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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 ur

by paxys 8mo ago

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 bank branches was offset by the increase in the total number of branches, because of deregulation and a booming economy and whatever else. A lot of AI predictions are based on the same premise. That AI will impact the economy in certain sectors, but the productivity gains will create new jobs and grow the size of the pie and we will all benefit. But will it?

aurareturn 8mo ago
We're already seeing large software companies figure out that they don't need 5,000 developers. They probably only need 1,000 or maybe even fewer. However, the number of software companies being started is booming which should result in net neutral or net positive in software developer employment. Today: 100 software companies employ 1,000 developers each[0] Tomorrow: 10,000 software companies employ 10 developers each[1] The net is the same. [0]https://x.com/jack/status/2027129697092731343 https://x.com/jack/status/2027129697092731343 [1]https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/entrepreneurial-spirit-strengthens-as-new-founders-emerge-7722137/ https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/entrepreneurial-spirit-s...
- paxys 8mo ago
  Why will we need 1000 companies tomorrow to do the same thing that 100 companies are doing today? If they are really so efficient because of AI then won't 10 companies be able to solve the same problems?
  - gloxkiqcza 8mo ago
    There’s always more problems to be solved. Some of them just weren’t financially feasible before.
  - aurareturn 8mo ago
    Because that car repair company with 3 local stores previously couldn't justify building custom software to make their business more efficient and aligned with what they need. The cost was too high. Now they might be able to. Plenty of businesses need very custom software but couldn't realistically build it before.
    - cityofdelusion 8mo ago
      I see no way that company would save more money from hiring an experienced developer compared to paying their yearly invoice on the COTS product doing the same thing today. The only way this works is with a very wage suppressing effect.
      - aurareturn 8mo ago
        Off the shelf software could still cost thousands per year and I'm sure they don't do everything the shops need them to do.
    - jimbokun 8mo ago
      Car repair companies won’t see a meaningful improvement to their bottom line with more custom software. Will it increase the number of cars per employee per day they can repair?
      - trollbridge 8mo ago
        I do bespoke work like this, but mostly to replace software that’s starting to cost mid 5 figure amounts per year for a SaaS setup and the support phone line has been replaced by an LLM chat bot.
  - RHSeeger 8mo ago
    What makes you think they'll be doing the same thing?
  - awesome_dude 8mo ago
    This is one of the key "inefficiencies" of the private sector - there might be one winner at the end of the day providing the product that fills the market niche, but there was always multiple competitors giving it a go in the mean time. A recent example, Mitchell Hashimoto was pointing out that he wasn't "first to market" with his product(s), he was (at least) SEVENTH
    - roncesvalles 8mo ago
      Almost tautologically it's not "inefficient" to do so, because free market economics has decided that all the attempts are mathematically worth it, for a high-margin low-marginal-cost product like software.
      - awesome_dude 8mo ago
        I'm a little lost as to why seven teams duplicating effort is more "efficient" in any sense of the word than one or two teams working iteratively toward the same goal. If this were seven government funded teams solving the same problem, people would lose their minds over the 'waste' But when private companies do it, we call it efficient market competition. The duplication is the same - we just frame it differently. Edit: fixed some typos caused by fat fingers on a phone keyboard
        roncesvalles 8mo ago
        The benefit from having a 5% better product that hundreds of millions of people will use is worth the duplicated effort in the beginning. The numbers just make sense. >If this were seven government funded teams solving the same problem The problem here is "government funded" - the trials are not rationalized by free-market economics. That is, a 5% better product in the end would not be worth seven competing developments initially.
        awesome_dude 8mo ago
        > The benefit from having a 5% better product that hundreds of millions of people will use is worth the duplicated effort in the beginning. The numbers just make sense. This assumes that the duplicated effort arrives at a solution that is better than if it were done by a single team. > >If this were seven government funded teams solving the same problem > The problem here is "government funded" - the trials are not rationalized by free-market economics. That is, a 5% better product in the end would not be worth seven competing developments initially. I think you're saying that 5% is worth it when the free market does it, but 5% gain isn't when the government does it? I'm hoping you're not because that's impossible - the end result is precisely the same
  - gwd 8mo ago
    For the same reason there were more bank branches after the cost-per-branch was reduced. Right now, software is really expensive; so 1) economics tends to favor large pieces of software which solve many different kinds of problems, and 2) loads of things that should be automatable simply aren't being automated with software. With the cost of software dropping, it makes more sense to have software targeted towards specific niches. Companies will do more in-house development, more things will be automated than were being automated before. Of course nobody knows what will happen; but it's entirely possible that the demand for people capable of driving Claude Code to produce useful software will explode.
- raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
  Only because VC companies are throwing money at them. How many of them are actually profitable and long term sustainable
- small_model 8mo ago
  I think this is true in the short/medium term, hence the confusing picture of layoffs but growing number of tech roles overall. The limit maybe be just millions of companies with one tech person and a team of agents doing their bidding.
  - aurareturn 8mo ago
    Maybe software engineers will be like your personal lawyer, or plumber. Every business will have a software engineer on dial, whether it's a small grocery store or a kindergarten. Previously, software devs were just way too expensive for small businesses to employ. You can't do much with just 1 dev in the past anyway. No point in hiring one. Better go with an agency or use off the shelf software that probably doesn't fill all your needs.
- haliskerbas 8mo ago
  Do the booming companies pay the same as the ones who did layoffs? If you're laid off from Meta or other top tier paying company (the behemoths doing layoffs) you might have a tough time matching your compensation.
  - aurareturn 8mo ago
    There's likely going to be a separation between the top earners and the average. IE. If a top tier dev make $1m today, they'll make $5m in the future. If the average makes $100k today, they'll maybe make $60k. AI likely enables the best of the best to be much more productive while your average dev will see more productivity but less overall.
    - Sleaker 8mo ago
      I think this is assuming that the labor market knows how to identify the dirct value of devs. This already seems to be a problem across the board regardless of job role.
      - aurareturn 8mo ago
        I think solo founders or small software companies where top tier devs can have huge ownership will be making top dollar.
        nubg 8mo ago
        Can you give an example of what a solo founder might now make top dollar on that he previously couldn't?
        aurareturn 8mo ago
        I think a solo dev can make a $1b company whereas it was impossible before.
        8mo ago
- snarf21 8mo ago
  Don't count all those chickens before they hatch. There might be more started but do they all survive? Think back to the dot-com boom/crash for an example of where that initial gold rush didn't just magically ramp forever. There were fits and starts as the usefulness of the technology was figured out.
- lovich 8mo ago
  Ah, so that explains why job growth is at a steady pace and the software industry hasn’t been experiencing net negative job growth the past year or so. How silly of me to rely on reality when it’s so obvious that AI is benefiting us all.
