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

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

#361

Post by throwaway173738 »

pixelatedindex wrote: post #190
hackyhacky wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone still needs to review and test the code, and if the code is for embedded systems I find it unlikely. I feel like you didn't understand my comment. I am predicting that there is no code to review. You simply ask the AI to do stuff and it does it. Today, for example, you can ask ChatGPT to play chess with you, and it will. You don't need a "chess program," all the rules are built in to the LLM. Same goes for…

> I feel like you didn't understand my comment. I am predicting that there is no code to review. You simply ask the AI to do stuff and it does it. I didn’t, and thanks for clarifying for me. This doesn’t pass the sniff test for me though - someone needs to train the models, which requires code. If AI can do everything for you, then what’s the differentiator as a business? Everything can be in chatGPT but that’s not t…

We hate talking to robots because they are largely useless when we have anything out of routine. We love talking to robots when we would ordinarily wait 30 minutes for a 3-minute conversation.

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

#363

Post by jacquesm »

Nice try, but no. When I was working for a US bank in the 80's, well before smartphone and even well before mobile phones the plan was hatched to reduce the number of offices because those offices were horrendously expensive. The big cost was the tellers and the handling of cash. For mortgages and other big ticket items there was a profit, but everything involved in the handling of money was a really large cost.

So they decided to reduce the number of offices. The ATMs were very specifically placed in the same location where the closed offices were, often renting just a fraction of the former space (usually a small cubbyhole attached to an outer wall). From 140 branches over a really small area they went to a small fraction of that, and ATMs took up the slack. Many people even preferred dealing with the ATMs rather than with the tellers because the ATMs were (at least initially) open 24x7.

Bank offices have all but disappeared. I think there are still two regional centers here and that's it. All deposits and all withdrawals of cash - as long as we still have cash - is handled by the ATMs. The iPhone came decades later.

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

#364

Post by lordnacho »

forgotaccount3 wrote: post #321
bwestergard wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise of your argument is that "the outcome" can be separated from the process. This is true enough for manufacturing bricks: I don't much care what processes was used to create a brick if it has certain a compressive strength, mass, etc. But Baumol's argument, which you introduced to the conversation, is that outcome and process cannot actually be distinguished, even if a distinction in thought is possible amo…

> But Baumol's argument, which you introduced to the conversation, is that outcome and process cannot actually be distinguished How is that Baumol's argument? How is 'outcome' vs 'process' relevant to his argument at all? 'Cost disease' is just the foundational truth that the cost of the output from industries with stagnant productivity will increase due to the fact that the workers in that industry can be more valua…

I think he means that when you go to watch the symphony orchestra, you are going to watch a bunch of people sitting with their instruments, manually playing them.

There is no way to separate this process from the product of the process.

You're not buying the sound of the music. You can just stream that. As far as that is the product, it has already been automated and scaled so millions of people can hear it at once, whenever they feel like it.

You're buying the sound AND the people sitting in their formal clothes manually moving their strings over a violin, with painstaking accuracy developed through years of manual practice.

You couldn't make a robot do it, for example. You could maybe make a robot play a violin, but that again isn't what the product is.

The product is tied to an expectation of what it is that does not allow for it to be done more effectively.

By contrast manufacturing processes are not tied to this expectation. If I buy a loaf of bread, I don't care whether the wheat was manually harvested or harvested by a huge machine.

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

#365

Post by victor106 »

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…

> cutting out menial decisions such as customer service

This is cited so often. We tried it at a large scale with some of the best engineering talent but unfortunately the humans on the other side preferred speaking to and interacting with a human by a wide margin.

We are still trying with the latest AI models but humans are still doing better at serving other humans.

In one of our studies, we observed by a large margin that our customers would hang up immediately on knowing that they are interacting with an AI system.

I have heard this from others as well.

