They Don’t Sass the Boss
Or have affairs or ask for a raise or get sick or take time off to tend to their children’s problems. What more could an employer ask for?
Upon arrival, Usher Robot welcomes customers to the restaurant and directs them to the seating area. Patrons can then place their order, which is relayed by humans to one of the four the robot chefs who are able to cook various styles of dumplings and noodles. The robot chefs even determine the temperature and ingredients for each dish and usually take about 3 minutes to prepare the average order. These robot chefs are no slouches either. The kitchen staff is able to prepare a menu of over 30 dishes ― perfect for a family dinner.
This mechanized kitchen is certainly a harbinger of what is to come in the future robotically though I’m not sure I would trust a hunk of metal and circuitry over the prowess of an experienced chef and a tongue full of taste-buds.
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An innovation like this could have several effects on the economy if its use became widespread.
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First, I think there would be fewer less-skilled jobs available for those without college educations if robots were to replace the expanse of service jobs in the food and beverage industry.
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Second, while significant job loss would occur for those less-skilled workers, new job growth would be experienced in the industries supporting the mass of digitry needed to pull off this feat. Manufacturing would recieve a boost from making the robots but the real job growth could be experienced for college-educated technicians and robotics specialists. The demand for support staff could drive the economy.
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In the aggregate, these two facts combined point to this new restaurant idea as a source of Schumpeterian Creative Destruction, a dynamic desperately needed in an economy searching for newness.
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Ultimately, this idea could only ever succeed if the robot’s service and delivered food rivaled the attentiveness and taste provided by their human rivals. Personally, I think I’ll prefer higher prices and human interaction but there might just be a market for this idea…
Provide competition between robots and humans? Inevitably, I believe robots will take away jobs humans nowadays perform and I don’t think we can stop that with the way we embrace technology as a means to make our lives easier. But, will that lead to competition between the robotics manufacturers and people who traditionally performed those jobs? Or will society accept to train themselves for more technical jobs, such as helping assemble/engineering these machines? I would enjoy reading this comment thirty years from now and hopefully able to answer these questions.
The article says that the restaurant isn’t profitable, it’s just a marketing scheme.
This is awesome!! However, could you ever really compare the job performed by robots with that performed by humans?
I saw a video on this. It is so awesome! They should have one in Dallas!