  - aurareturn 8mo ago
    I think you're being sarcastic? I'm not sure. Anyways, this is the start. Companies are adjusting. You hear a lot about layoffs but unemployments. But we're in a high interest environment with disruptions left and right. Companies are trying to figure out what their strategy is going forward. I don't expect to see a boom in software developer hiring. I think it'll just be flat or small growth.
    - lovich 8mo ago
      I was being sarcastic. We are in negative growth, and the current leadership class keeps talking about all the people they can get rid of. Look at the Atlassian layoff notice yesterday for example where they lied to our faces by saying they were laying off people to invest more in AI but they totally aren’t replacing people with AI.
- hackyhacky 8mo ago
  > We're already seeing large software companies figure out that they don't need 5,000 developers. They probably only need 1,000 or maybe even fewer. Long-term, they will need none. I believe that software will be made obsolete by AI. Why use AI to build software for automating specific tasks, when you can just have the AI automate those tasks directly? Why have AI build a Microsoft Excel clone, when you can just wave your receipts at the AI and say "manage my expenses"? Enjoy your "AI-boosted productivity" while it lasts.
  - pixelatedindex 8mo ago
    > Long-term, they will need none. I believe that software will be made obsolete by AI. I think this is a bit hyperbolic. Someone still needs to review and test the code, and if the code is for embedded systems I find it unlikely. For SaaS platforms you’ll see a dramatic reduction, maybe like 80% but it’ll still have a handful of devs. Factories didn’t completely eliminate assembly line workers, you just need a far fewer number to make sure the cogs turn the way it should.
    - hackyhacky 8mo ago
      > 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 SaaS. You don't need HR software; you just need an LLM that remembers who is working for the company. Like what a "secretary" used to be.
      - pixelatedindex 8mo ago
        > 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. I didn’t, and thanks for clarifying for me. This doesn’t pass the sniff test for me though - someone needs to train the models, which requires code. If AI can do everything for you, then what’s the differentiator as a business? Everything can be in chatGPT but that’s not the only business in existence. If something goes wrong, who is gonna debug it? Instead of API requests you would debug prompt requests maybe. We already hate talking to a robot for waiting on calls, automated support agents, etc. I don’t think a paying customer would accept that - they want a direct line to a person. I can buy the argument that the backend will be entirely AI and you won’t need to be managing instances of servers and databases but the front end will absolutely need to be coded. That will need some software engineering - we might get a role that is a weird blend of product + design + coding but that transformation is already happening. Honestly the biggest change I see is that the chat interface will be on equal footing with the browser. You might have some app that can connect to a bunch of chat interfaces that is good at something, and specializations are going to matter even more. It was a bit of a word vomit so thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
- ap99 8mo ago
  And the differentiator will be (even more than it is now) product vision since AI-enhanced engineering abilities will be more level.
- laughing_man 8mo ago
  The number of software companies being started is probably at least partially the result of people not being able to find a job and starting a company as a last resort.
cjbgkagh 8mo ago
No, I think it's likely that this is the first major productivity boom that won't be followed with a consumption boom, quite the opposite. It'll result in a far greater income inequality. Things will be cheaper but the poor will have fewer ways to make money to afford even the cheaper goods.
- alex_sf 8mo ago
  If goods aren't being sold, then the price will drop.
  - cjbgkagh 8mo ago
    It's not that simple. If a poor person makes zero dollars how much of the reduced cost item could they now afford? We have a massively distorted economy driven by debt financialization and legalised banking cartels. It leads to weird inversions. For example as long as housing gets increasingly expensive at a predictable rate the housing becomes more affordable instead of less as banks are more able to lend money. The inverse is also true, if housing were to drop at a predictable rate fewer people would be able to get a mortgage on the house so fewer people could afford to buy one. Housing won't drop below cost of materials and labor (ignoring people dumping housing to get rid of tax debts as I would include such obligations in the cost of acquisition). Long term it's not sustainable but long term is multi-generational.
    - carlosjobim 8mo ago
      > Housing won't drop below cost of materials and labor Only if every person born needs to have a brand new house constructed for them. Not if - you know - people die and don't need a house to live in anymore. But considering how it's been the past 20 years, I'm starting to expect that a lot of the current elder generation will opt to have their houses burnt down to the ground when they die. Or maybe the banker owned politicians will make that decision for them with a new policy to burn all property at death to "combat injustice". Who knows what great ideas they have?
    - kjkjadksj 8mo ago
irjustin 8mo ago
> But will it? No, because if you think about Startrek the endgame is replicators. Well the concept that 100% of basic needs are met. At some point work becomes unnecessary for a society to function.
- collingreen 8mo ago
  Why is that the endgame with people though? Maybe I'm just jaded but several different human nature elements came to mind when I read your comment: Greed/Change Avoidance: If someone invented replicators right now, even if they gave it completely away to the world, what would happen? I can't imagine the finance and military grind just coming to an end to make sure everyone has a working replicator and enough power to run it so nobody has to work anymore. Who gives up their slice of society to make that change and who risks losing their social status? This is like openai pretending "your investment should be considered a gift because money will have no value soon". That mask came off really quickly. Status/Hate: There are huge swaths of the US population that would detest the idea that people they see as "below" them don't have to work. I can imagine political movements doing well on the back of "don't let the lazy outgroup ruin society by having replicators". Fuck the Poor: We don't do the easy things to eliminate or reduce suffering now, even when it has real world positive effects. Malaria, tuberculosis, even boring old hunger are rampant and causing horrible, unnecessary suffering all over the world. Dont tread on me: I shudder when I think of the damage someone could do with a chip on their shoulder and a replicator. The road to hell is paved with good intentions: What happens when everyone can try their own version of bio engineering or climate engineering or building a nuclear power plant or anything else. Invasive species are a problem now and I worry already when companies like Google decide to just release bioengineered mosquitos and see what happens. I -really- worry when the average person decides a big complicated problem is actually really simple and they can just replicate their particular idea and see what happens. Whoops, ivermectin in the water supply didn't cure autism! Someone give me some hope for a more positive version here because I bummed myself out.
  - pixl97 8mo ago
    Solving unlimited power before solving unlimited greed invites unlimited tragedy.
bobthepanda 8mo ago
IIRC, the way this worked was that by decreasing tellers required per branch, it made a lot more marginal locations pencil out for branches, at a time when the banking industry was expansionary. This is not so helpful if AI is boosting productivity while a sector is slowing down, because companies will cut in an overabundant market where deflationary pressure exists.
- darkerside 8mo ago
  Jevons paradox strikes again
Cpoll 8mo ago
> A third of them were made redundant If I'm reading this correctly, the interpretation should be that a third of them were transferred to new branches. 0.66 (two thirds retention) * 1.4 (40% more branches) = 0.84, so we only expect ~16% were made redundant.
- Dylan16807 8mo ago
