Blog says: ATM didn't kill jobs. Okay, it did kill some jobs. Proportionally did, but lots of new banks means overall more jobs. (The relationship management stuff is kind of irrelevant, it was simply the banks took the efficiencies to expand, thus still less tellers per branch, but more tellers overall.) /Completely different technology that didn't have the physical space limitations of ATMs/ then caused branches to decline and then the actual teller decline was felt.
Pretty funny how this is being twisted into what feels like AI booster shillery. Smart people are talking about AI as being similar to ATMs (I prefer the analogy of a spelling and grammar checker in a word processor) or other marginal increasers in human productivity/efficiency. They absolutely will increase productivity. They mean less people can do more. But the the roles don't go away completely because they have clear technological limitations. They spout probably likely text, and straight up lie, and you can't trust 'em. That's a limitation in what they are just like an ATM needs to be in a big metal box and they only dispense cash.
AI can't do the automated firm linked to (to be fair, didn't read that linked substack, as it looked as ridiculous as that other sci-fi fanfic by Citroni Research or whatever it was). Not AI as it is now known, namely an LLM chatbot. /A completely different technology/ might. A technology that might be informed by AI. Sure. Just like I'm sure mobile banking was informed by the technology in ATMs. But we're not calling smartphones with mobile banking apps "mobile ATMs". Because if we were, then you could get away with it. And the future technology that could remove "labor shaped holes" (or however the author phrased it) could be twisted into an AI nomenclature. Just like Machine Learning (ML) got twisted into AI nomenclature. But the iPhone probably didn't need the ATM to come first. It needed things the ATM uses. The next thing could very well use ML. But not enough to be called "AI" except to boosters shills.
Overall, this sounds like the usual AI boosterism that Ed Zitron complains about often. And I agree with his critiques. This article says nothing about how a /new/ technology needs to come about from AI. If it did, it would also have to comment on whether we need to spend insane amounts on data centers and circular deals to get to it. Because my guess is the answer is, no, it takes R&D and a truthful "we don't know what it looks like yet and we can't promise you shareholders when it will come" to get to it.
Ironically the author says the ATM story was used to come up with two incorrect interpretations, and then provides what I feel like was another. Still interesting, if possibly irresponsible in how it frames AI as iPhone--and not the ATM it still feels like. [EDIT: a word.]
I feel sad for you that are actually humans and are saying negative things against this extremely well written post.
Perhaps you are doing it out of cognitive dissonance that you could be a baddie too. Perhaps you have lost the ability to read long form, it's certainly not encouraged any more. Perhaps doing it because you are being paid to shill a narrative (I still feel bad for you).
And for those of you that are bots saying these things, I probably feel bad for the ones who programmed you.
And I feel bad for us all that it is now almost impossible to know who is human, what is paid for, and what is real discourse.
I do not think the original post was propaganda. I think this was just someone who cares and wrote something because she wanted people to care. I applaud the author. I feel good knowing that something like this got written and read and shared.
Could it be that I am wrong in my assessment that this is excellently written and negative assessments are unfounded? I could be, but I wanted to add my assessment to the fray. I identify as human and not paid to write this comment, btw.
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Anonymity of users: validating someone's real-life identity sufficiently would make it possible to permanently ban malicious individuals and filter out bots with good effectiveness, but it will destroy anonymity online. In my opinion, literally untenable.
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What about zero knowledge proofs? Those with typical cryptocurrency wallets could leverage existing extensions. Everyone else can download an open source extension that sends the proof and an open source way to verify proofs but is unrelated to cryptocurrency. While a robustly decentralized chain like Bitcoin and Ethereum would be a good place to verify proofs, no reason a non-cryptocurrency solution can't also be avaliable as well for the cryptocurrency adverse. And for the tech adverse, a phone number to call/text to walk the person through sending the proof via phone that would cost a tiny bit--and could also help the tech adverse with setting up an extension going forward?
As I mourn today, I am trying to post this again, this time as its own thread. I posted this without the Silicon Valley impromptu subtitle on the Show HN October thread, so the trolley never really left the station.
Repeating what I put then, with an update:
Inspired by three people, so I tried to find three fitting ways to let people know this story exists.
1: On a website currently showing deep-fake propaganda to support a fascist (felt a bit icky posting there) (UPDATE: and succeeding to buy an election!).
2: On a dapp/chain that is the premiere place to lose money on s*coins (as a sh*coin itself, but at least I'm not going to call it collateral as a pretense for fraud).
3: Here, where they actually managed to get rid of someone (who later proved himself un-rid-able elsewhere).
Inspired by three people, so I tried to find three fitting ways to let people know this story exists. 1: On a website currently showing deep-fake propaganda to support a fascist (felt a bit icky posting there). 2: On a dapp/chain that is the premiere place to lose money on sh*coins (as a sh*coin itself, but at least I'm not going to call it collateral as a pretense for fraud). 3: Here, where they actually managed to get rid of someone (who later proved himself un-rid-able elsewhere).
Pretty funny how this is being twisted into what feels like AI booster shillery. Smart people are talking about AI as being similar to ATMs (I prefer the analogy of a spelling and grammar checker in a word processor) or other marginal increasers in human productivity/efficiency. They absolutely will increase productivity. They mean less people can do more. But the the roles don't go away completely because they have clear technological limitations. They spout probably likely text, and straight up lie, and you can't trust 'em. That's a limitation in what they are just like an ATM needs to be in a big metal box and they only dispense cash.
AI can't do the automated firm linked to (to be fair, didn't read that linked substack, as it looked as ridiculous as that other sci-fi fanfic by Citroni Research or whatever it was). Not AI as it is now known, namely an LLM chatbot. /A completely different technology/ might. A technology that might be informed by AI. Sure. Just like I'm sure mobile banking was informed by the technology in ATMs. But we're not calling smartphones with mobile banking apps "mobile ATMs". Because if we were, then you could get away with it. And the future technology that could remove "labor shaped holes" (or however the author phrased it) could be twisted into an AI nomenclature. Just like Machine Learning (ML) got twisted into AI nomenclature. But the iPhone probably didn't need the ATM to come first. It needed things the ATM uses. The next thing could very well use ML. But not enough to be called "AI" except to boosters shills.
Overall, this sounds like the usual AI boosterism that Ed Zitron complains about often. And I agree with his critiques. This article says nothing about how a /new/ technology needs to come about from AI. If it did, it would also have to comment on whether we need to spend insane amounts on data centers and circular deals to get to it. Because my guess is the answer is, no, it takes R&D and a truthful "we don't know what it looks like yet and we can't promise you shareholders when it will come" to get to it.
Ironically the author says the ATM story was used to come up with two incorrect interpretations, and then provides what I feel like was another. Still interesting, if possibly irresponsible in how it frames AI as iPhone--and not the ATM it still feels like. [EDIT: a word.]