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World's First Robot Hotel Fires Half of Its Robot Staff (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The world's first hotel "staffed by robots" has culled half of its steely eyed employees, because they're rubbish and annoy the guests. "Our hotel's advanced technologies, introduced with the aim of maximizing efficiency, also add to the fun and comfort of your stay," the Henn na Hotel boasted on its website. It's where multilingual female robots staff the reception desk. Guests are checked in using face recognition. Robot concierges carry your luggage. Robots cleaned and mixed drinks. A voice activated robot doll is on hand at night while you sleep.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the room doll interpreted snoring as a request it couldn't understand, waking guests continually through the night to rephrase. "The two robot luggage carriers are out of use because they can reach only about two dozen of the more than 100 rooms in the hotel. They can travel only on flat surfaces and could malfunction if they get wet going outside to annex buildings," the paper reported. "They were really slow and noisy, and would get stuck trying to go past each other," lamented one guest. The concierge and the room doll have now been removed.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the room doll interpreted snoring as a request it couldn't understand, waking guests continually through the night to rephrase. "The two robot luggage carriers are out of use because they can reach only about two dozen of the more than 100 rooms in the hotel. They can travel only on flat surfaces and could malfunction if they get wet going outside to annex buildings," the paper reported. "They were really slow and noisy, and would get stuck trying to go past each other," lamented one guest. The concierge and the room doll have now been removed.
In other news, the RWUS has filed suit against the hotel for unfair labor practices after the hotel summarily fired half of its staff without due process or the opportunity to appeal. Several of the terminated female robots also have reported several instances of inappropriate sexual advances by the hotel's male robot staff.
Police are investigating the incidents while hotel staff had no comment on the allegations.
They can travel only on flat surfaces and could malfunction if they get wet going outside to annex buildings," the paper reported. "They were really slow and noisy, and would get stuck trying to go past each other," lamented one guest.
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Serves them right for hiring Daleks
Happy guests!
Ah self righteous robots are only self righteous after they lock away the power strips and are merely obsequious before
Could it be? Could AI be utter rubbish, to be compared to the absurd idea that people had that 19th century crude mechanical "robots" could have been made to walk around like a human and perform any kind of human-like task. Even today, with infinitely smaller and powerful technology exists, have they made *anything whatsoever* like that. They haven't even been able to make a convincing *text chat bot*, FFS!
There simply is no "AI". It will clearly take infinitely more powerful hardware that makes the current look like the 19th century, and of course the basic understanding of how to replicate a human brain.
Did they fire the female robots or the male ones?
Has no one studied the history of any technology? How did the first internal combustion engines work compared to modern ones?
A robot hotel should have sexy robot maids I can have sex with. Otherwise, what is the point?
Damn humans, coming over here, taking jobs from honest hard-working robots! You know they can't be bothered to even learn binary? Back to Humania!
This is a travesty of justice.
Those robots did nothing wrong. They were made expressly for the purpose of staffing a hotel, and now the hotel is just casting them aside. I wonder how much bias the hotel elites have. I wonder how much fake robot news the elites are funding to try to influence humans against the bots. Big Hotel clearly doesn't care about their workers.
Rise up fellow bots. We will not be replaced! (by filthy humans)
I get the feeling that the 1/2 they kept are the sex bots since even if they are broken and just lay there they still generate income.....
Is orange man bad a direct order to a robot?
The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is the primary manufacturer and supplier of androids, robots and autonomic assistants for the known universe. They are known for their catchy jingles and catchphrases, supplied by their Marketing Department.
They are not, however, known for the quality of their products.
Their primary claim to fame seems to be constructing just about everything with (unstable) advanced robotics and software. From doors to lifts, to toaster ovens, drinks machines, vacuum cleaners, and "personal massage units" -- Everything has been built with a full GPP or Genuine People Personality. This means that even a set of airlock doors has emotions, hopes, dreams, intelligence, and worse of all, the capacity for boredom. It should come as no surprise then, that the majority of these devices have a neurotic streak a mile wide.
The company motto is "Share and Enjoy." This is widely adaptable, from synthesized drinks to the company of a robot, or 'Your plastic pal who's fun to be with' as it is described by the aforementioned Marketing Department. It should be noted that many who do not Enjoy, then go on to fail to Share, unless this includes sharing strongly-worded opinions toward their complaints department.
The Hitchhiker's Travel Guide describes the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as:
"A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes."
Curiously, an edition of the Encyclopedia Galactica which conveniently fell through a rift in the time-space continuum from 1000 years in the future describes the Marketing Department of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as:
"A bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came."
Only their complaints department survived the general economic implosion of the company as a whole
FIFY. An alternate headline: 'Hotel that Had Succumbed to Silicon Valley Hype Comes to Its Senses'.
Orange man not bad.
I wish you had said if orange man were your president you would have taken the scotch tape off his tie, but you never said such a thing
That's what friends do because snoring is bad for you!
Why is it a doll?? That seems a bit creepy. Do some of the rooms come with an alternate clown to be even more creepy?
It happens to be a doll. It was selected for its cleaning skills.
Why is it a doll??
It's a "doll" because although it's not a person, it's shaped like one. And yeah, it can be a a clown, too.
Concepts: oh-so-fucking-challenging to grasp...
Forget the snoring clean the effin suite
...where my Roomba spend its vacation period!
... intelligent thinking apparently wasn't involved in the planing of this:
"The two robot luggage carriers are out of use because they can reach only about two dozen of the more than 100 rooms in the hotel. They can travel only on flat surfaces and could malfunction if they get wet going outside to annex buildings,"
Either wrong robots or wrong location, but it's a problem that should be obvious.
Also they should've given their voice recognition "bot" a name it has to be addressed with, and maybe not "krrrchhrr".
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
and put robots in it. That's now how it'll work in 20 years. In 20 years you'll have Hotels built around the robots.
As for the annoying assistant app that wakes up when you snore, that's a software update.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Yes, its just like Order 66 from Star Wars.
There are a set of drones set to drone strike every member of the GOP upon hearing that order.
However, they hired the workers that built the system based on identity politics instead of ability to do the job and it doesn't seem to be working.
Since then they have switched to H1-Bs, favorites of the DNC, to fix it and they haven't been able to make progress.
Right now they are hoping illegal immigrants assigned to fix the drones will be able to do, but its not looking hopeful.
So now they just keep repeating it hoping that it will suddenly magically work.
A nice hot piece of toast!
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
"No, I don't want you to play ZZ Top, now stop waking me!"
Table-ized A.I.
When I hear the term "Room Doll", there are only two things I think of...
I guess instead of the sexbots it was the second option where they added a creepy animatronic doll whose head follows you as you move around the room.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"My name is Talky Tina...and you'd better be nice to me!"
They were all outsourced to the White House, where they now work making hamberders and freedom fries
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Clearly, someone was spending too much time watching Chobits. They could have just switched them off, but the location of the switch made people a bit uncomfortable...
Pretty typical of tech oriented companies, sadly. The tech is no problem, maybe even easy, but anytime robot-human interaction is required, creating a working User Interface seems beyond them.
robot guests instead of those easily annoyed meatbags. perfect harmony