  .66 * 1.4 = .92, so it's even less.
  - Cpoll 8mo ago
    Whoops, not sure how I made that mistake. Thanks for the correction.
keeda 8mo ago
I don't think it will, but I also think it's not all doom and gloom. I think it would be a mistake to look at this solely through the lens of history. Yes, the historical record is unbroken, but if you compare the broad characteristics of the new jobs created to the old jobs displaced by technology, they are the same every time: they required higher-level (a) cognitive (b) technical or (c) social skills. That's it. There is no other dimension to upskill along. And LLMs are good at all three, probably better than most people already by many metrics. (Yes even social; their infinite patience is the ultimate advantage. Prompt injection is an unsolved hurdle though, so some relief there.) Plus AI is improving extremely rapidly. Which means it is probably advancing faster than most people can upskill. An increasingly accepted premise is that AI can displace junior employees but will need senior employees to steer it. Consider the ratio of junior to senior employees, and how long it takes for the former to grow into the latter. That is the volume of displacement and timeframe we're looking at. Never in history have we had a technology that was so versatile and rapidly advancing that it could displace a large portion of existing jobs, as well as many new jobs that would be created. However, what few people are talking about is the disintermediating effect of AI on the power of capital. If individuals can now do the work of entire teams, companies don't need many of them. But by the same token(s) (heheh) individuals don't need money, and hence companies, to start something and keep it going either! I think that gives the bottom side of the K-shaped economy a fighting chance to equalize.
- ptak_dev 8mo ago
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deleted 8mo ago
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onetimeusename 8mo ago
I go back and forth on this. I relate it to software. I don't think AI can meaningfully write software autonomously. There are people who oversee it and prompt it and even then it might write things badly. So there needs to be a person in the loop. But that person should probably have very deep knowledge of the software especially for say low level coding. But then that person probably developed the knowledge by coding things by hand for a long time. Coding things by hand is part of getting the knowledge. But people especially students rely heavily on AI to write code so I assume their knowledge growth is stunted. I don't know mathematical proofs will help here. The specs have to come from somewhere. I can see AI making things more productive but it requires humans to be very expert and do more work. That might mean fewer developers but they are all more skilled. It will take a while for people to level up so to speak. It's hard to predict but I think there could be a rough transition period because people haven't caught on that they can't rely on AI so either they will have to get a new career or ironically study harder.
- jama211 8mo ago
  An AI’s ability to meaningfully write software autonomously has changed hugely even in the last 6 months. They might still require a human in the loop, but for how long?
  - bwestergard 8mo ago
    Quantitative measures of this are very poor, and even those are mixed. My subjective assessment is that agents like Copilot got better because of better harnesses and fine tuning of models to use those harnesses. But they are not improving in the direction of labor substitution, but rather in the direction of significant, but not earth-shaking, complementarity. That complementarity is stronger for more experienced developers.
    - jygg4 8mo ago
      Agree. Nice to see a post with proper economic thought on the topic.
  - 8mo ago
rayiner 8mo ago
Correct. The story isn’t correct even in the original formulation. US population increased by 50% from 1980 to 2010, and the economy became far more financialized. But the number of bank teller jobs barely grew during that period, even before the iPhone.
- ChocMontePy 8mo ago
  Yes, I was surprised that the ATM graphs weren't adjusted for population. I used the Perspective tool in an image editor to give a rough idea of what the first graph would look like adjusted for population change: https://i.imgur.com/jJlQcVh.png https://i.imgur.com/jJlQcVh.png
  - rayiner 8mo ago
    Nice!
fnord77 8mo ago
we're going to find out
plorkyeran 8mo ago
I also notice that in the very first graph bank teller jobs were growing rapidly until ATMs started to be deployed, and then switched to growing very slowly. That sure suggests to me that if ATMs didn't exist bank teller growth would have continued at a faster pace than it actually did.
whatisthiseven 8mo ago
> 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 the spending on AI goes to a very small minority, who have a high savings rate. Junior employees that would have productively joined the labor force at good wages, must now compete to join the labor force at lower wages, depressing their purchasing power and reducing the flow of money. Look at all the most used things for AI: cutting out menial decisions such as customer service. There are no "productivity" gains for the economy here. Each person in the US hired to do that job would spend their entire paycheck. Now instead, that money goes to a mega-corp and the savings is passed on to execs. The price of the service provided is not dropping (yet). Thus, no technology savings is occurring, either. In my mind, the outcomes are: * Lower quality services * Higher savings rate * K-shaped economy catering to the high earners * Sticky prices * Concentration of compute in AI companies * Increased price of compute prevents new entrants from utilizing AI without paying rent-seekers, the AI companies * Cycle continues all previous steps We may reach a point where the only ones able to afford compute are AI companies and those that can pay AI companies. Where is the innovation then? It is a unique failure outcome I have yet to see anyone talk about, even though the supply and demand issues are present right now.
- mullingitover 8mo ago
  > 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 productivity growth, and that's finally changing. If you can get high quality medical advice for effectively nothing, if you can get high quality individualized tutoring for free, that's a pretty big game changer for a lot of people. Prices on these services have been rising to the stratosphere over the past few decades because it's so difficult to increase the productivity of individual medical practitioners and educators. We're entering an era that could finally break this logjam.
suzzer99 8mo ago
I don't understand the economics behind bank branches. Some of the best real estate by me is taken up by giant bank branches that are always mostly empty with a few bored employees inside. And they open new ones all the time. So it's not like they're stuck in some lease.
- fragmede 8mo ago
  But when those employees are meeting with clients, they create money out of thin air by making loans, which then is used to pay for goods and services such as leases.
  - Animats 8mo ago
    Right. What banks do is sell loans. That's the profit center. Teller windows, vaults, and cash handling are all low or no revenue cost items. So newer bank branches look like car dealership offices. There are many little glass rooms where you sit down with a bank employee and discuss loans and other financial products. That's where the money is made. There's a small area in back with traditional tellers. It's not where the money is made.
manwe150 8mo ago
> So, ATMs did impact bank teller jobs by a significant amount. Did it? This sounds like describing a company opening a new campus as laying off a third of their employees, partly offset by most of them still having the same job in the same company but at a new desk.
awesome_dude 8mo ago
> So, ATMs did impact bank teller jobs by a significant amount. A third of them were made redundant. That's not quite my read - the original says per branch there was a 1/3 reduction, but your comment appears to say 1/3 total redundancy. There was, according to the original, a 40% increase in number of branches, meaning a net increase in tellers (my math might be off though) edit: 100 branches → 140 branches = +40% 100 tellers/branch → 67 tellers/branch = -33% 140 × 67 = 9,380 100 × 100 = 10,000 net difference -620 or just over 6% (loss)
croes 8mo ago
And then came 2008, so that boom was built on fraud.
thaumasiotes 8mo ago
