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Robots Are Already Replacing Fast-Food Workers (recode.net)
An anonymous reader quotes Recode:
Technology that replaces food service workers is already here. Sushi restaurants have been using machines to roll rice in nori for years, an otherwise monotonous and time-consuming task. The company Suzuka has robots that help assemble thousands of pieces of sushi an hour. In Mountain View, California, the startup Zume is trying to disrupt pizza with a pie-making machine. In Shanghai, there's a robot that makes ramen, and some cruise ships now mix drinks with bartending machines.
More directly to the heart of American fast-food cuisine, Momentum Machines, a restaurant concept with a robot that can supposedly flip hundreds of burgers an hour, applied for a building permit in San Francisco and started listing job openings this January, reported Eater. Then there's Eatsa, the automat restaurant where no human interaction is necessary, which has locations popping up across California.
More directly to the heart of American fast-food cuisine, Momentum Machines, a restaurant concept with a robot that can supposedly flip hundreds of burgers an hour, applied for a building permit in San Francisco and started listing job openings this January, reported Eater. Then there's Eatsa, the automat restaurant where no human interaction is necessary, which has locations popping up across California.
I can't wait for the day robots replace the Slashdot "editors". Maybe the comments can be written by robots too to get rid of ass-hats like me.
Damnit.
The elimination of all unskilled workers from the lowest to the highest levels. Reaffirms the idea that work will be optional in the future, and that the economy needs somethings like a universal basic income. Technology has done wonders. Now it's time for everyone to benefit from it.
These are garbage repetitive jobs, they should be automated. Sucks about the people that did this for a living, but maybe they could get a skill set that's harder to automate.
Is there a machine that washes the dishes? That would be news.
I noticed that the local McD's has a beverage filler at the drive-through station which is an oval track holding 10 or so beverage cups, which proceed through what looks like a partially automated filling line.
But this is really a progression rather than any new thing. We don't stop to think that the washing machine, the dish washer, and the answering machine took away a good many women's jobs.
Bruce Perens.
Pies are pastry.
Pizza is bread.
There's really nothing more too it.
You have simply never heard of savory pies. Pizza is one. Pies need not be sweet.
Bruce Perens.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ...sad that idiocracy may eventually be viewed as a documentary.
Someone had to do it.
With human element out of the picture food could be more consistently made and no food contamination cause by human laziness and error. Current kitchens are designed for humans to operate but I could see more of a vending machine kitchens replacing all that. I can't wait for vending machine pizza or ramen.
This kind of tech has been around since the invention of the multifunction hot beverage machine. It grinds beans, steeps coffee, blends creamer and such to the users specification. theres not much special about extending this to fast food. mcdonalds has had pilot instances of french fry machines for more than a decade now.
the trouble with these machines comes when capitalism rears its ugly head. hot beverage machines become brake-dust dispensers as the drive for profit leads to borderline rancid beans sourced from auction in a 50lb hopper. in the 21st century i cant think of a single person that would stuff 60 cents into one of these and expect a decent cup of black coffee (the arguable standard by which such a machine is judged to make other beverages.) Pretty soon ingredients like cheese are replaced with cheese topping, and other ingredients become dehydrated synonyms of their original embodiment. Automation of fast food is an excellent idea, so long as silicon valley understands that doing so further enables companies to cut costs and corners, ultimately delivering a mediocre product from an almost bankrupt franchise. McDonalds is the meat-space embodiment of this capitalism-until-death model, with kiosks to place orders and automatic fry droppers and ten pound caulk guns filled with toppings shipped four thousand miles across the country. Maybe companies will realize customers dont embrace automation if the machine is flipping garbage, but the continued existence of the 'hot beverage' machine in my companies breakroom seems to suggest companies dont give a shit what customers want in an automated form factor.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The answer: rank robots by capabilities, tax them as virtural workers, pay proceeds into Social Security system
I for one welcome our new robotic overlords!
Bring on the Pizza!!
Luckily all the high-school dropouts flipping burgers can just go to college and get a degree in liberal arts. Problem solved! They've lived so frugally over the years they surely must have enough money saved up to pay for that plus kids/rent while unemployed.
