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

nytimes.com

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

#111

Post by gm-conspiracy »

vortico wrote: post #88

Why is the UI on these things so atrocious? It took him a number of key presses just to select from a list of 6 and many more to finalize the purchase. Why not have a bunch of large tactile buttons at the bottom of the screen like all normal vending machines do? I don't want to wait in line for 3 minutes while some technophobe tries to figure out how to nagivate a pressure touchscreen with 12 menus deep. It's not his…

Have you ever been to a Sheetz gas station?

They seem to have a good UI (although they started working on it over 20 years ago).

https://www.cstoredecisions.com/2011/03/10/in-touch-with-foo...

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

#112

Post by orbifold »

bambax wrote: post #103

> Salad bars are magnets for bacteria and viruses. Even if the sprouts and ranch dressing aren’t tainted, the serving utensils may be. The Silicon Valley start-up Chowbotics has devised what it says is a partial solution. A solution to what? What exactly is the problem? Just because bacteria (and "viruses"? really?) may or may not be found in salad bars doesn't make it an emergency. Exactly how many people get sick,…

There was a case in Germany a couple of years ago, a relatively large number of people got a very deadly and rare bacterial infection. The cases were distributed all over the country. In the end it turned out that the origin was contaminated sprouts from one sprout factory. This robot only eliminates one part of the risk.

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

#113

Post by gm-conspiracy »

robert_foss wrote: post #99
christopheml wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's new? Well, if we keep replacing low-skill jobs by high-skills ones, we may have a little problem: are humans going to keep up with the training? Is the workforce going to adapt fast enough? When job replacement happens over several generations, it's a pretty easy problem to solve. When it gets faster, turns out some human abilities are not scaling very well.

A solution is providing the option of mid-life education. Of course this comes more easily to places with free education.

and available careers, not just jobs.

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

#114

Post by merraksh »

vortico wrote: post #88

Why is the UI on these things so atrocious? It took him a number of key presses just to select from a list of 6 and many more to finalize the purchase. Why not have a bunch of large tactile buttons at the bottom of the screen like all normal vending machines do? I don't want to wait in line for 3 minutes while some technophobe tries to figure out how to nagivate a pressure touchscreen with 12 menus deep. It's not his…

I don't want to wait in line for 3 minutes while some old guy tries to figure out

Please rewrite, this is borderline discriminatory and quite offensive. Some "old guys" can be as capable to handle such UI as some "young guys".

Disclaimer: half-old guy.

[EDIT] thanks for replacing "old guy" with "technophobe".

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

#115

Post by gm-conspiracy »

Houshalter wrote: post #86
greglindahl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vending machine still has many humans involved: building it involved humans, maintaining it involves humans. The difference is that the button is pushed by the customer. That's the same amount of human labor, actually, it's just that the customer isn't paying someone else for the button press.

Lets say the vending machine costs $2,000 a year including maintenance and everything. That means there can't be more than $2,000 worth of human labor involved in it, neither in production or maintenance. That's an order of magnitude less labor involved than hiring a person. If it didn't save labor, there'd be no economic advantage to it after all. On top of that, the jobs it does require are skilled. Engineers to de…

That means there can't be more than $2,000 worth of human labor involved in it, neither in production or maintenance.

That is not necessarily true, as the company could be subsidizing its labor costs in order to gain salad-vending marketshare.

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

#117

Post by MrFoof »

bambax wrote: post #103

> Salad bars are magnets for bacteria and viruses. Even if the sprouts and ranch dressing aren’t tainted, the serving utensils may be. The Silicon Valley start-up Chowbotics has devised what it says is a partial solution. A solution to what? What exactly is the problem? Just because bacteria (and "viruses"? really?) may or may not be found in salad bars doesn't make it an emergency. Exactly how many people get sick,…

Let's replace "salad" with "burrito" and just look at Chipotle in isolation...

* In March and April 2008, 22 customers were infected with hepatitis A from a Chipotle restaurant in California.

* In April 2008, over 400 people were infected with norovirus from a Chipotle restaurant in Ohio.

* In February 2009, an outbreak of campylobacteriosis was traced to a Chipotle restaurant in Minnesota.

* In July 2015, five people were infected with E. coli traced back to a Chipotle restaurant in Seattle, Washington.

* In August 2015 nearly 100 people were infected with norovirus from a Chipotle restaurant in Califorina.

* In August 2015, 64 people were infected with Salmonella traced back to Chipotle restaurants in the Minneapolis area.

* In October 2015, 52 people were infected with E. coli traced back to Chipotle restaurants, with 20 requiring hospitalization.

* In November 2015, 5 people were infected with E. coli traced back to Chipotle restaurants in Oklahoma and Kansas.

* In December 2015, ultimately 141 people (80 directly) in Massachusetts were infected with norovirus traced back to a Boston, Massachusetts area Chipotle restaurant.

* In July 2017, more than 130 people were infected with norovirus traced back to a Chiptole restaurant in Virginia.

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

#118

Post by freeflight »

setr wrote: post #79
j7ake wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because there is no theory linking interaction of molecules to flavour yet, although there are some preliminary work from some labs on this (with beer)

Seeing as humans don't usually taste their coffee before serving, identifying flavour is probably not strictly necessary to the task. And given that the act of making good-enough coffee isn't a very difficult task (given how readily available and quickly trained "baristas" are), and how mechanical the process is already, im not sure there's anything to suggest it isn't do-able. Its more likely a matter of cost and sc…

Smelling is already a form of tasting, just like looking at how it behaves because we humans are really good at combining our senses to get the input we look for, that's why most people usually don't taste the coffee before serving, unless it's smelling/looking funny while brewing.

Replicating this with electrical sensors is a pretty complex task we still haven't managed to get working, after all we are not only talking about replicating the sense of taste but also the sense of smelling and how they interact with each other.

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

#119

Post by ErrantX »

robert_foss wrote: post #99
christopheml wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's new? Well, if we keep replacing low-skill jobs by high-skills ones, we may have a little problem: are humans going to keep up with the training? Is the workforce going to adapt fast enough? When job replacement happens over several generations, it's a pretty easy problem to solve. When it gets faster, turns out some human abilities are not scaling very well.

A solution is providing the option of mid-life education. Of course this comes more easily to places with free education.

What about if there are a group of people who cannot do mid-to-high skilled jobs (whilst potentially controversial, I think this is accurate)?

If we replace all of those jobs what do they do?

I have always thought there is a far-future dystopian story in that somewhere; society has evolved IT and automation to the extent that only the top 25% of individuals actually "work" and everyone else has leisure. The 25% decide they want a leisurely life also, causing the collapse of society...

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

#120

Post by jamesrcole »

j7ake wrote: post #70
jamesrcole wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A robot has no way of knowing if the coffee will taste good or contains rat poison Eventually automated systems ought to be able to do this better than most people can. Why couldn't there be engineered sensors that could detect such things very well?

Because there is no theory linking interaction of molecules to flavour yet, although there are some preliminary work from some labs on this (with beer)

I said "eventually". Are you saying it will never be possible?
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