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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?

#121

Post by jo909 »

wiz21c wrote: post #110
sho wrote: post #18

I'm bullish on food robots in general, but I have to say that as a fan of caesar salad, the output of that robot fails to impress. It looks exactly like what it is - a bunch of ingredients randomly dropped in a bowl. The lettuce hasn't even been tossed with the dressing! I wouldn't pay for that, and IMO this robot has a long way to go before I'd agree it can make a "mean" salad.

I would add that if a bad cook can make an average salad, it doesn't make any easier to accept the fact that we make robots which can barely do better. In other words, instead of replacing the cook by a machine, we should train him to cook better. And we should train people to make the difference between a soulless dish and a good one. (I cook for myself and I can assure you that a machine can't cook; it can assemble…

The creativity has to happen at the "design" stage. The best restaurants strive for perfect _repeatable_ dishes, and no cook has to improvise with spices or ingredients on a normal shift.

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

#122

Post by deepGem »

jon_richards wrote: post #104
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.

Horses used to be used for practically everything. The first commercial steam engine pumped water from mines and was measured in "horsepower", the the rate at which a horse could continuously pump water. Then steam engines replaced freight hauling. Then personal transport. Don't see many working horses now.

Are you implying that human population could ultimately decline, because of AI and automation ? If so, why is that undesirable.

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

#123

Post by dagw »

wiz21c wrote: post #110
sho wrote: post #18

I'm bullish on food robots in general, but I have to say that as a fan of caesar salad, the output of that robot fails to impress. It looks exactly like what it is - a bunch of ingredients randomly dropped in a bowl. The lettuce hasn't even been tossed with the dressing! I wouldn't pay for that, and IMO this robot has a long way to go before I'd agree it can make a "mean" salad.

I would add that if a bad cook can make an average salad, it doesn't make any easier to accept the fact that we make robots which can barely do better. In other words, instead of replacing the cook by a machine, we should train him to cook better. And we should train people to make the difference between a soulless dish and a good one. (I cook for myself and I can assure you that a machine can't cook; it can assemble…

that's for sure but there's no creativity

The last thing you want from your line chef is 'creativity'.

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

#124

Post by zero_shift »

greglindahl wrote: post #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…

> None of this excites a moral panic.

It has done, in the past, and these concerns have not been without merit.

The Ur-Case is that of the Luddites. When weaving machines came onto the fore in 19th century Britain, groups of saboteurs fearing for their jobs wrecked the machines with rocks and hammers. The Crown response was swift and unflinching. Machine-breaking was made a capital offence and the Luddites were put down with the violence typical of 19th century law enforcement.

Nowadays we look on and shake our heads. In the long run the Luddites' fears were unfounded. Mechanisation improved productivity, which meant more cloth could be made cheaply, which increased the size of the market, boosted purchasing power and opened up new markets for new kinds of work.

In the short run, however, things were not so comfortable for the workers of Northern England. The 'compensatory effects' of technological improvement took many years to land. In the meanwhile an entire generation of men were reduced to penury.

Perhaps these technologies will open new markets after all. But how quickly? And will the jobs compare? What happens when the work human beings like and are good at disappears? What happens when only trivial jobs remain? What does that do to people and their relation to society?

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

#126

Post by robert_foss »

ErrantX wrote: post #119
robert_foss wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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% decid…

Even if there is such a group of people, unable to learn a new trade, surely they're not the majority. So there is lots of room for improving the situation.

There are lots of stories of American coal miners going into tech when the mining jobs dried up. But their process of getting there is through charitable organizations, not a proper educational program.

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

#127

Post by pygy_ »

musage wrote: post #107
jon_richards wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horses used to be used for practically everything. The first commercial steam engine pumped water from mines and was measured in "horsepower", the the rate at which a horse could continuously pump water. Then steam engines replaced freight hauling. Then personal transport. Don't see many working horses now.

Don't see many horses at all. That is, the offspring of those working horses certainly doesn't roam about in pastures, to pursue happiness because there are no jobs that require them.

I've read here that the obsolete horses helped bootstrap the pet food industry...

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

#128

Post by dogruck »

There is a misconception that the list of tasks that we need humans to work on is roughly equal to the number of humans that we currently have available. Instead, I think if we eliminated many of the current tasks from our global priority queue (such as chopping salads) then we will soon discover new tasks.

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

#129

Post by lucas_maximus83 »

zero_shift wrote: post #124
greglindahl wrote: post #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…

> None of this excites a moral panic. It has done, in the past, and these concerns have not been without merit. The Ur-Case is that of the Luddites. When weaving machines came onto the fore in 19th century Britain, groups of saboteurs fearing for their jobs wrecked the machines with rocks and hammers. The Crown response was swift and unflinching. Machine-breaking was made a capital offence and the Luddites were put d…

This is an incorrect history of the Luddites. They didn't fear for their jobs. Most of them were machine operators and most of the machines they destroyed was over 200 years old at the time.

It was a protest about shit working conditions caused.

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

#130

Post by jeremyjh »

I don't think there is any easy fix for this. The capital is only interested in building robots if they save human labor costs. If they save human labor only to pay those same costs in taxes for basic income then they should have invested in something else.

For the most part, the deployment of capital into robots can only happen if it is going to displace people.

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