Oh wait, no, maybe the solution is raising minimum wage? Oh, that'll accelerate automation you say? Hmm.
Institutional unemployment is best paid for institutionally (free education) or else the problems will be paid institutionally anyway (crime, poverty, social welfare programs.) I knew someone who never went to high school because her broke parents were too poor to afford the $50/year fee; if that fee were waived, that $200 would've paid for itself many times over in reduced social welfare costs.
As an increasing number of people are shuffled into a decreasing number of jobs, it'll lead to wage depression. Higher productivity will lower costs of goods and services to offset this somewhat, but lowered job security and making more people unemployable is a more serious price paid. The only winners here are those who own the means of production. Publicly available replicators or central planning are potential solutions. Nationalized real estate + basic income could work as well.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Who will have the money to buy fast food, iPhones, cars, movie tickets, etc? This sort of thing contributes to the decline of the economy, to the betterment of the company's shareholders...
It's amazing how an idea can affect us! The push to increase the Minimum Wage causes those businesses that need a low minimum wage to innovate. And the technology sector (that is, /.'s readers) is innovating. We /.-ers may want a higher minimum wage but we are systemically creating and refining technology to displace minimum wage workers even before the minimum wage is raised. We should be ashamed of ourselves!
Actually, how funny the prideful superiority the average /.-ers display and the hypocrisy in manufacturing and distributing the actual opposite of their stated desire. How Funny! We are AssHats of the First Order!
Place few of these machines in the most impoverished corners of this world. Instant gratification, the end of hunger and world peace with hundreds of burgers an hour, endlessly churning out of the back of the machine. It would be like resurrected Ilmarinen would have engineered the Sampo again, powered by an internal Jesus-core. Really.
If I'm going to patronize a business in meatspace, I expect the experience to include at least one interaction with... meat (as in, an employee). This is part of the social contract that goes back to the beginning of commerce.
As such, I detest self-checkout because as a customer I should not be expected to perform employee's duties without compensation.
Likewise I plan to boycott fully automated restaurants. Wendy's and McDonald's have already begun to automate, so no more of them for me.
I can see a backlash to this approach. The capitalist class will say: We purchased these robots and they are ours. If you tax them, we'll shut down the business and go find something else to exploit. What they don't realize is if they build enough of these robotic based businesses, there will be nobody left to come.
Apt comparison to a FORD (Fix or Repair Daily) :)
plan B make jail / prison cost so much that UBI is cheaper. When people just start going in and out of the system just to get room and board then UBI looks like a better thing to do.
The folks with all the money realized a few decades ago: there's just too many people (as other than prostitutes and bodyguards, we don't need them anymore due to off-shoring, computerization and automation).
But rolling the cattle trucks is a bit too on the nose, so let's go with Permanent War, sugar-based industrialized food, set them at each others' throats with race and religion-based hatreds, choke-off competent and well-funded primary education, and what the hell, add in the idea that vaccines are a bad idea.
I've been in a few Jackinthebox restaurants that have a touchscreen order taking system, you touch what you want, insert your card, and voila!! food appears by a human in a couple of minutes... I gather with all of the b.s. about a $15 min wage, these will become MUCH more common.....
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
Who pays for the UBI? Corporations? Nope, they pay $0 on their taxes. People who actually work? Income tax just means people will just use more schemes to have their income not seen by the IRS. BitCoin or other coins come to mind. Sales tax? People will just buy their shit in Mexico and import it here.
I'm sorry, but the dole has failed everywhere it has been tried. The fault of this isn't automation, but unwillingness of people working to get used to new concepts and learn new things. If textile making doesn't do it, learn something else. Buggy whip makers turned into veterinarians or mechanics. It is no wonder why businesses have moved to Japan in the 1990s, then China and India in recent years.
The UBI isn't going to happen. Most likely, here in the US, we will return to a laissez faire form of government, with some new company taking the Pinkertons role in keeping law and order.
the solution will be forced chemical castration of the populace in order to recieve public service benefits. Only the wealthy (and their vassals) will be allowed to procreate, and the general populace will slowly be forced into squalor, selling their souls for not even enough food or healthcare to keep themselves alive. Eventually you will have the elites living in walled gardens with their essentially slave vassals who everyone on the outside will wish they are (and maybe get an opportunity to be employed as when purges/attacks internal to the elite's world happen and render their vassals deceased, resulting in a need to source from the 'rest of the populace', assuming of course they don't have clone vats by that point, in which case be very scared.
