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Comment by bobthepanda | Hacker News Reader

> To date, automation has consistently removed lower skilled jobs and replaced them with higher skilled ones.

I think that an equally likely outcome is that of the ATM. After the introduction of the ATM, the number of bank tellers in the US actually increased. Why? Because ATMs didn't completely eliminate the need for bank tellers, they just automated a lot of their most mundane tasks. However, ATMs did reduce the amount of tellers needed to operate a branch, which made it cheaper to open new branches. So in the end, the elimination of positions at existing branches was dwarfed by all the positions created at new bank branches that now could be operated profitably.

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> After the introduction of the ATM, the number of bank tellers in the US actually increased

Weird, why that would happen?!... I don't think that's a common outcome elsewhere...

In Northern Europe, for example, there's almost no bank branches left now... they've been closing down for years and now it's actually hard to find any branch that's open to the public (this started with ATMs but now it's mostly a result of the cashless economy and online banking).

The US bank market is (was?) highly competitive, the US still uses a lot of cash and checks, you can generally only deposit at ATMs for your bank, and non-bank ATMs have very high fees. So it becomes a distinct advantage to have more locations for customers, because it makes banking with your bank more convenient.

The bank I use has very few branches, from what I can tell. They let me deposit checks by mail or with a smart phone and they refund all of my off-network ATM fees, I guess with the money they're saving by not operating physical branches.

You can do that with a check but you can't really take smartphone pictures or use mail to deposit cash. I have an online bank account but I do maintain a checking account with a traditional US bank for this reason.

This is true, and my bank does have one branch in my city I can go to if I ever had to deposit cash. In actuality, though, I rarely receive large sums of cash and any cash I do get I usually just spend (thus avoiding having even to visit an atm to get more cash as I commonly have to). The end result is that I haven't been inside a bank in at least 5 years.

> ATMs didn't completely eliminate the need for bank tellers, they just automated a lot of their most mundane tasks.

That looks suspiciously similar to the process of raising the skill floor that I referred to. The simpler parts of the job were relegated to a machine while the more complicated bits remained. My point is that there are inherent limits to such a process. What happened historically (including the ATM example) ceases to be relevant once such a limit is reached.

Relevant quote: "Instead of shooting where I was, you should have shot at where I was going to be." -Lrrr (to Fry)

(In the ATM example, it's specifically the bits that require vision, situational awareness, and human level conversational capabilities that were retained by the human. All things that cutting edge ML is making very visible progress on. I implore you to take a serious look at the state of cutting edge ML research with such tasks in mind.)

That's incorrect. The level of skill and automation potential aren't related. For instance healthcare is a hugely growing market with a lot of low skilled opportunities requiring human interaction.

What kind of jobs are those?

In my country, except janitors and people working cafeteria, pretty much any job in healthcare requires some kind of degree (exception is taking care of old folks in private homes, but even those require a substancial amount of staff with some kind of schooling in it)

Theatre support worker would be one example of a healthcare role that doesn't require a degree. This is in the context of the UK NHS. I'm unsure if an equivalent role is common within the healthcare systems of other countries.

Don't ODPs need to have a degree in England?

https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/allied-health...

Yes, ODP is a role which requires more qualifications. It's a separate role from theatre support worker.

https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/wider-healthc...

> The level of skill and automation potential aren't related.

I never claimed they were? I said that when a job is automated away, any that replace it inevitably require a higher skill level. Thus the skill floor rises over time.

> requiring human interaction

That's the key. That's a specific task that we can't (yet) automate.

Does it raise the skill floor? The actual job requirements of bank teller have not significantly changed; you always needed to be a basic functioning human being WRT "vision, situational awareness, and human level conversational capabilities"

The skill floor I'm referring to is across the entire market, not a single job. I didn't claim that the skill required in that particular example had changed at all. Rather, I pointed out that the underlying process taking place there appeared consistent with the broader trend of the skill floor rising.

My claim is that once we're able to automate away that job entirely, any that appear to replace it will almost invariably require a higher skill level.

I think that example just emphasises Reelin's point. Perhaps there was a temporary effect of more tellers, but now they've been entirely replaced with software - to the point there are many Internet only banks with no physical branches - and bank branches are closing down all over.

But now it seem to me, to work in a bank or any other office job, you need a degree from university. Whereas before, these jobs required a high school diploma and maybe some training.

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