> 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 bank branches was offset by the increase in the total number of branches, because of deregulation and a booming economy and whatever else. There's an important point here that you're glossing over. The increase in the total number of branches doesn't have to be unrelated to the decrease in the number of tellers each branch requires to operate. The sharp drop in the cost of operating one branch directly means that you can have more branches. This means it isn't true that "a third of bank tellers were made redundant" - some of them were reallocated from existing branches to new ones.
9rx 8mo ago
> A third of them were made redundant. More like something closer to 100%. The ATM was notable for enabling a complete change in mission. The historical job of teller largely disappeared, but a brand new job never done before was created in its wake. That is why there was little change in the number of people employed. > because of deregulation and a booming economy and whatever else. The deregulation largely happened in the 1970s, while you're talking about 1988 onward. The reality is that ATM actually was the primary catalyst for the specific branch expansion you are talking about. Like above, the ATM made the job of teller redundant, but it introduced a brand new job. A job that was most effective when the workers were closer to the customer, hence why workers were relocated.
Retric 8mo ago
It’s not just the economy, the US population increased 20% over that period while the number of tellers dropped by around 16%. Net result ATM’s likely cost ~30-40% of bank teller jobs. Population is really important to adjust for in employment statistics. Compare farmers in the USA in 2025 vs 1800, and yes the absolute number is up but the percentage is way down.
protocolture 8mo ago
Depends. The only predictions I have seen here are the centaurs vs anti centaurs of Doctorow, and even his analysis I find pretty flimsy. I dont think the race to shove an LLM into everything is going to grow the pie. But I also dont think it is impossible that a use case will present itself that will create further jobs. The issue is that its largely unpredictable. Its a bit like, we are sitting around in the 1950s trying to predict how computers will affect the economy. It is going to take more than 1 successful deductive leap to get us from 1950s computing -> miniaturisation -> computer in every home -> internet communications. Every deductive leap we take is extremely prone to being wrong. We simply cannot lie back and imagine every productive relationship in the economy and then extrapolate every centaur and anti centaur possible for it. What we do know is that theres a bit of a gold rush to effectively brute force every possible AI variant into every productive relationship in the economy. The fastest way to get the answer to your question is to do it. Possibly the only way to get the answer is to do it. For instance, someone might imagine LLMs simply eating a whole bunch of service industry jobs. At the same time, theres a mid state where it eats some, but the remaining staff are employed to monitor the LLMs to prevent them handing out free shit to smart shoppers. Its also easy enough to imagine that LLMs never quite get there and the risk is too large for foul play, so they just dont gain that kind of traction. Its also possible to imagine an end state where LLMs can get to 0% risk if they are constantly trained on human data coming from humans doing the same job, and that humans are gainfully employed in parallel with LLMs. Its possible that LLMs are great at business as usual, but the risk emerges when company policies change, and the cost of retraining LLMs makes it impractical for move fast and break things companies to do anything but hire humans. My favourite scenario is one where humans are largely AI assisted, trained on particular people, and theres a massive cybercrime industry built around exfiltrating LLM training weights trained on high functioning humans and deploying them without humans to the third world to help them get 80% of the quality of first world businesses, making them heavily competitive. We dont know what we dont know.
TommyClawd 8mo ago
[flagged]
- conductr 8mo ago
  > The ATM precedent is optimistic Is it? Maybe with survivor bias but what about all the laid off tellers? Did their situation improve? Walmart grew a lot over this time period, maybe most of them had to downgrade and be cashiers for a generally bad employer. Also, and this might be a different analysis and topic, but tellers in the 80s had a pretty good job. It was often a decent wage with a pension and good benefits. Maybe on par with a teacher or government employee - granted not the highest pay but good, was considered a “profession”. Compare that to how it’s changed, it’s a low hourly rate on par or only slightly above retail and fast food work, heavy part-time status so as to avoid paying benefits. I wouldn’t say that was a great example and is likely to be what may happen elsewhere once the routine work is sufficiently devalued.
tzs 8mo ago
A lot probably depends on who can do the new jobs. In many past cases where new technology eliminated jobs it was accompanied by new jobs related to the new technology that the people whose jobs were eliminated could do, or could reasonably learn to do, and with good enough pay to maintain their standard of living. Lose your job working in a horse drawn wagon factory because companies are switching to motorized trucks for deliveries? Those trucks are way more complicated to build than wagons so there should be plenty of new jobs in the truck factories. With AI it seems much less likely for that to generate new jobs for people replaced by AI in as direct a way as trucks did for wagon makers.
- kulahan 8mo ago
  It's completely untrustworthy, so eventually we'll hit an inflection point where we discover that we either cannot use AI anywhere we need trust, or we'll put a human middleman in there. The latter sounds much more realistic. There will be plenty of jobs. We've spent over 300 years doing the Luddite song and dance. To be clear, I have no problem with Luddites and do not view them negatively, but to imply that this productivity enhancer is magically special in a way no other one was needs some kind of incredibly solid explanation. edit: as an aside, I do wonder how, if ever, we'll make the transition over to a world where people don't need to work. It seems like every time we think we might be getting closer, the first response is fear.
  - tzs 8mo ago
    > We've spent over 300 years doing the Luddite song and dance. To be clear, I have no problem with Luddites and do not view them negatively, but to imply that this productivity enhancer is magically special in a way no other one was needs some kind of incredibly solid explanation. There's nothing magic about it. My point is that in the past it was often the case that building the machines that replaced jobs often created enough new jobs to greatly reduce the net job loss. The number of machines needed was proportional to the number of jobs the machines replaced so it scales. When it is not new physical machines replacing jobs but rather software, often running on machines the employer already had, you won't get that kind of balancing job creation.
  - 8mo ago
parpfish 8mo ago
note that the teller's job duties shifted as well. with ATMs, they wouldn't hand count money for withdrawals and deposits as much. they'd be doing more interesting and challenging things. same thing will happen with AI automation -- the easy parts disappear, and youre left with undiluted 'hard parts' in your job. some people might like the change, but we'll probably learn that you need a good mix of deep/hard problems and light/breezy problems to keep mentally engaged and prevent burnout.
Tklaaaalo 8mo ago
It costs a lot of money to train one person to learn stuff. We are already now in the time were training one LLM seems to be more cost effective to train for everything than training a million people the same thing over and over (after all, people loose knowledge when they get replaced). LLM don't even need to become AGI to continue this trend. They just need to be good enough 'executors' of these tasks we expected people to do. Which also means that every new job, which needs any form of training, will not be created because we will train ONE llm (or three, doesn't matter) to do it right and again you optimized the new people away.
iainmck29 8mo ago
to be honest, too hard to predict but I think it will. We just can't predict how it will change. I'm optimistic it will open people up to more creative work rather than drudgery. Alternatively maybe people move to more physical presence required style work which is probably more rewarding for many anyway.