Apt for that rant: delirium
Also: Continuum. It wasn't the best show ever, but it gives a good gritty, visual, and modern take on the old sci-fi trope of the future world of megacorps ruling us all. And we're almost there as our own technology is sold and used against us, but without the capability to operate without it (or at least knowledge of it if you want even the possibility of staying dark.)
BK's "flame broiled" tag was a marketing coverup for a major robotic replacement of human labor. Dismiss the burger flippers, and replace them with a conveyor belt. And call it "flame broiled" and claim it as a "taste innovation". There have been thousands of automation tools that have been implemented over the years. It's not a new thing, and it's not a new trend.
Learn to love Alaska
the video claims " we are doing something never done before" and is 100% bullshit.
Frozen pizza companies have had automated pizza making processes in place for nearly 3 decades now. Your frozen pizza has been "made by robots" since the 1980's.
The process that place in the video uses is horribly inefficient and is more of a rube goldberg entertainment system than a proven robotic pizza making system.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
that voted for president pussygrabber?
You're still taking money away from earners (the owners of the robots) to give to non-earners (the people put out of work by the robots). Venezuela just took 4.8 million toys from a company to give away to poor kids. What you're proposing is basically the same thing, at least if you take the end results. What gives you the right? They robot's owners earned it. How is what you're doing anything other than theft? If the robot owners want to give away the proceeds that's their business. But you're suggesting we force them (presumable at the barrel of a gun)?
If you can't answer these questions I don't think socialism will ever get anywhere. At least, not until things have gone completely to shit for 90% of the population. Maybe 95%...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I might as well stay home with a 6 pack in my cooler. I like the interaction between patrons and staff. If it comes to that I probably won't go out for my pints on a regular basis ever again.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
No, it really doesn't have anything at all to do with a $15/hr min wage.
The efforts to automate fast food started when the minimum wage was well under half that amount. If you're going to automate a $15/hr job, then why wouldn't you automate a $6/hr job? You don't have to pay the robot, after all, and they never up and quit like Judge Reinhold in Porkys.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I think automation is the way to go, absolutely, if we can create technology to work for us, then we don't have to work, and more time to play and follow our own interests. This is a good thing for society. Humans shouldn't have to work if they don't need to, as a society on the whole.
The problem is as they stop paying workers, that areas economy decreases as they are sucking money out of it into share holders / people outside of that local community.
It's like mining etc. They're going to suck as much money out of an area until it's dead then move to somewhere else, and we need to do something to stop it.
Local business are good, international ones suck money out of your area and leave it high and dry.
Yes, they get taxed, but if you have to pay 30,000$ per work which is mostly money in that community, vs the taxes on that worker of a fraction of it, a lot of money is leaving your community that they're taking in the form of sales.
Look people, this sort of tech has been around for decades now.
I don't think most people know, but for some of these automated restaurant ideas and industrial food machines, you read "it has been around for years"... you'll think something like early 2000s, but it's actually more like back in the 60s or 70s. You know that conveyor belt sushi thing? It was invented in 1958. It had a huge boom, then it fell out of fashion, then it started becoming popular once again in early 2000s. But here's the deal: restaurants with regular non automated parts are still the majority and the most popular.
Wanna see something older? Try restaurants that serves food using vending machines only. One of those existed back in 1902, and it was in the US:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A prototype restaurant is far from replacing jobs in a large scale, and if this is about robots replacing fast food workers in a smaller scale, this isn't news. China and some countries in Europe already used adapted industrial automation systems, robots and robotic arms. The fact that one restaurant is opening does not mean that it's economically feasible as a regular thing, doesn't mean that all restaurants will copy the concept, and it doesn't mean it'll work at all.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/4...
Remember this Nuremberg restaurant from 2007?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
How about this japanese restaurant from 2009?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Eatsa opened last year, but it's basically the same idea as the previously mentioned Automat that had an initial boom only to disappear years later:
https://techcrunch.com/2015/08...
