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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

#481

Post by techblueberry »

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.

Honestly, I think it’s the second.

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

#482

Post by sarchertech »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #265
hn_acc1 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1990? We were solid lower-middle class, and I got a computer for Christmas in 1983. I bought my own, from $$ saved by working in 1987.

Computers were roughly ~ $1000 in 1990. How did your lower-middle class family justify a $1000 expenditure inflation adjusted to $2565 today? Average minimum wage in the US is $11.30 so that's 29 days working at minimum wage. My family was on the border of upper-lower and lower-middle and we bought a computer once and used it for 10+ years. I dumpster dove later to scavenge parts for upgrading until the mid 2000s whe…

>$1000

That depends very much on the computer.

https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1990-Sea...

Commodore 64C,1990, $159.99

My parents were working class in the 80s and we got a used Tandy that plugged into the TV and ran BASIC.

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

#483

Post by techblueberry »

mattmaroon wrote: post #477

This is a whole wall of post hoc ergo propter hoc. You can’t state with any certainty that the ATM’s increased efficiency had anything to do with the expansion of bank branches. That could have simply been due to the strong population and economic growth. It’s quite possible (and I’d assume it to be true) that if the ATM had never been invented, there would have been far more bank tellers in 2005 than there were. You…

“Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'.”

What exactly is your competing theory?

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

#484

Post by techblueberry »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #442

I've been thinking hard about this paradigm shift while thinking about ideas for things to "vibecode" I started by trying to think about ways of running a vending machine company autonomously using a finite state machine + agents. It turns out most of "automating" a vending machine company doesn't need LLM agents at all, and simply buying machines with reliable telemetry + a database + automated inventory could get y…

Maybe there are a lot of bad managers (almost certainly there are) but I feel like a lot of the talk about what a manager doesn’t address the true role of a manager, the whole point of a manager is to address uncertainty, and look to the future. The manager shouldn’t have any “tasks” per say, but in the vending machine example, they’re the one that keeps an eye on their suppliers, negotiates, changes suppliers if one fails, decides how much inventory to store in a warehouse.

But like, I as a manager try and delegate the coordination role yes. Unlike an IC, loosely speaking the more ‘tasks’ I’m doing as a manager, the more I consider myself to be failing at the job.

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

#485

Post by techblueberry »

tossandthrow wrote: post #448
LarsDu88 wrote: post #442

I've been thinking hard about this paradigm shift while thinking about ideas for things to "vibecode" I started by trying to think about ways of running a vending machine company autonomously using a finite state machine + agents. It turns out most of "automating" a vending machine company doesn't need LLM agents at all, and simply buying machines with reliable telemetry + a database + automated inventory could get y…

> The troubling thought I had is that AI does not displace the technicians, or the vending machines. It replaces the manager. This is really why ai will have a more profound impact on the society: it is fundamentally changing the hierarchy of conpetence we have gotten so accustomed to.

Why the difference that I’ve seen the exact opposite? It brutally reinforces it. It’s no longer the ability to do a task that is valuable, it’s the ability to understand what tasks need to be done.

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

#486

Post by pwagland »

idop wrote: post #317
stephbook wrote: post #267

I'm based in the rich Western world. Whenever I travel elsewhere, I'm amazed by the cheapness of labor. Humans would attend a gas station or fetch items in a store. Why? They're completely unneeded, I can do (and WANT to do) that myself. I always feel sad about these people, trapped in an economic system that forces them into useless labour when they could spend their time learning actually useful skills.

It's weird how you both describe visiting other cultures AND thinking everybody's just like you in the same paragraph. 1. You can fill your own car with gas, but some people can't, or prefer someone more knowledgeable to do it for them. Some people like the comfort of having someone bag their groceries for them, or have disabilities that necessitate it. Some people are old. Today you learned. 2. Your economic system…

Economics has this concept called revealed preferences[1]. These are preferences that people don't say that they want, but is what they actually use preferentially. An example of this the ordering machines that you normally now see in fast food places these days. People often say that they'd rather order by a cashier, but when given the choice of using one of these machines, or waiting a few minutes in line to get a cashier, they overwhelmingly choose for the automated option.

Tying this back to your first point, the revealed preference is that people would rather fill their own gas tank, rather than be forced to wait for someone to come and fill it for them.

Bagging groceries is different, however the revealed preference is that people would prefer the lower price/lower service supermarket, and those that need the help have to ask for it.

You are correct that everyone needs to earn a living, I think that most people would prefer that others can earn a living doing a somewhat meaningful job, in a somewhat safe manner.

The reason that much of this isn't automated has nothing to do with ensuring that jobs exist, but rather that the cost of automation is higher than the cost of labour. This is what op is talking about.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revealed_preference

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

#487

Post by philistine »

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 didn’t know Claude Code could put a thermometer in my butt.

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

#488

Post by gpderetta »

ori_b wrote: post #403
mullingitover wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It's interesting that you assume there's value in being educated in this hypothetical world of complete passive consumption. The world you're describing is one where the entire economic value of humanity is in reminding the AI to put out the food bowl and refill the water dish at the appropriate time.

For many, the Culture is an utopia to aspire to, for some is something to run away as fast as possible. Banks himself described the dichotomy.

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

#489

Post by duskdozer »

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?

Most of the difference is intentional enshittification of the non-app UX because it pushes users onto a platform where they have less control over their device and thus less ability to avoid malware like ads and tracking.

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

#490

Post by duskdozer »

rkomorn wrote: post #159
ghaff wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the US and things are definitely less check-centric than they used to be but I still probably write or receive a couple a month.

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.

Maybe you aren't required to, but there can tend to be downsides to the other methods in practice:

credit card: - often extra fees or minimums for nontrivial expenses - privacy of course

direct debit: - payee gains ability to debit any amount, and while resolution plays out, you are stuck with the consequences - limited ability to cease payments

check: - fixed payment amount; violating this would be clear fraud not attributable to "mistakes" that can happen with DD

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