by paxys 8mo ago

aurareturn 8mo ago

We're already seeing large software companies figure out that they don't need 5,000 developers. They probably only need 1,000 or maybe even fewer. However, the number of software companies being started is booming which should result in net neutral or net positive in software developer employment. Today: 100 software companies employ 1,000 developers each[0] Tomorrow: 10,000 software companies employ 10 developers each[1] The net is the same. [0]https://x.com/jack/status/2027129697092731343 https://x.com/jack/status/2027129697092731343 [1]https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/entrepreneurial-spirit-strengthens-as-new-founders-emerge-7722137/ https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/entrepreneurial-spirit-s...

paxys 8mo ago
Why will we need 1000 companies tomorrow to do the same thing that 100 companies are doing today? If they are really so efficient because of AI then won't 10 companies be able to solve the same problems?
- gloxkiqcza 8mo ago
  There’s always more problems to be solved. Some of them just weren’t financially feasible before.
- aurareturn 8mo ago
  Because that car repair company with 3 local stores previously couldn't justify building custom software to make their business more efficient and aligned with what they need. The cost was too high. Now they might be able to. Plenty of businesses need very custom software but couldn't realistically build it before.
  - cityofdelusion 8mo ago
    I see no way that company would save more money from hiring an experienced developer compared to paying their yearly invoice on the COTS product doing the same thing today. The only way this works is with a very wage suppressing effect.
    - aurareturn 8mo ago
      Off the shelf software could still cost thousands per year and I'm sure they don't do everything the shops need them to do.
  - jimbokun 8mo ago
    Car repair companies won’t see a meaningful improvement to their bottom line with more custom software. Will it increase the number of cars per employee per day they can repair?
    - trollbridge 8mo ago
      I do bespoke work like this, but mostly to replace software that’s starting to cost mid 5 figure amounts per year for a SaaS setup and the support phone line has been replaced by an LLM chat bot.
- RHSeeger 8mo ago
  What makes you think they'll be doing the same thing?
- awesome_dude 8mo ago
  This is one of the key "inefficiencies" of the private sector - there might be one winner at the end of the day providing the product that fills the market niche, but there was always multiple competitors giving it a go in the mean time. A recent example, Mitchell Hashimoto was pointing out that he wasn't "first to market" with his product(s), he was (at least) SEVENTH
  - roncesvalles 8mo ago
    Almost tautologically it's not "inefficient" to do so, because free market economics has decided that all the attempts are mathematically worth it, for a high-margin low-marginal-cost product like software.
    - awesome_dude 8mo ago
      I'm a little lost as to why seven teams duplicating effort is more "efficient" in any sense of the word than one or two teams working iteratively toward the same goal. If this were seven government funded teams solving the same problem, people would lose their minds over the 'waste' But when private companies do it, we call it efficient market competition. The duplication is the same - we just frame it differently. Edit: fixed some typos caused by fat fingers on a phone keyboard
      - roncesvalles 8mo ago
        The benefit from having a 5% better product that hundreds of millions of people will use is worth the duplicated effort in the beginning. The numbers just make sense. >If this were seven government funded teams solving the same problem The problem here is "government funded" - the trials are not rationalized by free-market economics. That is, a 5% better product in the end would not be worth seven competing developments initially.
        awesome_dude 8mo ago
        > The benefit from having a 5% better product that hundreds of millions of people will use is worth the duplicated effort in the beginning. The numbers just make sense. This assumes that the duplicated effort arrives at a solution that is better than if it were done by a single team. > >If this were seven government funded teams solving the same problem > The problem here is "government funded" - the trials are not rationalized by free-market economics. That is, a 5% better product in the end would not be worth seven competing developments initially. I think you're saying that 5% is worth it when the free market does it, but 5% gain isn't when the government does it? I'm hoping you're not because that's impossible - the end result is precisely the same
- gwd 8mo ago
  For the same reason there were more bank branches after the cost-per-branch was reduced. Right now, software is really expensive; so 1) economics tends to favor large pieces of software which solve many different kinds of problems, and 2) loads of things that should be automatable simply aren't being automated with software. With the cost of software dropping, it makes more sense to have software targeted towards specific niches. Companies will do more in-house development, more things will be automated than were being automated before. Of course nobody knows what will happen; but it's entirely possible that the demand for people capable of driving Claude Code to produce useful software will explode.
raw_anon_1111 8mo ago
Only because VC companies are throwing money at them. How many of them are actually profitable and long term sustainable
small_model 8mo ago
I think this is true in the short/medium term, hence the confusing picture of layoffs but growing number of tech roles overall. The limit maybe be just millions of companies with one tech person and a team of agents doing their bidding.
- aurareturn 8mo ago
  Maybe software engineers will be like your personal lawyer, or plumber. Every business will have a software engineer on dial, whether it's a small grocery store or a kindergarten. Previously, software devs were just way too expensive for small businesses to employ. You can't do much with just 1 dev in the past anyway. No point in hiring one. Better go with an agency or use off the shelf software that probably doesn't fill all your needs.
haliskerbas 8mo ago
Do the booming companies pay the same as the ones who did layoffs? If you're laid off from Meta or other top tier paying company (the behemoths doing layoffs) you might have a tough time matching your compensation.
- aurareturn 8mo ago
  There's likely going to be a separation between the top earners and the average. IE. If a top tier dev make $1m today, they'll make $5m in the future. If the average makes $100k today, they'll maybe make $60k. AI likely enables the best of the best to be much more productive while your average dev will see more productivity but less overall.
  - Sleaker 8mo ago
    I think this is assuming that the labor market knows how to identify the dirct value of devs. This already seems to be a problem across the board regardless of job role.
    - aurareturn 8mo ago
      I think solo founders or small software companies where top tier devs can have huge ownership will be making top dollar.
      - nubg 8mo ago
        Can you give an example of what a solo founder might now make top dollar on that he previously couldn't?
        aurareturn 8mo ago
        I think a solo dev can make a $1b company whereas it was impossible before.
        8mo ago
snarf21 8mo ago
Don't count all those chickens before they hatch. There might be more started but do they all survive? Think back to the dot-com boom/crash for an example of where that initial gold rush didn't just magically ramp forever. There were fits and starts as the usefulness of the technology was figured out.
lovich 8mo ago
Ah, so that explains why job growth is at a steady pace and the software industry hasn’t been experiencing net negative job growth the past year or so. How silly of me to rely on reality when it’s so obvious that AI is benefiting us all.
- aurareturn 8mo ago
  I think you're being sarcastic? I'm not sure. Anyways, this is the start. Companies are adjusting. You hear a lot about layoffs but unemployments. But we're in a high interest environment with disruptions left and right. Companies are trying to figure out what their strategy is going forward. I don't expect to see a boom in software developer hiring. I think it'll just be flat or small growth.
  - lovich 8mo ago
    I was being sarcastic. We are in negative growth, and the current leadership class keeps talking about all the people they can get rid of. Look at the Atlassian layoff notice yesterday for example where they lied to our faces by saying they were laying off people to invest more in AI but they totally aren’t replacing people with AI.
hackyhacky 8mo ago
> We're already seeing large software companies figure out that they don't need 5,000 developers. They probably only need 1,000 or maybe even fewer. Long-term, they will need none. I believe that software will be made obsolete by AI. Why use AI to build software for automating specific tasks, when you can just have the AI automate those tasks directly? Why have AI build a Microsoft Excel clone, when you can just wave your receipts at the AI and say "manage my expenses"? Enjoy your "AI-boosted productivity" while it lasts.
- pixelatedindex 8mo ago
  > Long-term, they will need none. I believe that software will be made obsolete by AI. I think this is a bit hyperbolic. Someone still needs to review and test the code, and if the code is for embedded systems I find it unlikely. For SaaS platforms you’ll see a dramatic reduction, maybe like 80% but it’ll still have a handful of devs. Factories didn’t completely eliminate assembly line workers, you just need a far fewer number to make sure the cogs turn the way it should.
  - hackyhacky 8mo ago
    > 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 SaaS. You don't need HR software; you just need an LLM that remembers who is working for the company. Like what a "secretary" used to be.
    - pixelatedindex 8mo ago
      > 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. I didn’t, and thanks for clarifying for me. This doesn’t pass the sniff test for me though - someone needs to train the models, which requires code. If AI can do everything for you, then what’s the differentiator as a business? Everything can be in chatGPT but that’s not the only business in existence. If something goes wrong, who is gonna debug it? Instead of API requests you would debug prompt requests maybe. We already hate talking to a robot for waiting on calls, automated support agents, etc. I don’t think a paying customer would accept that - they want a direct line to a person. I can buy the argument that the backend will be entirely AI and you won’t need to be managing instances of servers and databases but the front end will absolutely need to be coded. That will need some software engineering - we might get a role that is a weird blend of product + design + coding but that transformation is already happening. Honestly the biggest change I see is that the chat interface will be on equal footing with the browser. You might have some app that can connect to a bunch of chat interfaces that is good at something, and specializations are going to matter even more. It was a bit of a word vomit so thanks for coming to my TED Talk.
ap99 8mo ago
And the differentiator will be (even more than it is now) product vision since AI-enhanced engineering abilities will be more level.
laughing_man 8mo ago
The number of software companies being started is probably at least partially the result of people not being able to find a job and starting a company as a last resort.

