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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

#581

Post by alex43578 »

babypuncher wrote: post #518
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.

this is straight up not even true, and even if it was, you're ignoring the fact that things like cell phone and internet are required to function in modern society.

$10 a month cell phone plan to pay bills and a $50 Android phone easily fits into this budget for essential internet use.

Remember, the OP wants to live a "lower-middle class (1980s)" life, so he doesn't need the latest camera phone, Snapchat, Netflix, and more.

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

#582

Post by generic92034 »

NetMageSCW wrote: post #541
generic92034 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would require several breakthroughs in robotics and AI to automate a nurse's job. And then it would still be unlikely that this kind of automation is saving costs.

Why not - after the first automated robotic nurse it seems unlikely the second one will cost more than raising and educating a human nurse.

For a company the costs of raising and educating humans are only a fraction of their taxes, which they might mostly avoid anyway. The costs of employing a nurse (robotic or human) for a year are much more relevant. And there I am skeptical current robotics can hold a candle to (relative) cheap human labor.

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

#583

Post by mattmaroon »

techblueberry wrote: post #483
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?

ATMs did reduce the need for bank tellers but population and economic growth simply increased the amount of banks faster.

Digital payments accelerated during Covid (prior to that it was uncommon for a business to not take cash, now you see it in a lot of places) and reduced the need to go to a branch.

Banks are often located in high visibility retail areas, many of which have closed or are struggling to get foot traffic these days.

The only difference smartphones make is the ability to deposit checks. Which you could already do at the ATM.

A lot of the people so old they can’t use iPhones or ATMs (ask any bank teller in retail and they’ll tell you they mostly serve seniors) passed away in the last several years.

There are really 500 other ways to skin this cat, and it’s surely a combination of them, but there’s no reason to suspect the iPhone was the straw that broke the camels back. A lot of things happened all at once.

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

#584

Post by hackyhacky »

bigtex88 wrote: post #556
hackyhacky wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone still needs to review and test the code, and if the code is for embedded systems I find it unlikely. I feel like you didn't understand my comment. I am predicting that there is no code to review. You simply ask the AI to do stuff and it does it. Today, for example, you can ask ChatGPT to play chess with you, and it will. You don't need a "chess program," all the rules are built in to the LLM. Same goes for…

So even in your example you still need to have someone to ask the AI to play chess. So there will still be a need for someone somewhere to ask the AI to do something and supervise it or guide it in the right direction.

You've misunderstood my position. My argument is not that "AIs can operate independently and don't need supervision," but rather that "AIs are able or will soon be able to perform complex behaviors directly without having to create traditional software first." The chess example is illustrative because you can play chess with the AI without first asking the AI to implement chess-playing software. This means that software is obsolete, not people.

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

#586

Post by nubg »

aurareturn wrote: post #410
nubg wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example of what a solo founder might now make top dollar on that he previously couldn't?

I think a solo dev can make a $1b company whereas it was impossible before.

Yes I understand but so far I don't know what such a company could look like, or even in what industry it would be.

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

#587

Post by mattmaroon »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #516
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…

I have a hard time believing that Redbox had much of an impact on Blockbuster, and they certainly weren't changing the video rental paradigm. Netflix's original DVD-rental by mail business no doubt ate into Blockbuster's business to some degree, and with their huge inventory was more of a head-on competitor than Redbox which could only offer a vending-machine full of options - the most popular ones. What really kille…

That sounds logical but the timeline doesn’t match up. Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy in 2010. This came after years of decline.

Netflix streaming launched in 2007 and ended 2010 with only 20 million users. (They currently have over 15x that). I was using it from the start, they had barely any content back then, Hulu was pretty new, and that was the entirety of the streaming universe. Netflix’s first major original content, House of Cards, came out in 2013.

Blockbuster peaked in 2004. Redbox was just getting started.

Blockbuster’s fall loves to get shoved into 100 different narratives, none of which match the facts. It was death by 1,000 papercuts. Netflix. Redbox. Cable system technology improving drastically. Cable TV improving drastically (this happened right around the time Blockbuster peaked, great book on how/why called Difficult Men). TV show quality in general improving drastically. The rise of HBO. Poor management. Etc.

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

#589

Post by SergeAx »

whatisthiseven wrote: post #186
paxys wrote: post #35

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…

> 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 that when Chinese factory-cities adapt to tremendous demand, we will see a new digital Renaissance with teraflops of compute in toasters and kettles. And we will laugh at laptops with 8 GB of RAM so hard.

Your compute is someone else's sand.

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

#590

Post by lordnacho »

mullingitover wrote: post #532
lordnacho wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. I…

But it's not clear to me that medical and education are good examples of cost disease?

For instance, technology means cancer is more easily treated that it was in the past.

Education, I'm less sure about. A lot of the tech there is very new, it takes time for evidence to build up.

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