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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

#371

Post by hackyhacky »

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…

> I don’t think a paying customer would accept that - they want a direct line to a person.

What the customer wants only matters insofar as they are willing to pay for it. Sure, I'd rather talk to a person... But I'm not willing to pay 100x as much for a service that's only marginally better. Same reason I don't fly first class, as miserable as coach is.

Someone may want to pay for a boutique human lawyer/banker/coder/professor, maybe as a status symbol, the same way people pay $20k for an ugly handbag. But I think most people will take the cheaper and almost as good option, when the difference in quality is far overshadowed by the difference in price.

> someone needs to train the models, which requires code.

I'm not sure that training llms is a coding problem, but it doesn't much matter: llms can train each other.

> If AI can do everything for you, then what’s the differentiator as a business?

Good question. My gut says there isn't: all money flows to the model providers, everyone else is a serf at best parasiting on someone else's model.

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

#372

Post by WalterBright »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #368
sssilver wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The sound track to "Lord of the Rings" is one of my favorites.

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

#373

Post by WalterBright »

sciencejerk wrote: post #338
jimbokun wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you have perfect medical information and advice through an LLM, can you perform surgery on yourself? Can you prescribe yourself whatever medication you think you need? For education, if you know as much as the average Harvard grad, can you give yourself a Harvard degree that will be as readily accepted in a job application or raising funds for a new business?

Interesting perspective; medical regulation as a business moat

That's why medical licensing was introduced.

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

#374

Post by hackyhacky »

aurareturn wrote: post #192
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…

Because AI agents are tool users. Why does AI need to research 2026 tax code changes and then try to one-shot your taxes when it can just use Turbotax to do it for you? Turbotax has the latest 2026 tax changes coded into the app. I'd feel much more confident if AI uses Turbotax to do my taxes than to try to one-shot it.

> Turbotax has the latest 2026 tax changes coded into the app.

How does TurboTax implement the latest tax changes? My guess is that before the decade is over, the answer is "an LLM does it."

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

#375

Post by ludston »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #368
sssilver wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't think we can know whether or not this is the case in our own lifetimes, because we are so immersed in popular culture that we can't be objective about it. Enough of our historical great composers weren't venerated until after their deaths, and to describe composers as "hiding" within the most popular media of our era is a great disservice to the many composers that don't have the fame, connections and reputation to be hired to write for these.

I would also point out that composing for a medium like a game or a movie places a great deal of constraints upon the composer, in terms of theme, cost of instrumentation, duration and most importantly: what is safe and palatable for an executive to approve of.

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

#376

Post by ssl-3 »

WalterBright wrote: post #370
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…

> 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.

And the executives do this in a golden shower of trickle-on economics.

...which didn't work so well during the Reagan administration, but I guess we're on course to try it again.

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

#377

Post by wisty »

mcmcmc wrote: post #222
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…

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 ha…

Ok sow how about "much cheaper"?

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

#378

Post by ssl-3 »

alex43578 wrote: post #359
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. … Each person in the US hired to do that job would spend their entire paycheck This person can no longer get a customer service job, but why can’t they get another job? Customer service is hardly career with a huge sunk cost in training and with a non-fungible skill set. If they go get another job, compared to the base case of economy = customer service, we now…

It's easy for anyone to go get a different job as long as the supply of jobs is infinite.

But it is not infinite; eventually, we reach a point where we no longer need additional ditch diggers.

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

#379

Post by matheusmoreira »

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…

At some point we're gonna have to abolish the economy itself. We need to transition to a post-scarcity society where everything is abundant and there's no need to economize.

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

#380

Post by foxglacier »

Misleading graph alert! The green graph's vertical axis starts at 150,000 instead of 0. It shows the number falling to about 50%, not 10% as it appear at first. The misleadingness fits the author's narrative, which is how it always seems to go so I think it's safe to assume malice and that he's trying to mislead his readers.
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