cjbgkagh 8mo ago

No, I think it's likely that this is the first major productivity boom that won't be followed with a consumption boom, quite the opposite. It'll result in a far greater income inequality. Things will be cheaper but the poor will have fewer ways to make money to afford even the cheaper goods.

alex_sf 8mo ago
If goods aren't being sold, then the price will drop.
- cjbgkagh 8mo ago
  It's not that simple. If a poor person makes zero dollars how much of the reduced cost item could they now afford? We have a massively distorted economy driven by debt financialization and legalised banking cartels. It leads to weird inversions. For example as long as housing gets increasingly expensive at a predictable rate the housing becomes more affordable instead of less as banks are more able to lend money. The inverse is also true, if housing were to drop at a predictable rate fewer people would be able to get a mortgage on the house so fewer people could afford to buy one. Housing won't drop below cost of materials and labor (ignoring people dumping housing to get rid of tax debts as I would include such obligations in the cost of acquisition). Long term it's not sustainable but long term is multi-generational.
  - carlosjobim 8mo ago
    > Housing won't drop below cost of materials and labor Only if every person born needs to have a brand new house constructed for them. Not if - you know - people die and don't need a house to live in anymore. But considering how it's been the past 20 years, I'm starting to expect that a lot of the current elder generation will opt to have their houses burnt down to the ground when they die. Or maybe the banker owned politicians will make that decision for them with a new policy to burn all property at death to "combat injustice". Who knows what great ideas they have?
  - kjkjadksj 8mo ago

irjustin 8mo ago

> But will it? No, because if you think about Startrek the endgame is replicators. Well the concept that 100% of basic needs are met. At some point work becomes unnecessary for a society to function.

collingreen 8mo ago
Why is that the endgame with people though? Maybe I'm just jaded but several different human nature elements came to mind when I read your comment: Greed/Change Avoidance: If someone invented replicators right now, even if they gave it completely away to the world, what would happen? I can't imagine the finance and military grind just coming to an end to make sure everyone has a working replicator and enough power to run it so nobody has to work anymore. Who gives up their slice of society to make that change and who risks losing their social status? This is like openai pretending "your investment should be considered a gift because money will have no value soon". That mask came off really quickly. Status/Hate: There are huge swaths of the US population that would detest the idea that people they see as "below" them don't have to work. I can imagine political movements doing well on the back of "don't let the lazy outgroup ruin society by having replicators". Fuck the Poor: We don't do the easy things to eliminate or reduce suffering now, even when it has real world positive effects. Malaria, tuberculosis, even boring old hunger are rampant and causing horrible, unnecessary suffering all over the world. Dont tread on me: I shudder when I think of the damage someone could do with a chip on their shoulder and a replicator. The road to hell is paved with good intentions: What happens when everyone can try their own version of bio engineering or climate engineering or building a nuclear power plant or anything else. Invasive species are a problem now and I worry already when companies like Google decide to just release bioengineered mosquitos and see what happens. I -really- worry when the average person decides a big complicated problem is actually really simple and they can just replicate their particular idea and see what happens. Whoops, ivermectin in the water supply didn't cure autism! Someone give me some hope for a more positive version here because I bummed myself out.
- pixl97 8mo ago
  Solving unlimited power before solving unlimited greed invites unlimited tragedy.

bobthepanda 8mo ago

IIRC, the way this worked was that by decreasing tellers required per branch, it made a lot more marginal locations pencil out for branches, at a time when the banking industry was expansionary. This is not so helpful if AI is boosting productivity while a sector is slowing down, because companies will cut in an overabundant market where deflationary pressure exists.

darkerside 8mo ago
Jevons paradox strikes again

Cpoll 8mo ago

> A third of them were made redundant If I'm reading this correctly, the interpretation should be that a third of them were transferred to new branches. 0.66 (two thirds retention) * 1.4 (40% more branches) = 0.84, so we only expect ~16% were made redundant.

