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Part of this has to do with demographics. We prefer to deal with robots and order stuff on web interfaces. I was talking with my aunt and uncle the other day. T

Part of this has to do with demographics. We prefer to deal with robots and order stuff on web interfaces. I was talking with my aunt and uncle the other day. They were telling me that they prefer to bring their paper checks to the bank and interact with the teller rather than scan it in the app from the comfort of their home. That blew my mind. I think there's a huge age gap when it comes to preference for human vs mechanical interface. Until the older generation dies out these sort of redundant service jobs will exist. As they say, sometimes progress only happens one funeral at a time.

jdietrich 9y ago
Robots aren't going to replace all of the service jobs, but I think they're going to replace more than we might imagine. Over the last 30 years, more than half of bank branches in the UK have closed. Many older customers have been substantially inconvenienced by these closures, but they're on the wrong side of economics. Beyond a certain point, it's just no longer financially viable to keep a branch open. A lot of older people prefer DVDs to online streaming, but good luck finding a rental store in most towns. The social effects may well be very ugly, but I think that most businesses will be quite ruthless about their deployment of automation. They clearly have no qualms about the impact on jobs and I don't think that they'll care if some proportion of their customer base is marginalized.
- nitrogen 9y ago
  There's good reason to prefer a disc over a stream, especially if you use player software that lets you skip the unskippable previews. The audio is better, the bitrate is higher, and you can rip the disc and store it somewhere safe.
ilaksh 9y ago
It's not really human vs mechanical in the teller example despite what they say. They are just keeping their long running habit rather than having to learn how to scan it on their phone which is work and risking that their money will disappear.
- pbhjpbhj 9y ago
  I think you could easily be wrong here. I can self-checkout, or at some supermarkets self-scan (using a handheld scanner), but I chose the human checkout operator. It's partly economic, the supermarket doesn't discount my shop if I do the checkout work myself, so I extract a modicum of their takings towards wages for a local person rather than have it go to shareholder profit. People here need jobs.
  - ilaksh 9y ago
    People do need jobs. I wasn't talking about grocery stores. It was specifically the behavior related to depositing checks. Also there is a difference between a rationalization for a behavior and the actual behavior. Usually the rationale is actually created afterwards. Although certainly some people must have created a deliberate policy to support employment or simply out of preference for human interaction. But my supposition was just about the check depositing. Regardless, keeping people in menial jobs is not optimal for them or for consumers and almost certainly not a policy that will generally persist when more capable AIs are available.
    - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
      >Regardless, keeping people in menial jobs is not optimal for them or for consumers and almost certainly not a policy that will generally persist when more capable AIs are available. // "Keeping" people in menial jobs isn't the issue. When the robot takes over it's because the owner-capitalists can make more profit by cutting the proles out of the loop. It's not the job, it's money to pay for water+food+shelter that's the issue. If rich capitalists are happy to give up their profits to make an equal society with few menial roles then your way s works. There's no evidence that's the case and lots of evidence against it.
- Noos 9y ago
  Keep in mind this requires a smartphone. Some seniors don't have them. They may not even have dumb cell phones. Some don't use computers at all. Some are using the old CRT TV they bought ten years ago because it still works fine. There's a point where your life works fine and you don't particularly need to change it or learn radically new things unless you have no other option at all. In some ways, the old actions have their own benefits. The senior goes to cash her paper check at the bank because it gets her out of the house and in front of people; she saves the money on a cell phone that she doesn't use much because she stays home more than travels at her age. Even with computers...she doesn't feel helpless or at the mercy of technology she doesn't understand. She might even reduce her vulnerability some that way; a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

jdietrich 9y ago

Robots aren't going to replace all of the service jobs, but I think they're going to replace more than we might imagine. Over the last 30 years, more than half of bank branches in the UK have closed. Many older customers have been substantially inconvenienced by these closures, but they're on the wrong side of economics. Beyond a certain point, it's just no longer financially viable to keep a branch open. A lot of older people prefer DVDs to online streaming, but good luck finding a rental store in most towns. The social effects may well be very ugly, but I think that most businesses will be quite ruthless about their deployment of automation. They clearly have no qualms about the impact on jobs and I don't think that they'll care if some proportion of their customer base is marginalized.

nitrogen 9y ago
There's good reason to prefer a disc over a stream, especially if you use player software that lets you skip the unskippable previews. The audio is better, the bitrate is higher, and you can rip the disc and store it somewhere safe.

ilaksh 9y ago

It's not really human vs mechanical in the teller example despite what they say. They are just keeping their long running habit rather than having to learn how to scan it on their phone which is work and risking that their money will disappear.

pbhjpbhj 9y ago
I think you could easily be wrong here. I can self-checkout, or at some supermarkets self-scan (using a handheld scanner), but I chose the human checkout operator. It's partly economic, the supermarket doesn't discount my shop if I do the checkout work myself, so I extract a modicum of their takings towards wages for a local person rather than have it go to shareholder profit. People here need jobs.
- ilaksh 9y ago
  People do need jobs. I wasn't talking about grocery stores. It was specifically the behavior related to depositing checks. Also there is a difference between a rationalization for a behavior and the actual behavior. Usually the rationale is actually created afterwards. Although certainly some people must have created a deliberate policy to support employment or simply out of preference for human interaction. But my supposition was just about the check depositing. Regardless, keeping people in menial jobs is not optimal for them or for consumers and almost certainly not a policy that will generally persist when more capable AIs are available.
  - pbhjpbhj 9y ago
    >Regardless, keeping people in menial jobs is not optimal for them or for consumers and almost certainly not a policy that will generally persist when more capable AIs are available. // "Keeping" people in menial jobs isn't the issue. When the robot takes over it's because the owner-capitalists can make more profit by cutting the proles out of the loop. It's not the job, it's money to pay for water+food+shelter that's the issue. If rich capitalists are happy to give up their profits to make an equal society with few menial roles then your way s works. There's no evidence that's the case and lots of evidence against it.
Noos 9y ago
Keep in mind this requires a smartphone. Some seniors don't have them. They may not even have dumb cell phones. Some don't use computers at all. Some are using the old CRT TV they bought ten years ago because it still works fine. There's a point where your life works fine and you don't particularly need to change it or learn radically new things unless you have no other option at all. In some ways, the old actions have their own benefits. The senior goes to cash her paper check at the bank because it gets her out of the house and in front of people; she saves the money on a cell phone that she doesn't use much because she stays home more than travels at her age. Even with computers...she doesn't feel helpless or at the mercy of technology she doesn't understand. She might even reduce her vulnerability some that way; a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.