A new post from me.

There’s a famous story in economics about how ATMs, literally “automated teller machines,” didn’t actually automate the teller. People like to use it to illustrate how technology can complement labor, rather than displace it.

The problem is that another technology actually did replace the bank teller right after: and that technology was the iPhone. And the story of why iPhones killed bank teller jobs while ATMs did not has lots of implications for thinking about job loss from AI.

Please enjoy!