Right now, these automated systems are on average extremely expensive, single purpose, hard to maintain, and mostly seen as novelty both by clients and from a marketing perspective. We're still probably over a century away from a multipurpose humanoid robot that can do everything human staff do, in an ideal condition where the price, maintenance costs and usefulness counterbalances paying minimum wage or so. By the time miraculous robots like those appear, we'll be more prepared for the switch, and it'll happen gradually. And even then, it's hard to imagine robots completely replacing fast-food and restaurant staff unless we're talking about a future where robots are replacing humans. Because there will always be people willing to pay for a restaurant that has humans preparing your food and serving it.
The base logic why things like that don't suddently happen out of nowhere is easy to understand: even if by some miraculous circunstance we managed to produce perfect robots that would work flawlessly and require no maintenance in all restaurants in a city, this would automatically put so many people out of a job that these restaurants would end up having no costumers to serve, closing down before all the investment put into it had any return. But of course, we can't magically create thousands of robots out of thin air overnight, most robots and automation systems nowadays have limited functionality that's not usually adequate for fast food kitchen environments, and culturally people are not used to and will take a long time to get used to automated restaurants.
Perhaps far into the future we'll pay more to go to restaurants with an all human staff that will only be there simply because they enjoy working with that... but here I'm entering utopia territory. If we ever reach an age where robots can do most things for use at reasonable costs, we'll either have already implemented the universal basic income, or governments will be responsible for most of the upkeep of basic population needs. I mean, you have a damn army of multipurpose robots,
Interesting that after the election, stock prices of private prison companies spiked by 30%, and have only gone up. CoreCivic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America) was around $15/share, went to $20, and is now at $25/share. I fear that this may be the road taken.
We use to have carriage makers...the automobile replaced them. Use to make wax candles, we don't do that either. A lot of automobile manufacturers have replaced somewhat overpaid labor with machines. Low skill jobs being replaced by machines isn't hard to imagine. Considering the ton of youtube videos where kids working these jobs are screwing around, throwing food on the floor, taking a bath in the sinks and what not, I don't blame them. These are the same low skilled people that complain about a "living wage". If they don't want to better themselves in society, then they will be out of a job. They want to party, use/sell drugs, get tattoos, wear their pants low, have 4 or more babies by as many women, and then when they age into their 20-30's...they bitch about not being able to hold a job that might actually pay the bills! Life is hard, but it's a hell of a lot easier when you figure that out!
Nobody argues that automation isn't the predictable and inevitable outcome, but it is naive to say that the minimum wage doesn't have anything to do with the adoption of automation. Sure, automation is going to happen either way, but it should be obvious that the minimum wage effects how much and how quickly companies will invest in automation.
As a consumer, the experience I've had so far is that automation leads to better service in industries like fast food where the alternative is to have unmotivated people serving you. I for one can't wait until every last one of those jobs is replaced by a robot.
French fries
In a factory, shape a potato into a fixed size rectangular prism, save the rest for things like hash browns
Package the blocks in a multi-level grid
At the restaurant, feed the grid into a cooling unit
Have a machine remove a row from the grid and feed it to the cutting machine
From the cutting machine, feed the row of potatoes through one at a time
Per serving of french fries, press a matching metal rectangular prism into the top of the container to force the potato block through a cutting grid made up of cutting wires. The wires are found on the base of the potato storage.
The uncooked fries land in a basket and are dropped into a cooker for a deterministic period of time.
The basked is lifted and moved over a salting area
Salt is applied from above
The basket is moved over a funnel
The fries are dropped and a container is located beneath to receive them.
The fries are moved by conveyor belt towards the customer.
The basket moves to another station to be pressure washed
The salting area is cleaned by rinsing with water
Once a day (or more often) the deep fryer is turned off and once cold enough drains the oil from the bottom via a valve. From above a wire brush lowers to clean the bottom and a hose is used to clean the rest draining through a second valve on the bottom. The oil is then refilled.
The used oil travels through pipes to be picked up by a biodiesel company collecting waste.
Empty containers for carrying potatoes are placed in a second rack where a new grid is built from empties
Access to the grids of full and empties are reachable from the building side where they can be loaded and unloaded by a robotic truck.
