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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

#491

Post by tsss »

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…

You could get high quality medical advice 20 years ago on the internet, or 40 years ago in the library. Doctors aren't there to give you advice, they are mostly gate keepers. Every person who's chronically ill knows that doctors are totally useless for anything beyond the 10 most common diseases and primarily exist to approve or reject your pleas for lab work. They won't go away, neither will psychotherapists and all the middle managers that can be easily automated, because their real purpose is not the practical work that they do.

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

#492

Post by gpderetta »

kavalg wrote: post #465
matheusmoreira wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In Azimov's Robot series the society that chose to live with robots gradually destructed itself by just living longer and not having so many children. The other part of humanity that avoided robots flourished (not without suffering). But that all required new planets for settlement (I am looking at you Elon).

Trying not to spoil a 40+ year old story, but Asimov eventually retconned that the flourishing of humanity was driven by a benevolent AI behind the curtain.

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

#493

Post by myrak »

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…

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

#494

Post by myrak »

Devasta wrote: post #270
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.

> the value just in the co-opting of another human being's attention? Thats a weird way of describing it. A machine telling me to exercise and eat right will be ignored, even if the advice is correct. A person I trust taking me aside, looking me in the eye and asking me the same would be taken far more seriously.

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

#495

Post by duskdozer »

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.

That's great. I'd not be opposed to you having the option to do those things by yourself. Personally though, I'd rather just have someone who's paid to do it than have ads pumped into my ears as I pump gas or mess with the finicky self-checkout machines as someone watches me anyway. Now, if giving these things up would result in those employees ending up with a better station in life or more meaningful work, that would be something to consider. But in reality, the only result of forcing me to do those things will be higher corporate margins. So, no thanks.

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

#497

Post by giancarlostoro »

lchengify wrote: post #196

Two anecdotes I'll share: First: Most people believe it was Netflix that killed Blockbuster, but that's not strictly correct. It was the combination of Netflix and Redbox that really sealed the deal for Blockbuster (and video rental generally). It normally takes not one, but at least two things to really fill the full functionality of a old paradigm. Also it's human nature to focus heavily on one thing (Blockbuster w…

American Express savings has no physical branches. Heck its not unique to them, there's other banks with no physical branches.

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

#499

Post by giancarlostoro »

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?

How do you deposit a check on a PC? I know on a computer you can just take photos of the front and back, and deposit it.

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

#500

Post by throwawayffffas »

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?

For inexplicable reasons I have found that some operations are only possible through the app. Ok they are not inexplicable, there is the illusion that the App is more secure and thus some high impact stuff is only possible through the app. At least in my bank.
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