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A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?

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Re: A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?

#3
post #2

Interestingly, this breaks Betteridge's law by giving an indeterminate response instead of the negative.

To save others a seaerch: From Wikipedia -- Betteridge's law of headlines is one name for an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist, although the principle is much older. As with similar "laws" (e.g., Murphy's law), it is intended as a humorous adage rather than the literal truth.

Re: A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?

#4
If there is a tax (I believe there should be) on automation then my opinion is that it should be based on the profit and reduced by the percentage of 'traditional' (role specific) job hours that remain; counting service personnel the same as bus-boys/janitorial services.

If the profit is under a given percentage then there shouldn't be any tax assessed.

Re: A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?

#5
Yes. All the jobs. Drivers, luggage handlers. The salad cook is just another in the long line of manual jobs that can be done quicker, better, cheaper by a robot. So now what? What job do we guide our children into? What jobs are left as the fall through for kids who decline formal training? I don't know, but we need to answer that question quickly.

Re: A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?

#6

Yes. All the jobs. Drivers, luggage handlers. The salad cook is just another in the long line of manual jobs that can be done quicker, better, cheaper by a robot. So now what? What job do we guide our children into? What jobs are left as the fall through for kids who decline formal training? I don't know, but we need to answer that question quickly.

Robot repairperson.

I hear the stand-in-line-as-a-service industry is growing as well. Anyone with a lot of free time can get paid to stand in line. It’s great! Who wouldn’t want such a bright future?

Re: A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?

#9
i love automation. there is something to be said for automated food. not only can money and time be saved, but there are other benefits as well. for example, storing the raw ingredients in your home can allow you to stockpile food for much longer than you could if you only bought the finished product. i have several food grade buckets filled with whole wheat flour and i enjoy freshly baked bread almost every day. with a few gamma lids (screw-top lid accessory for standard 5 gallon food grade buckets), and about 10% of my (normal sized) freezer space, i am able to eat fresh bread every day for five months without ever going to the store. with a bread machine, making the bread only requires a few seconds of my time. and the savings are unreal. perhaps im a little odd, but i would very much like to have some kind of system in my home where i could buy non-perishable food stuffs and store them in mass quantity, and simply press a button to turn them into a meal ready to eat.

Re: A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs?

#10
My local coffee place has humans who operate an espresso machine, while Starbucks has baristas who push a button, and there are vending machines that produces espresso without having an operator. None of this excites a moral panic. Kitchen labor-saving devices have been being invented for hundreds of thousands of years. What's new?

Think about wheat. Wheat used to be ground in stone mills operated by oxen or wind or water, which is much more labor-intensive than today's mills. Before that, the grinding process was even more labor-intensive.

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