Burgers
Burgers are formed and packed into a tube like structure that can be stored frozen
Burger is loaded into freezer at restaurant in rows on a rotating base to make each tube accessible as needed
A mechanism moves up and down the tubes to the next available burger
The mechanism places pressure along side rails on the tube to stabilize the tube
The mechanism using pressure from the back pushes (possibly hits) the burger and forces it out of the tube into a catching mechanism
The burger is moved onto a conveyor belt and carried into a cooking area
The burger is moved onto a heated and oiled teflon pan, a second heated and oiled teflon pan is placed on top to cook from above.
Bread is stored in the freezer in a similar tube but as separate top and bottom.
Bread is moved from cold storage using a nearly identical mechanism to the burgers
The bread is defrosted by hot air as it travels over the conveyor belt
The burger once cooked is placed on the bottom piece of bread
The frying pans are flipped and moved over a pressure washer, washed and then sprayed with oil
Ketchup, mustard, etc... are placed via tubes from above onto the top bun.
A cylinder that matches the size of the burger and bun surround the burger and vegetables are slices and/or chopped from above
The cylinder moves away and is pressure washed
The top bread is places on the burger
The burger rolls onto a piece of cardboard which is folded from the sides and then put on the delivery conveyor.
I can go on for a while... I am 100% confident that it wouldn't take much time, effort, money or intelligence to build a fast food restaurant that cleans itself, cooks all the food, changes oil, etc... In addition, the restaurant can be easily designed to support automatic loading and unloading of all the materials from the delivery truck with no effort from a human. Additionally, the truck itself can be self driving. Additionally, given time, it would be possible to automate substantial parts of preparing the food for the restaurant.
What I don't understand is... why do we even have employees at fast food restaurants anymore. At $15 an hour, I would rather replace them with robots. Probably could do it within a year.
Seriously, we are going to see a large number of the low-end jobs disappear. As such, we need the illegals that have not integrated into our society to be sent off.
Basically, it is long past time that we quit outsourcing and that is what illegals do; they outsource the jobs that can not be.
So, hopefully, we get a COMPROMISE in which the families that have successfully integrated (kids in our schools for 4 or more years; still in it or have GED/better;etc), while send others home.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
...massive shit I just dropped.
If you're going to automate a $15/hr job, then why wouldn't you automate a $6/hr job?
Because the return on investment is less than half as much.
If you ever decide to start a business, you should partner with someone that can do math.
But the ROI is more than zero, and increases over time.
When you figure in all the hassles of having humans working for you, automation that can do the job will be a better investment even if you could get the human to work for nothing.
And this is really the end-game of late-stage capitalism. It's always about exploitation. You don't have to fuck people over to make a profit, but it helps.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Those of us can't score pussy would get a card we could redeem at the hooker of our choice.
One of the problems of this world is that half of all produce spoils before it's eaten. So in the cities of the future, why not have centralized, automated mega-kitchens which receive trucks of fresh raw ingredients and transform them into healthy, delicious and customized meals? Sure, they only make fast food now, but there is no reason why robots can't execute the instructions of Michelin-star chefs, and no reason why such excellent meals should cost more than fast food costs now. Together with some sort of automated delivery service, this is simply a much better way of feeding people than what we do now.
Just think of all the time we waste stocking shelves in stores, driving to them, parking, filling our carts... stocking our fridges, heating up an entire oven for the sake of a single meal, cooking, cleaning up, etc. etc. All that requires a great deal of total cognitive load for many humans, and much wasting of resources. The alternative is that a massive restaurant kitchen cooks up exactly the meal you want, with the freshest ingredients and flavoring details that you would simply not be able to accomplish in a home kitchen. Then the meal arrives through an automated delivery car network, which also picks up the dishes from the previous meal. The city could also have dining rooms with a direct pipeline to each of the city's various mega-kitchens, and these can host social or family groups who want to eat out.
A world like that is actually quite achievable with tech that's already in the prototype stage, and it's a much better world than the wasteful one we live in now.
