391–400 of 607 posts
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Your bank's insurer trusts Google's security more than yours, and they must surely (and rightfully) believe that while Google would spy on you, they wouldn't steal your bank account.
That's a much more precise and accurate way to describe the situation.
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…
In many past cases where new technology eliminated jobs it was accompanied by new jobs related to the new technology that the people whose jobs were eliminated could do, or could reasonably learn to do, and with good enough pay to maintain their standard of living.
Lose your job working in a horse drawn wagon factory because companies are switching to motorized trucks for deliveries? Those trucks are way more complicated to build than wagons so there should be plenty of new jobs in the truck factories.
With AI it seems much less likely for that to generate new jobs for people replaced by AI in as direct a way as trucks did for wagon makers.
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I know this is true, but for serious tasks, I need the screen real estate. I'm amazed at what some people can do from a phone, but also wonder if they're missing things, of if it's actually inefficient.
What "serious" tasks does banking involve? I log in to transfer money, to take a photo of a check to deposit it, to check my balance. All of that is fine on a phone screen. Actually, it's a lot easier to take the check photo. And a banking app is a whole lot more secure than a browser tab running extensions that might get hijacked, on a desktop OS whose architecture allows this like widespread disk access, keyloggers…
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My boomer dad does more things on his phone than I do and I'm Gen X. It's actually astonishing how much he does on his iPhone. I'm dragging out the laptop and he's on his iPhone happy as a clam.
I've heard that GenX/Millenials are in a sort of PC goldilocks zone. People older than that cohort don't know computers and therefore use phones for everything, people younger don't know computers and also use phones for everything.
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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.
Job supply trends towards zero. The ultimate logical conclusion of this train of thought is there is no point in keeping the lower classes alive. Why do we need 15 billion humans if they do nothing but burden you with their maintenance costs? Let them die so that the quadrillionaires can enjoy the Earth with their perfect AI workforces catering to their every need. The future is bleak. If this is the sort of dystopia…
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 t…
How do you explain the data contradicting this? I believe that your bank did this but the data seems to show otherwise.
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> 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…
This is an area where a confident, but wrong information is extremely costly. It’s like saying an LLM can give you high quality directions on how to tap into a high voltage transformer. Sure, but when it’s wrong, it’s very very wrong with disastrous consequences. That’s why professions like doctors and Engineers are more regulated than others.
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If it makes you feel better, most labor is useless. In the sense that a computer program and/or machine could easily do it, or the customer could trivially do it themselves. But the labor is cheap enough that having a warm body around is worth it. We've pretty much locked ourselves into an economic system that requires everyone to work, even though our productivity has skyrocketed many orders of magnitude. The end re…
People don't need to do much work to survive. They choose to because they want to play the rat-race. They want to compete with each other for status and wealth. And that's a good thing - it's what drives all the productivity that enables easy-goers to live off grid or in a tent or renting in a cheap neighborhood doing just a little part-time work.
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…
A lot probably depends on who can do the new jobs. In many past cases where new technology eliminated jobs it was accompanied by new jobs related to the new technology that the people whose jobs were eliminated could do, or could reasonably learn to do, and with good enough pay to maintain their standard of living. Lose your job working in a horse drawn wagon factory because companies are switching to motorized truck…
We've spent over 300 years doing the Luddite song and dance. To be clear, I have no problem with Luddites and do not view them negatively, but to imply that this productivity enhancer is magically special in a way no other one was needs some kind of incredibly solid explanation.
edit: as an aside, I do wonder how, if ever, we'll make the transition over to a world where people don't need to work. It seems like every time we think we might be getting closer, the first response is fear.