Does Technology Make More Jobs than it Takes?

Automation and ATMs are topics of this episode of The AI Minute. For more on Artificial Intelligence: https://voicesinai.com https://gigaom.com https://byronreese.com https://amzn.to/2vgENbn... Transcript: Question, are there more bank tellers today in the US than there were before the invention of the ATM? Surprisingly the answer is, yes, in spite of the fact that the ATM stands for automatic teller machine, and it came along among widespread prediction that it would eliminate the job of bank teller. And yet there are more tellers today. What's going on there? ATMs it turned out lowered the cost for banks to open more branches. Therefor banks opened more and each of those needed some number of tellers. Thus we end up with more bank tellers and more bank branches. Of course it always doesn't work that way does it? Farming would be a case where we clearly lost net jobs. There are less farmers today than there were 50 years, 100 years, and so forth. There are less switchboard operators, but the important thing to note is that the calculation is never as straightforward as it might seem at first glance. As technology lowers the cost of items, it frees up money that consumers and businesses spend elsewhere which creates new jobs. This is the basic dynamic that has kept us near full employment for a very long time. http://bit.ly/30UcSw7 gigaom May 29, 2019 at 04:35PM