About 10 years ago I lived in Japan for two years. The first time I encountered automatic ticket ordering technology I was quite perplexed. I went to a window (at an amusement park) to order food the window worker gave me the big X (forearms crossed in the universal Japanese signal for go away, or stop or no). I stood back and watched others go up to a little kiosk and feed Yen in, and get a little slip of paper out, which they then took to the counter and exchanged for food. Once this mystery was solved I found that I really liked it and it sped up service. My families favorite restaurant was "that ticket place".
Also in Japan, at any decent rest stop on the highway you can order hot or cold food including fresh french fries and of course the ubiquitous noodles of various sorts. Quality was quite acceptable.
Those vending machines that dispense a mildew-laden cup of poor quality coffee have been around for a LONG time. I remember encountering one of those lousy machines when waiting around to be selected for jury duty, back in the late 1980's.
The fact is, people building and deploying these machines know that the public's expectations from them are minimal. The goal is to offer something you can afford with your left-over pocket change, so they get that impulse buy.
I think any building calling itself a restaurant is going to be held to a much higher standard. So robotic automation used in one of them really does still have to work with a food product of the same quality the restaurant used with human labor, or people will stop patronizing them.
If you paid attention to speeches given by Ray Kroc about McDonalds, you'd learn that HIS business model is rather unique anyway. He's really in the real estate business, with McDonalds restaurants as the "excuse" to acquire valuable land in developing areas. They generally make more money reselling McDonalds restaurants that have been open a while than they ever make selling food while they're open.
If you're going to automate a $15/hr job, then why wouldn't you automate a $6/hr job?
Because the return on investment is less than half as much.
If you ever decide to start a business, you should partner with someone that can do math.
I was going to comment about this in a separate subthread, but here goes. The concept that we are forcing the poor fast food company to automation by raising the minimum wage, is merely a handy excuse to pass on to the world. This is coming whether the Minimum wage is 7, 15, or 3 dollars an hour.
Getting rid of employees with their issues is a very important thing for business, especially at the bottom of the ladder. Exhibit one is that we are going forward with the automation even as the minimum wage stays the same.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
hmm robots as virtural workers, maybe they should have Health Care too?
Maybe we should just mix it with some virtuality and call it Virtual Social Security. We'll also add some robotic rights like buying rights. but what if one robot buys another robot... Should that robot has life contract or sells tax?
Free education is never really free, first of all. All you're doing is advocating that the bulk of the costs of teaching students be covered by those who are already gainfully employed. Society has already pretty much agreed to accept that burden for a basic "core" education (grade school and high school). The enrollment fees some of the public high schools are charging are literally peanuts compared to what taxpayers are on the hook for to keep them running. I honestly don't know where those fees came from, except possibly from certain districts deciding it was a way to get around a failed tax increase vote? When I was in high school, there were never any fees like that -- but today, I have friends in the Chicago area having to pay $300 or so per kid, annually, for a public school. If a kid misses out on a high school education over those enrollment fees? I find it hard to believe that's the fault of anyone but the parents for not trying a little harder to get something worked out. I mean, otherwise? Why are we even still messing around with a public school system, if it's not really for those who can't afford the fee to get in?
The "decreasing number of jobs" should be able to be largely offset by encouraging more small business growth and new business ventures. Every day, people have ideas for things they might be able to do or sell as a business. But government taxes and regulations generally create a steep wall to climb, right from the get-go. (For example, "Obamacare" has caused quite a few businesses to close their doors or stop trying to grow because they can't afford the additional healthcare expenses they're now required to pay if they exceed 50 employees.) And even if we ignore all of that? Try opening your own sole proprietorship and then deciding to hire on your first additional employee! You're suddenly met with payroll challenges, and accounting that just got so much more complicated, you probably need to hire a bookkeeper or CPA as well, to handle all of that while you try to keep your business running. The current system discourages people from employing other people.
More directly to the heart of American fast-food cuisine, Momentum Machines, a restaurant concept with a robot that can supposedly flip hundreds of burgers an hour, applied for a building permit in San Francisco and started listing job openings this January, reported Eater. Then there's Eatsa, the automat restaurant where no human interaction is necessary, which has locations popping up across California.
In other words, a robot that makes lower quality food and some place that hates humans.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
My wants are limitless. As automation replaces these workers we should rejoice because they can then do something else that I value. Manufacturing in Canada and the USA has doubled over the last 20 years and the number of people employed has halved. I should therefore have 4 times as much as I had in 1996.
