Everything else allowed either credit card or direct debit on top of allowing checks.

Both my housekeeper and contractor use checks and, while I could get the bank to "write" them checks, it's easier to just hand them a piece of paper. I've also needed to pay my neighbor something from time to time and it's easier to just write a check. I do also periodically receive checks from various institutions.

I guess to me there's just a big difference between what you're describing (which matches what I remember) and "stubbornly check-focused" as ancestor comment said.

I do find the money transfer options where I am in Europe much easier, though, and they do make checks and PayPal/Zelle/Venmo pretty obsolete too, IMO.

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

#224

Post by wagwang »

whatisthiseven wrote: post #186
paxys wrote: post #35

One key line about ATMs is buried deep in the article: > the number of tellers per branch fell by more than a third between 1988 and 2004, but the number of urban bank branches (also encouraged by a wave of bank deregulation allowing more branches) rose by more than 40 percent So, ATMs did impact bank teller jobs by a significant amount. A third of them were made redundant. It's just that the decrease at individual b…

> But will it? My prediction is no, because productivity gains must benefit the lower classes to see a multiplier in the economy. For example, ATMs being automated did cause a negative drop in teller jobs, but fast money any time does increase the velocity of money in the economy. It decreases savings rate and encourages spending among the class of people whose money imparts the highest multiplier. AI does not. All t…

> because productivity gains must benefit the lower classes to see a multiplier in the economy

by this logic, the invention of mechanized farm equipment, which displaced farm labor, didnt increase productivity

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

#225

Post by retired »

socalgal2 wrote: post #169
eloisant wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the article is wrong about the iPhone. It's the Internet that killed bank tellers.

It's also not the iPhone given Europe is 60-70% Android

Android market share in Europe is dropping, hasn’t been 70% in a while and it’s closing in on 60%.

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

#226

Post by thesuitonym »

dylan604 wrote: post #97
freedomben wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Browsers and websites work pretty well on mobile devices too. Website != desktop only

If you consider a website fully laden with ads as working. I have yet to find an ad blocker that works on my iOS/iPad OS that works as well as on my computer. I also hate apps with all of their invasive data hoarding that is much more controllable on my computer. So to me, websites on mobile are broken as they are full of malware vectors that are not present when looking at the same website on my non-mobile device. F…

If your banks website has a bunch of ads on it, you should probably consider switching banks.

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

#227

Post by suzzer99 »

paxys wrote: post #35

One key line about ATMs is buried deep in the article: > the number of tellers per branch fell by more than a third between 1988 and 2004, but the number of urban bank branches (also encouraged by a wave of bank deregulation allowing more branches) rose by more than 40 percent So, ATMs did impact bank teller jobs by a significant amount. A third of them were made redundant. It's just that the decrease at individual b…

I don't understand the economics behind bank branches. Some of the best real estate by me is taken up by giant bank branches that are always mostly empty with a few bored employees inside. And they open new ones all the time. So it's not like they're stuck in some lease.

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

#228

Post by mekoka »

jama211 wrote: post #194
onetimeusename wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go back and forth on this. I relate it to software. I don't think AI can meaningfully write software autonomously. There are people who oversee it and prompt it and even then it might write things badly. So there needs to be a person in the loop. But that person should probably have very deep knowledge of the software especially for say low level coding. But then that person probably developed the knowledge by codi…

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?

This LLM ability is directly proportional to the quantity of encoded (i.e. documented) knowledge about software development. But not all of the practice has thus been clearly communicated. Much of mastery resides in tacit knowledge, the silent intuitive part of a craft that influences the decision making process in ways that sometimes go counter to (possibly incomplete or misguided) written rules, and which is by definition very difficult to put into language, and thus difficult for a language model to access or mimic.

Of course, it could also be argued that some day we may decide that it's no longer necessary at all for code to be written for a human mind to understand. It's the optimistic scenario where you simply explain the misbehavior of the software and trust the AI to automatically fix everything, without breaking new stuff in the process. For some reason, I'm not that optimistic.

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

#230

Post by fragmede »

suzzer99 wrote: post #227
paxys wrote: post #35

One key line about ATMs is buried deep in the article: > the number of tellers per branch fell by more than a third between 1988 and 2004, but the number of urban bank branches (also encouraged by a wave of bank deregulation allowing more branches) rose by more than 40 percent So, ATMs did impact bank teller jobs by a significant amount. A third of them were made redundant. It's just that the decrease at individual b…

I don't understand the economics behind bank branches. Some of the best real estate by me is taken up by giant bank branches that are always mostly empty with a few bored employees inside. And they open new ones all the time. So it's not like they're stuck in some lease.

But when those employees are meeting with clients, they create money out of thin air by making loans, which then is used to pay for goods and services such as leases.
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