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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?

#141

Post by Suncho »

By definition, all labor-saving technology costs jobs. That is, unless you do something to compensate for it, like produce more total stuff than you used to. And, of course, more total stuff will only get made if people are willing to spend more money to buy the additional stuff.

There's only a problem if we're expecting people to get that money from... wait for it... jobs. So let's lower interest rates and make it easier for everyone to borrow money. That will boost spending and create jobs! What could possibly go wrong?

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

#143

Post by strken »

deepGem wrote: post #122
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.

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

Some believe that a human life has intrinsic value, even outside the value of the species as a whole and even outside the value of that human's labour.

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

#144

Post by bluedino »

statictype wrote: post #29
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…

What's different is that the button was being pushed by a human. That human gets paid a salary and earns a living. And that human could presumably choose not to push the button if the expresso machine tries to become sentient (in theory).

Real-life George Jetson

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

#145

Post by Ensorceled »

merraksh wrote: post #114
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".

Not sure why you are being downvoted. Perhaps because ageism is still a borderline ok form of discrimination?

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

#146

Post by LeifCarrotson »

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…

It's because it's way, way cheaper and more flexible to use a touchscreen PLC, like one of these:

https://www.automationdirect.com/adc/Shopping/Catalog/HMI_(H...

than a huge mess of buttons and wires.

Just look at that linked product! Less than $500 and you have as many buttons and labels as you can shake a stick at, and it's all behind a pretty color display. I can hardly buy 3 buttons, a vinyl overlay, and pay for the labor for the wiring of that stuff (plus the PLC that you'd now need behind it all) for $500. Much less pay someone to make physical modifications to the completed machine when someone decides they need 4 buttons.

You say it's the fault of the "UI designers" who think they're working with pixels and X/Y coordinates. The situation far worse than that! The person who writes the UI for these is probably an EE thinking in terms of the primitive ladder logic that drives the machine. And it doesn't help that the software you use to configure these things is pretty terrible.

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

#147

Post by dhmeyers »

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…

What does refusing to navigate a bad UI have to do with being a "technophobe"?

User interfaces (and webshit) aren't technology.

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

#148

Post by sharemywin »

merraksh wrote: post #114
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".

If your talking about my Dad he wouldn't be eating salad anyway.

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

#149

Post by FussyZeus »

Maybe this particular robot won't cost jobs (though I have doubts about that, but we'll grant it) but other robots will. I don't understand how there's even a sort-of discussion between the author and their audience about "Do robots cost jobs" of course they bloody do, that's the point, those robots are sold to the businesses that buy them on the idea that they're going to reduce labor costs, that's the point. Restaurants have been serving us filthy salads out of bars for decades, do you think they suddenly had an attack of conscience about it? Of course not, having that machine means a whole host of things the employees don't have to do, that's why they bought it. It may not cost anyone a job right now, but it will be contributing to that down the line.

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

#150

Post by FussyZeus »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #146
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…

It's because it's way, way cheaper and more flexible to use a touchscreen PLC, like one of these: https://www.automationdirect.com/adc/Shopping/Catalog/HMI_(H... than a huge mess of buttons and wires. Just look at that linked product! Less than $500 and you have as many buttons and labels as you can shake a stick at, and it's all behind a pretty color display. I can hardly buy 3 buttons, a vinyl overlay, and pay for…

Honestly I have zero beef with touchscreen interfaces, some are a little clunky but I've never found one I couldn't figure out.

That said, DUMP THE GODDAMN RESISTIVE SCREENS IN THE TRASH. Seriously those things were fucking garbage when they were invented, now that we have capacitive screens, there is NO REASON WHATSOEVER to keep making me endure the touch technology of 2001.

While we're at it get them out of my fucking car too.

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