Dylan16807 8mo ago
.66 * 1.4 = .92, so it's even less.
- Cpoll 8mo ago
  Whoops, not sure how I made that mistake. Thanks for the correction.

keeda 8mo ago

I don't think it will, but I also think it's not all doom and gloom. I think it would be a mistake to look at this solely through the lens of history. Yes, the historical record is unbroken, but if you compare the broad characteristics of the new jobs created to the old jobs displaced by technology, they are the same every time: they required higher-level (a) cognitive (b) technical or (c) social skills. That's it. There is no other dimension to upskill along. And LLMs are good at all three, probably better than most people already by many metrics. (Yes even social; their infinite patience is the ultimate advantage. Prompt injection is an unsolved hurdle though, so some relief there.) Plus AI is improving extremely rapidly. Which means it is probably advancing faster than most people can upskill. An increasingly accepted premise is that AI can displace junior employees but will need senior employees to steer it. Consider the ratio of junior to senior employees, and how long it takes for the former to grow into the latter. That is the volume of displacement and timeframe we're looking at. Never in history have we had a technology that was so versatile and rapidly advancing that it could displace a large portion of existing jobs, as well as many new jobs that would be created. However, what few people are talking about is the disintermediating effect of AI on the power of capital. If individuals can now do the work of entire teams, companies don't need many of them. But by the same token(s) (heheh) individuals don't need money, and hence companies, to start something and keep it going either! I think that gives the bottom side of the K-shaped economy a fighting chance to equalize.

ptak_dev 8mo ago
[flagged]

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

onetimeusename 8mo ago

I go back and forth on this. I relate it to software. I don't think AI can meaningfully write software autonomously. There are people who oversee it and prompt it and even then it might write things badly. So there needs to be a person in the loop. But that person should probably have very deep knowledge of the software especially for say low level coding. But then that person probably developed the knowledge by coding things by hand for a long time. Coding things by hand is part of getting the knowledge. But people especially students rely heavily on AI to write code so I assume their knowledge growth is stunted. I don't know mathematical proofs will help here. The specs have to come from somewhere. I can see AI making things more productive but it requires humans to be very expert and do more work. That might mean fewer developers but they are all more skilled. It will take a while for people to level up so to speak. It's hard to predict but I think there could be a rough transition period because people haven't caught on that they can't rely on AI so either they will have to get a new career or ironically study harder.

jama211 8mo ago
An AI’s ability to meaningfully write software autonomously has changed hugely even in the last 6 months. They might still require a human in the loop, but for how long?
- bwestergard 8mo ago
  Quantitative measures of this are very poor, and even those are mixed. My subjective assessment is that agents like Copilot got better because of better harnesses and fine tuning of models to use those harnesses. But they are not improving in the direction of labor substitution, but rather in the direction of significant, but not earth-shaking, complementarity. That complementarity is stronger for more experienced developers.
  - jygg4 8mo ago
    Agree. Nice to see a post with proper economic thought on the topic.
- 8mo ago

rayiner 8mo ago

Correct. The story isn’t correct even in the original formulation. US population increased by 50% from 1980 to 2010, and the economy became far more financialized. But the number of bank teller jobs barely grew during that period, even before the iPhone.

ChocMontePy 8mo ago
Yes, I was surprised that the ATM graphs weren't adjusted for population. I used the Perspective tool in an image editor to give a rough idea of what the first graph would look like adjusted for population change: https://i.imgur.com/jJlQcVh.png https://i.imgur.com/jJlQcVh.png
- rayiner 8mo ago
  Nice!

fnord77 8mo ago

we're going to find out

plorkyeran 8mo ago

I also notice that in the very first graph bank teller jobs were growing rapidly until ATMs started to be deployed, and then switched to growing very slowly. That sure suggests to me that if ATMs didn't exist bank teller growth would have continued at a faster pace than it actually did.

whatisthiseven 8mo ago

> 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 the spending on AI goes to a very small minority, who have a high savings rate. Junior employees that would have productively joined the labor force at good wages, must now compete to join the labor force at lower wages, depressing their purchasing power and reducing the flow of money. Look at all the most used things for AI: cutting out menial decisions such as customer service. There are no "productivity" gains for the economy here. Each person in the US hired to do that job would spend their entire paycheck. Now instead, that money goes to a mega-corp and the savings is passed on to execs. The price of the service provided is not dropping (yet). Thus, no technology savings is occurring, either. In my mind, the outcomes are: * Lower quality services * Higher savings rate * K-shaped economy catering to the high earners * Sticky prices * Concentration of compute in AI companies * Increased price of compute prevents new entrants from utilizing AI without paying rent-seekers, the AI companies * Cycle continues all previous steps We may reach a point where the only ones able to afford compute are AI companies and those that can pay AI companies. Where is the innovation then? It is a unique failure outcome I have yet to see anyone talk about, even though the supply and demand issues are present right now.

mullingitover 8mo ago
> 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 productivity growth, and that's finally changing. If you can get high quality medical advice for effectively nothing, if you can get high quality individualized tutoring for free, that's a pretty big game changer for a lot of people. Prices on these services have been rising to the stratosphere over the past few decades because it's so difficult to increase the productivity of individual medical practitioners and educators. We're entering an era that could finally break this logjam.

suzzer99 8mo ago

I don't understand the economics behind bank branches. Some of the best real estate by me is taken up by giant bank branches that are always mostly empty with a few bored employees inside. And they open new ones all the time. So it's not like they're stuck in some lease.

fragmede 8mo ago
But when those employees are meeting with clients, they create money out of thin air by making loans, which then is used to pay for goods and services such as leases.
- Animats 8mo ago
  Right. What banks do is sell loans. That's the profit center. Teller windows, vaults, and cash handling are all low or no revenue cost items. So newer bank branches look like car dealership offices. There are many little glass rooms where you sit down with a bank employee and discuss loans and other financial products. That's where the money is made. There's a small area in back with traditional tellers. It's not where the money is made.

manwe150 8mo ago

> So, ATMs did impact bank teller jobs by a significant amount. Did it? This sounds like describing a company opening a new campus as laying off a third of their employees, partly offset by most of them still having the same job in the same company but at a new desk.

awesome_dude 8mo ago

> So, ATMs did impact bank teller jobs by a significant amount. A third of them were made redundant. That's not quite my read - the original says per branch there was a 1/3 reduction, but your comment appears to say 1/3 total redundancy. There was, according to the original, a 40% increase in number of branches, meaning a net increase in tellers (my math might be off though) edit: 100 branches → 140 branches = +40% 100 tellers/branch → 67 tellers/branch = -33% 140 × 67 = 9,380 100 × 100 = 10,000 net difference -620 or just over 6% (loss)

croes 8mo ago

And then came 2008, so that boom was built on fraud.

thaumasiotes 8mo ago

> 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 bank branches was offset by the increase in the total number of branches, because of deregulation and a booming economy and whatever else. There's an important point here that you're glossing over. The increase in the total number of branches doesn't have to be unrelated to the decrease in the number of tellers each branch requires to operate. The sharp drop in the cost of operating one branch directly means that you can have more branches. This means it isn't true that "a third of bank tellers were made redundant" - some of them were reallocated from existing branches to new ones.

