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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

#571

Post by cjbgkagh »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #528
cjbgkagh wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I intended to make a weaker claim of ‘in general long run / maintainable’ circumstances and should have done so. Many low cost areas have bad crime problems, there is another little phenomenon where the wealthy by doing a poor job in governance can increase the price of their assets by making alternative assets (lower cost housing) less desirable due to the increase in crime.

Not really the case for much of the midwest. These are low crime areas generally. Working class population is not nearly so rent burdened so less pressure towards making ends meet in other ways. Gang activity is effectively nill unlike placed where you find ms13 written on walls. Homeless people amount to probably a small few dozen visibly homeless if that, and you really need to look to find them.

I gather that such places do exist it would help if you gave an example. When I did travel to middle america there seemed to be a general drug problem and associated thefts. Perhaps there could be a copper theft map which could be used as a proxy for crime.

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

#572

Post by ej88 »

dbspin wrote: post #366
victor106 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Isn't it obvious why? We contact support services to fix material problems. 'This booking is wrong.' 'I want a refund for that.' AI systems aren't empowered to solve these problems. At best they can provide information. If the answer is information - the user can likely already find it online themselves (often from a better AI model than they're going to find running your support line). If they're calling, they most…

This is exactly why customer service is ripe to be decimated by AI agents that can actually interact with systems

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

#573

Post by danans »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #531
danans wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Those are things you start learning in preschool, from other humans. Granted, some never learn.

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

#574

Post by WalterBright »

wwweston wrote: post #568
WalterBright wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US currently has something like 30x the proven oil reserves that Norway does And 60x the population. And defends the world with defense expenditures. > simply a 5% bite out of net worth Once that door is open, there will be no end to it. Washington state enacted a 7% capital gains tax, and the next year raised it to 9.9%. Now they're close to enacting a 9.9% income tax. > My understanding is that estate taxes g…

> And 60x the population. OK, let's assume that oil is the only relevant resource, and population is the other relevant factor, and there's no efficiencies of scale or exceptional American ingenuity that can be discovered. 30x the resources combined with 60 times the population would mean we should be able to provide at least half the floor that Norway does, right? Does that mean if we discover another resource the U…

What's your explanation for why SpaceX, Amazon, Google, Walmart, etc., are American companies, and not Norwegian?

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

#575

Post by fauchletenerum »

heavyset_go wrote: post #445
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.

Wisdom comes from application of knowledge and experience in the real world, as does skill. The value comes from applying an expert's wisdom and skill to the problem at hand. You get neither from LLMs.

This sounds eerily familiar to the naysayers who claimed that no one would ever buy a pair of shoes or a car online in the late 90s/early 2000s.

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

#576

Post by fauchletenerum »

jimbokun wrote: post #240
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.

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?

A robotic surgeon can use the data from the LLM to perform the appropriate surgery for you. Ditto for the automated pharmacy kiosk.

That Harvard degree will be irrelevant since no one will be hiring humans.

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

#577

Post by philistine »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #538
philistine wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn’t know Claude Code could put an IR scanner to my forehead.

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

#578

Post by tuatoru »

Domestic appliances killed domestic service jobs.

Telephones killed messenger-boy jobs.

The automatic telephone exchange killed telephone operator jobs.

Movable-type presses killed the job of scribes despite the huge expansion in book production.

Various farm machines together killed arable farm labour.

The Laserjet and Wang word processor killed typist jobs.

Mainframe computers killed invoicing clerk, general accounting clerk, and inventory control clerk jobs.

We could go on.

In each case, the minor tasks in each job that were not automated were just folded into other jobs.

Focusing on ATMs and claiming no impact is egregious, tendentious cherry-picking. Machines almost always eliminate occupations.

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

#579

Post by tuatoru »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #522

Most responses here are reacting to the specifics of ATMs and bank tellers, but I think the more interesting point, which seems to be the point of the story, is that paradigm shifts (e.g at-home vs at-the-bank banking) can be more disruptive than automation. The interesting question of course is what paradigm shifts may be enabled by AI? Certainly all the use case emphasis so far has been on automation, whether that'…

Domestic appliances were extremely disruptive. (vacuum cleaners, fridges, washing machines, air conditioners, ...) Domestic servants were eliminated. But there was no paradigm shift.

People still live in houses and prepare and store food, and clean their houses and clothes. Minor tasks of domestic servants (making beds, tidying, etc.) were folded in to the job of the homemaker, who was demoted from a supervisory role.

Mainframe computers emptied out accounts departments in large companies, eliminating invoicing clerks, general ledger clerks, stock control clerks, payroll clerks and many more specialised roles. No paradigm shift. Accounting is still accounting.

Typing pools were emptied by the introduction of the Lasrjet printer and the personal computer. Their minor tasks (spell-checking, grammar correction, etc.) were taken over by other people. No paradigm shift, just a task automated.

Telephone operators were eliminated by automatic exchanges (central and customer-premises). No paradigm shift, that came later with digital radio phones ("smartphones"), and didn't cause wholesale job elimination.

The binary distinction between task replacement and paradigm shift is flawed. Reality is much more varied and fluid.

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

#580

Post by alex43578 »

wwweston wrote: post #504
alex43578 wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can easily live a “lower middle class 1980s life” on minimum wage today. Find a 1980s apartment, an early 2000s used car, and don’t bother paying for TV, Starbucks, a cellphone, etc.

The rent on a literal 1980s apartment (let alone SFH mortgage) in every area that I’ve lived in has scaled up faster than average income. This is the trend for essentials. Consumer electronics are cheaper; this is the trend for substitutable goods. Love me the right 20-30 year old car, but the dramatic cost rise around covid times means the savings is only relative to new. A 3x increase in old car prices hasn’t been…

If you want 1980s, you have to go all in. That means you can't live in today's areas which have improved in the 40+ years since the 1980s, but move to areas that are not developed yet or have stagnated - you don't get those improvements, amenities, and job markets/school systems of 2020s at 1980s prices today.

You also aren't buying today's average used car (which has gone up about 50% per CPI numbers, not 300%, since 2020), with a backup camera, blind spot monitoring, side curtain airbags, etc. Hop on FB Marketplace and find the cheapest used car from 2010+ that runs: it's still more fully featured, with better safety and fuel economy than that 1980s car, and likely cheaper in adjusted dollars than 1980s.

What 1980s jobs have been automated away without providing alternatives? Switchboard operator> Call center rep; typist> administrative assistant, video store clerk> regular store clerk, etc.

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