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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

#531

Post by NetMageSCW »

danans wrote: post #407
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.

> Is the value in the outcome of receiving medical advice and care, and becoming educated, Absorbing information doesn't make you "educated". Learning how to employ knowledge with accountability and trust with beings in the real world is what's important, and a machine can't teach you how to do that. > or is the value just in the co-opting of another human being's attention? Why is it "co-opting" if it involves a mut…

Neither does traditional human interacting education - those are things you learn in your first jobs in the real world, regardless of how you were educated.

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

#532

Post by mullingitover »

lordnacho wrote: post #364
forgotaccount3 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

The musical performance example is just one example. The general problem of services being resistant to increased productivity, however, is not restricted to this somewhat unique case. That's why I pointed to medical advice and education: when I need a medical consult or personalized tutoring, I don't specifically care if I have to lock down irreplaceable moments of another human being's life in order receive them.

It's misguided to focus on one special case of the cost disease problem where human by definition must provide the services, when most of the time this is not the case.

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

#533

Post by NetMageSCW »

duskdozer wrote: post #469
TeMPOraL wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very true for healthcare (especially mental healthcare) and education today as well, because for most people, the choice isn't LLM vs. human attention - it's LLM vs. no access at all .

It's not like that's an inherently unsolvable problem without using LLMs

Teacher shortages and increasing tuition costs say it practically is.

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

#534

Post by Steppphennn »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #497
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.

Cash App is probably the biggest. I was surprised how many gen z people I talked to say they use cash app for everything from direct deposit to their tax returns.

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

#535

Post by idop »

pwagland wrote: post #486
idop wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the revealed preference is that people would rather fill their own gas tank

MOST people, not ALL. Smaller markets can still be profitable and useful markets. Most people prefer to pay less and cook their own food, but some people prefer to pay more and have lunch delivered to them. That market is doing quite well despite the fact that pretty much everybody can just stick something in the microwave. There are endless more examples.

> doing a somewhat meaningful job

Who decides what's "meaningful" and what isn't?

> 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.

SOME of the times, you're right, but not ALL of the times. People (most often via unions) aren't resisting automation because they're excited about moving to a "more meaningful job" or because they hate progress. They're resisting because in modern society they MUST have a job, and if they spent the past two decades working as cashiers in supermarkets, their ability to find "more meaningful jobs" at this stage in their lives is extremely limited, and chances are they're gonna have to take a pay cut. Progress cannot come with higher unemployment and poverty rates. If that means low income, less meaningful jobs remain, so be it.

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

#536

Post by NetMageSCW »

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.

My Watch tells me I need to stand up and walk around and that I should do some more exercise or walk further than normal today.

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

#537

Post by NetMageSCW »

bumby wrote: post #398
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…

> If you can get high quality medical advice for effectively nothing 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.

It is definitely too early to expect AI medical advice to be usable (except in very limited instances) but the question is how long and how far will that change? After all, human doctors don’t do so well with new or under documented or rare conditions (consider the history of alpha-gal allergy or lyme disease sufferers even now).

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

#538

Post by NetMageSCW »

philistine wrote: post #487
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 didn’t know Claude Code could put a thermometer in my butt.

No human doctor needs to do that either - today, they just IR scan your temple or forehead. In a dedicated medical environment, there’s no reason that couldn’t automatic be fed into the AI.

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

#539

Post by NetMageSCW »

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…

So what do you think of Linux or OSS / GPL software?

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

#540

Post by NetMageSCW »

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…

As someone who has an automated drive-thru Bojangle’s nearby, I would say the AI is always immediately available, understands better, feels out the conforming order screen in real time, and generally results in my order being placed correctly.
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