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

#366

Post by dbspin »

victor106 wrote: post #365
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…

> cutting out menial decisions such as customer service This is cited so often. We tried it at a large scale with some of the best engineering talent but unfortunately the humans on the other side preferred speaking to and interacting with a human by a wide margin. We are still trying with the latest AI models but humans are still doing better at serving other humans. In one of our studies, we observed by a large mar…

Isn't it obvious why?

We contact support services to fix material problems. 'This booking is wrong.' 'I want a refund for that.' AI systems aren't empowered to solve these problems. At best they can provide information. If the answer is information - the user can likely already find it online themselves (often from a better AI model than they're going to find running your support line). If they're calling, they most often want something done.

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

#367

Post by linkregister »

dbspin wrote: post #366
victor106 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cutting out menial decisions such as customer service This is cited so often. We tried it at a large scale with some of the best engineering talent but unfortunately the humans on the other side preferred speaking to and interacting with a human by a wide margin. We are still trying with the latest AI models but humans are still doing better at serving other humans. In one of our studies, we observed by a large mar…

Isn't it obvious why? We contact support services to fix material problems. 'This booking is wrong.' 'I want a refund for that.' AI systems aren't empowered to solve these problems. At best they can provide information. If the answer is information - the user can likely already find it online themselves (often from a better AI model than they're going to find running your support line). If they're calling, they most…

Do you know that to be true or are you speculating?

As we argue on the orange site, companies are paying Sierra AI to integrate voice and text agents into their systems to look up account information and process refunds. Fallbacks to human agents are built in to these systems.

We all hate phone trees because they never have the capability to handle exceptions to the most basic functions. We shout "speak to an agent!" into the phone because their website and phone trees only handle the happy path.

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

#368

Post by somerandomqaguy »

sssilver wrote: post #343
sssilver wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The supply/demand picture here is more complicated than it looks. If AI displaces human educators, yes, their supply shrinks -- but we can't assume what direction its demand will go. We've seen this pattern before: as recorded music became free, live performance got more expensive, and therefore much less accessible than it used to be. What's likely to happen is that "worse" (read: AI) education will become much chea…

Important follow-up to my comment: as fewer people do X -- live music, medicine, education, you name it -- fewer talented people do it as well. Fields need a large base of participants to produce great ones. This is exactly why software has been so extraordinary over the past 30 years: an unusual concentration of gifted minds across the entire humankind committed themselves to it. In my view, Bach, Rachmaninoff, Cole…

Disagree, we do have the Bach's and Rachmanioff's today: John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, Bear McCreary, Yuki Kajiura, Hans Zimmer, and probably a slew I'm not even aware of today.

We're in the greatest era of symphonies IMO, it's just that they're hiding in surprising places; movies, TV shows, games, etc.

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

#369

Post by da_chicken »

dbspin wrote: post #366
victor106 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cutting out menial decisions such as customer service This is cited so often. We tried it at a large scale with some of the best engineering talent but unfortunately the humans on the other side preferred speaking to and interacting with a human by a wide margin. We are still trying with the latest AI models but humans are still doing better at serving other humans. In one of our studies, we observed by a large mar…

Isn't it obvious why? We contact support services to fix material problems. 'This booking is wrong.' 'I want a refund for that.' AI systems aren't empowered to solve these problems. At best they can provide information. If the answer is information - the user can likely already find it online themselves (often from a better AI model than they're going to find running your support line). If they're calling, they most…

Yeah, it's like trying to use an ORM to find data in the database that's invalid due to a bug. You can't see things in the system that break the premises of the system by using the system, and the fact that some things are "supposed to be impossible" doesn't change the reality of what's actually occurring in the data store.

So customer support needs to know how the systems works and need to understand what the data means, but also has to know when the system is factually incorrect. Customer support has to know when the second party is speaking the truth.

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

#370

Post by WalterBright »

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…

> that money goes to a mega-corp and the savings is passed on to execs

And the execs invest that money back into the economy.

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