,
I have money but no free time. I would love to have someone clean my house, rake my leaves and give me a massage. The kids in the neighbourhood aren't interested in physical work, a registered massage therapist charges $85/hr but I don't need a registered therapist and a cleaning company is going to charge me $100 to clean my house and require me to tidy the house before they come in. I would be willing to pay $15 - $20/hr for these jobs (minimum wage where I live is $11.25/hr) but I don't know how to find and vet someone to do these jobs.
up till the point they become peoples only doctor and the prison will need to pay for that.
Say a machine costs $40k and replaces one person.
In three years, it replaces $36k of wages at $6/hour, it 90k at $15/hour (50*40=2000 hours/year).
Yeah, may year for both machines are possible, but also, maybe I want the $40k machine that replaces 2 people in half the space, so I can't also have extra throughput.
If that machine comes out at year three, I've lost money buying the first version.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Yes the fast food industry will automate rather quickly eliminating millions of jobs. Fancier joints will be slower to automate and have to hide a great deal of their automation from patrons who pay big bucks for food. And please understand that it can not be stopped. Why would we want to pay more for fast food than other nations who automate sooner will charge? This is rather like Trump claiming he would put a 35% tax on American companies that move to Mexico and want to sell their products in the US. The buyers would be the ones paying that extra 35%. And domestic factories would jack up their car prices as the buyers would have less options. The hourly wage for human workers is now not a factor. If American robots can produce better and faster than Chinese robots we will make a lot of money exporting goods. But if their robots are better than ours then we will suffer badly. The real problem is funding for our colleges and school systems. If we do not produce superior students we are lost. And right now we simply do not produce superior students. Budget cutting has likely killed America.
Except for the fact that each person may make several kids, making hundreds of additional mouths to feed within a couple of centuries where the people kept in prisons are only one mouth to feed before they die.
Especially on a cruise or bar, i've been shortchanged tons of times or poured really weak drinks that where maybe 12 bucks. I love good bartenders, but for cheap techno bars and cruiseships this sounds like a good thing. Plus no tipping required.
The mistake you're making is thinking that there is a 1:1 ratio between machines and the workers they replace. No machine only replaces one worker, because we still have those pesky limits on how long we can force people to work. Machines are meant to run 24/7.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I, personally, want human interaction with restaurant staff.
But then, I do not consider McDonalds (as one example) to be a restaurant. So perhaps we have a categorisation error here.
If I want cheap crap food then I don't care what dispenses it. If I want to go to a restaurant then I'm after a food experience, and that is enhanced by humans.
I want a pizza made where it's done entirely with lasers. Cut the ingredients, cook it, cut it, push it onto a plate, oh yeah.
Realistically it's more likely that for a pizza they will just make a wedge shaped dough cutter and save the lasers for final cuts. Pizzas tend to be too sticky unless coated in oil.
But the ROI is more than zero, and increases over time.
That is not necessarily true, unless you assume your cost of capital is zero, your investment will last forever, and require no maintenance. But if you assume that, then there is never a bad investment.
In the real world, any investment has to have returns sufficient to cover interest, depreciation, and on-going expenses such as maintenance and repairs. And even then, it needs to be better than alternative investments.
The problem is NOT the Robots. The problem is who owns them.
Many homes already have a baking robot, mixer-blender robot, juicer robot, baker robot, boiling-beverage robot, cooling robot. And a radiation-emitting-turntable robot (not recommended for nutrition).
Go back to basics - make a sandwich, boil some veggies, cook at home, carry your lunch. At least you own the means of production.
> Because the return on investment is less than half as much.
But it's not really. You're not factoring in training costs, turnover, staff shortages during sickness, etc. Factor all of that in and the robot ROI looks better and better regardless of meatbag wage. The $15/hr minimum wage talk was brought up by the CEOs of fast food places as a red herring to try and shift blame for when the robots and automation changes come. Instead of them just looking like money grubbers, they can now blame the minimum wage workers for daring to want a living wage for the changes. And the public eats it up, figuratively speaking.
