---
title: "When the technology makes the existing service model in a business more efficient"
url: https://sam-page.com/thinking/when-the-technology-makes-the-existing-service-model-in-a-business-more-efficien
date: 2026-06-16
author: Sam Page
type: Post or article
categories: [Emerging tech and AI]
reading_time: 2 min
summary: "When the technology makes the existing service model in a business more efficient, employment grows. When technology lets people do the work themselves at home, demand for the service…"
first_published: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn%3Ali%3Ashare%3A7472572070275608576
---

# When the technology makes the existing service model in a business more efficient

When the technology makes the existing service model in a business more efficient, employment grows. When technology lets people do the work themselves at home, demand for the service collapses.

![](https://sam-page.com/img/thinking/when-the-technology-makes-the-existing-service-model-in-a-business-mor-li1.webp)

This is a really interesting trend, surfaced in an FT article, that I'd not fully considered before. And there are countless examples.

ATM machines actually increased bank branches and bank workers. Banking apps that allow you to manage finances at home has reduced them.

Washing machines when they became available at home, nearly killed of laundrettes entirely.

In the future, AI will extend this world. If you can ask an AI agent why your over is broken, it's likely there will need to be less oven fixing businesses.

The caveat being, people need to be able to efficiently, reliably and safely use the technology at home for this to work.

Where AI currently is, this often isn't the case - it's just not quite good enough yet. For example complex building and programming projects and scenarios that need a very wide context window such as planning a detailed holiday.

AI will get better at these type of complex tasks, but there is a long way to go.

The shift in itself becomes an economic problem though. Capitalism has been built on shifting work from the household, into a company, and the company in turn being paid for this, creating jobs and so on.

Will AI reverse this trend? Or will all the income simply go to the companies operating the AI? Meta / Google / OpenAI / Anthropic are certainly betting on the latter.

Post credit: FT: By shifting work to the consumer, AI will usher in a self-service economy, Carl Benedikt Frey