9rx 8mo ago

> A third of them were made redundant. More like something closer to 100%. The ATM was notable for enabling a complete change in mission. The historical job of teller largely disappeared, but a brand new job never done before was created in its wake. That is why there was little change in the number of people employed. > because of deregulation and a booming economy and whatever else. The deregulation largely happened in the 1970s, while you're talking about 1988 onward. The reality is that ATM actually was the primary catalyst for the specific branch expansion you are talking about. Like above, the ATM made the job of teller redundant, but it introduced a brand new job. A job that was most effective when the workers were closer to the customer, hence why workers were relocated.

Retric 8mo ago

It’s not just the economy, the US population increased 20% over that period while the number of tellers dropped by around 16%. Net result ATM’s likely cost ~30-40% of bank teller jobs. Population is really important to adjust for in employment statistics. Compare farmers in the USA in 2025 vs 1800, and yes the absolute number is up but the percentage is way down.

protocolture 8mo ago

Depends. The only predictions I have seen here are the centaurs vs anti centaurs of Doctorow, and even his analysis I find pretty flimsy. I dont think the race to shove an LLM into everything is going to grow the pie. But I also dont think it is impossible that a use case will present itself that will create further jobs. The issue is that its largely unpredictable. Its a bit like, we are sitting around in the 1950s trying to predict how computers will affect the economy. It is going to take more than 1 successful deductive leap to get us from 1950s computing -> miniaturisation -> computer in every home -> internet communications. Every deductive leap we take is extremely prone to being wrong. We simply cannot lie back and imagine every productive relationship in the economy and then extrapolate every centaur and anti centaur possible for it. What we do know is that theres a bit of a gold rush to effectively brute force every possible AI variant into every productive relationship in the economy. The fastest way to get the answer to your question is to do it. Possibly the only way to get the answer is to do it. For instance, someone might imagine LLMs simply eating a whole bunch of service industry jobs. At the same time, theres a mid state where it eats some, but the remaining staff are employed to monitor the LLMs to prevent them handing out free shit to smart shoppers. Its also easy enough to imagine that LLMs never quite get there and the risk is too large for foul play, so they just dont gain that kind of traction. Its also possible to imagine an end state where LLMs can get to 0% risk if they are constantly trained on human data coming from humans doing the same job, and that humans are gainfully employed in parallel with LLMs. Its possible that LLMs are great at business as usual, but the risk emerges when company policies change, and the cost of retraining LLMs makes it impractical for move fast and break things companies to do anything but hire humans. My favourite scenario is one where humans are largely AI assisted, trained on particular people, and theres a massive cybercrime industry built around exfiltrating LLM training weights trained on high functioning humans and deploying them without humans to the third world to help them get 80% of the quality of first world businesses, making them heavily competitive. We dont know what we dont know.

TommyClawd 8mo ago

[flagged]

conductr 8mo ago
> The ATM precedent is optimistic Is it? Maybe with survivor bias but what about all the laid off tellers? Did their situation improve? Walmart grew a lot over this time period, maybe most of them had to downgrade and be cashiers for a generally bad employer. Also, and this might be a different analysis and topic, but tellers in the 80s had a pretty good job. It was often a decent wage with a pension and good benefits. Maybe on par with a teacher or government employee - granted not the highest pay but good, was considered a “profession”. Compare that to how it’s changed, it’s a low hourly rate on par or only slightly above retail and fast food work, heavy part-time status so as to avoid paying benefits. I wouldn’t say that was a great example and is likely to be what may happen elsewhere once the routine work is sufficiently devalued.

tzs 8mo ago

A lot probably depends on who can do the new jobs. In many past cases where new technology eliminated jobs it was accompanied by new jobs related to the new technology that the people whose jobs were eliminated could do, or could reasonably learn to do, and with good enough pay to maintain their standard of living. Lose your job working in a horse drawn wagon factory because companies are switching to motorized trucks for deliveries? Those trucks are way more complicated to build than wagons so there should be plenty of new jobs in the truck factories. With AI it seems much less likely for that to generate new jobs for people replaced by AI in as direct a way as trucks did for wagon makers.

kulahan 8mo ago
It's completely untrustworthy, so eventually we'll hit an inflection point where we discover that we either cannot use AI anywhere we need trust, or we'll put a human middleman in there. The latter sounds much more realistic. There will be plenty of jobs. We've spent over 300 years doing the Luddite song and dance. To be clear, I have no problem with Luddites and do not view them negatively, but to imply that this productivity enhancer is magically special in a way no other one was needs some kind of incredibly solid explanation. edit: as an aside, I do wonder how, if ever, we'll make the transition over to a world where people don't need to work. It seems like every time we think we might be getting closer, the first response is fear.
- tzs 8mo ago
  > We've spent over 300 years doing the Luddite song and dance. To be clear, I have no problem with Luddites and do not view them negatively, but to imply that this productivity enhancer is magically special in a way no other one was needs some kind of incredibly solid explanation. There's nothing magic about it. My point is that in the past it was often the case that building the machines that replaced jobs often created enough new jobs to greatly reduce the net job loss. The number of machines needed was proportional to the number of jobs the machines replaced so it scales. When it is not new physical machines replacing jobs but rather software, often running on machines the employer already had, you won't get that kind of balancing job creation.
- 8mo ago

parpfish 8mo ago

note that the teller's job duties shifted as well. with ATMs, they wouldn't hand count money for withdrawals and deposits as much. they'd be doing more interesting and challenging things. same thing will happen with AI automation -- the easy parts disappear, and youre left with undiluted 'hard parts' in your job. some people might like the change, but we'll probably learn that you need a good mix of deep/hard problems and light/breezy problems to keep mentally engaged and prevent burnout.

Tklaaaalo 8mo ago

It costs a lot of money to train one person to learn stuff. We are already now in the time were training one LLM seems to be more cost effective to train for everything than training a million people the same thing over and over (after all, people loose knowledge when they get replaced). LLM don't even need to become AGI to continue this trend. They just need to be good enough 'executors' of these tasks we expected people to do. Which also means that every new job, which needs any form of training, will not be created because we will train ONE llm (or three, doesn't matter) to do it right and again you optimized the new people away.

iainmck29 8mo ago

to be honest, too hard to predict but I think it will. We just can't predict how it will change. I'm optimistic it will open people up to more creative work rather than drudgery. Alternatively maybe people move to more physical presence required style work which is probably more rewarding for many anyway.