...that bakes you a bun right after your order...
....to make students be in school more hours? Because more science, maths and liberal arts is just more of what exists right now.
Of course everyone knows free education isn't free... but it's cheaper than a user pays system as well as being more effective.
Free refers to up front costs. It refers to the fact that if you dont have $5000 right now you don't get an education. Perhaps if you had taken English in a decent school system you'd understand colloquial usages.
The thing is, paying for public education is an investment in your future as you're relying on the next generation of workers to support all the infrastructure retired people will no longer be paying for.
Then again, you never think of those things and expect the world will magically take care of you.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
That's fine, except you can up the price to $120k and have it replace three people them, and theatch still works out.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
We had pizza vending machines back in 2009 (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/14/business/worldbusiness/14vend.html?_r=0). It fit in standalone box. I hardly see getting the innards outside of the box into less constrained environment as innovative and distruptive...
That's prison food.
How to cook. It's cheaper than eating out.
Now you're making a different, but related, mistake. You assume that the price of a robot is based on how many people it replaces.
It's possible that a $20,000 machine replaces 10 people. The point is that there is no floor for wages above which workers' jobs are safe. Machines get cheaper and easier to maintain. People's lives don't get cheaper and easier to maintain. It's a one-way street and humans can't compete.
You can either accept a greatly expanded welfare state or fire up the ovens. There really isn't any other choice.
You are welcome on my lawn.
What? You want more?
There is a great short story I read about 10 years ago: http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm/ that deals with this exact topic. The similarities are scary.
While that makes perfect sense, the problem is, that is a communal kitchen. You communist. ;)
One way to look it is this: You became their source of labor for that transaction. It's not so much about automation, it's about moving the work away from their process so they don't have to pay for it (i.e. trick people into doing it for you). Same thing with self-checkout at the grocery store, guess what now you're the bag boy and the cashier.
I'm not making that point at all, of course a robot can replace more than one person.
My point is minimum wage will adjust what price is profitable.
Of course a robot can replace more than one person, and sometimes in less space too, that was my point.
There are robots that aren't worth it to replace $6/hour, but are for $15.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Where are you getting your numbers from?
... I thought they already were robots.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
Hardly worth my time replying to you, except it's pretty disturbing how the OP here was modded +5 Interesting for that stereotypical Bernie Sanderesque drivel.
Paying for your own education is an investment in your future. Paying for other people's educations is an unknown.... How do you know how if those people will make any effort to learn anything useful, vs. just costing you a big chunk of tax money to act as a state-sponsored babysitter? And yes, despite that - our country decided it's willing to fork over the money to at least TRY to get the majority of people up to certain minimum levels of knowledge. But that's not good enough for a bunch of people today. Now, you hear these excuses about jobs being "too difficult to find", so they need a "free" college education as the new minimum.
News flash... The more people we churn out with 4 year degrees, the less a 4 year degree will be worth to an employer. Giving people taxpayer-funded higher education isn't going to do anything to improve the job situation if the businesses aren't here in the first place to hire all of them! That's where things sit today. Our biggest employers are WalMart and fast food giants.
I spent nine years in federal prison.
We had pizza kits on the commissary.
They had regular (microwave) crusts.
Just sayin'.
OK, we can agree on that.
But can we also agree that automation inevitably leads to a situation where it's more profitable than even a $1/hr wage?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Thankfully once we have left Europe here in the UK we will be able to get rid of these foreign robots who work in these places.
That ignores that for a majority "follow our own interests" means sitting in front of the telly watching "reality" television while sucking down high carb food chased with cheap beer. In no way does that contribute to society as a whole.
Business does not care about personality.
Seriously, capitalism and competition move the focus to results.
With a selection on results, the winners are those companies that don't care about people's personality.
Only to how functional a person can produce.
The free market has no intrinsic value for human labour.
Absolutely,
Also, I think Min Wage should be higher. Jobs SHOULD be automated to increase the productivity of the remaining jobs, and their should be more disposable money at the bottom to allow for investment in poorer areas.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Welcome to the fallout of the minimum wage. When the cost benefit analysis of a machine, with no health insurance premiums is less expensive than the labor, viola.
Also coming to walmart, and other department stores soon.