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.
ATMs didn't just reduce teller headcount per branch. They changed what tellers do. Before ATMs, tellers were mostly cash handlers. After, the remaining tellers shifted toward relationship banking — account openings, loan discussions, financial advice. The job title survived but the job content was transformed.
The deeper question for AI is whether the same pattern holds when the technology affects cognitive tasks rather than physical ones. ATMs automated a narrow physical routine (dispensing cash), which freed up the human role to emphasize the parts machines couldn't do (relationship judgment, complex problem-solving). AI is different because it targets exactly those higher-order cognitive tasks that humans were "freed up" to do after previous automation waves.
So the real question isn't "will AI create new jobs?" — it probably will. The question is whether the new tasks humans get pushed into will be higher-value (as happened with ATMs making tellers into advisors) or lower-value (humans relegated to tasks AI can't yet do, which tend to be physical, uncomfortable, or poorly paid).
The ATM precedent is optimistic, but the mechanism that made it work — automating the simple task so humans could do the complex one — runs in the wrong direction when the technology specifically targets complex cognitive work.