Robot baristas and AI chefs caused a stir at CES 2024 as casino union workers fear for their jobs : technology

[–] [email protected] 80 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I work in the casino industry (IT) and my organization has already purchased and deployed a bevy of products to replace people. We’ve been trying nearly everything we can since 2020 as calls for higher wages have gotten louder and the company has no interest in meeting that demand. We have machines that read incoming orders and make cocktails, machines making some of the food or at least helping, machines that deliver food to tables, automated floor cleaners, towel/supply delivering machines at the hotels, hybrid tables that are more of a zoom call than a table game, card printing machines, etc. We’ve cut hundreds of jobs at each location in the past few years.

The automation tools shown at CES and other conferences get bought, get tested, and get improved upon. Dont read these stories and articles and think it isn’t really happening, I’ve deployed a lot of it already and have projects in motion for more later this year as capital projects start up.

A lot of these jobs were extremely simple and not worth a human mind to use on anyway but… under our current system people need jobs. I’d like to see an introduction of better social support systems as we replace these jobs en masse.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I’d like to see an introduction of better social support systems as we replace these jobs en masse.

*cough* UBI *cough*

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Ideally yes, along with programs to teach people to take care of the machines that replace them. Currently my IT team is tasked with taking care of all these job replacers but without any addition to the IT team to make up for the extra work. Its unsustainable

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I work in government and we have systems that are planning on going live that will automate entire departments away coming in 2024-2025. It's not perfect but it is being iterated like you said. It's all about reducing headcount over the long run.

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[–] [email protected] 78 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

People freed from chores fear for their income. Guess it's about time for universal income.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (5 children)

People freed from chores fear for their income. Guess it’s about time for ~~universal income.~~ fully automated luxury gay space communism

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I really wanna hear what the proposal is for removing "unqualified" jobs en masse without implementing universal basic income.

The low pay and bad conditions of "unqualified" jobs often gets excused because they, allegedly, are "stepping stones", a means of sustaining oneself while working towards more specialized careers.

If you destroy a significant amount of those positions, where does that leave those people? Are we so drunk on cyberpunk-esque lust of AI evolution that we are fine eliminating the means of entry to society for so many?

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

You're making a fundamentally bad assumption: that this is in any way "good faith".

The billionaires and giant corporations can make more money by employing less people. That's it.

It's limitless greed. They don't care about living wages or "stepping stones" or funding the country or how many people get thrown out onto the street. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but it's the truth and we're all witnessing it. This is capitalism run amok: They can become even richer and nothing matters more than that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

We don't have to let corporations rule us. If voters weren't so fucking brainwashed we could make a system that works for everyone. I'm hoping at some point it will be too obvious for anytime not to notice that a system where give swathes of the population are just left to starve isn't something we can tolerate.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The solution is - instead of rejecting technology, which isn't going anywhere and will only progress and can't be stopped, because under capitalism it will lead to workers starving - we reject capitalism.

It's literally the only way that would actually prevent people from suffering (and significantly help the planet, too).

https://www.globallearning-cuba.com/blog-umlthe-view-from-the-southuml/marx-on-automated-industry

https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/mar/18/fully-automated-luxury-communism-robots-employment

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The problem is that humans are really bad at caring for unproductive people. If you use wealth generated by natural resources as a proxy for wealth generated by robot labor, humans have a bad record of distributing the material wealth.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

humans are really bad at caring for unproductive people.

That's a current, not fundamental, observation.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

On the family level, you see some supporting of other family members. However, it becomes a lot harder as you go beyond people's immediate kin.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

Thank you for including those links. I especially liked this part of the conclusion:

So the transformation from capitalism to socialism requires political action by the working class, in order that it can establish structures necessary for the transition to socialism. Just as the merchant class during feudalism could discern its long-range interests in the full realization of factory production, the working class must discern its interest in the full emancipatory implications of automated industry. And just as the merchant class became a revolutionary bourgeoisie, the working class must become a revolutionary class that acts politically to establish a new type of society on a foundation of automated industry.

If anyone is curious, it's a short read and a good overview.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

The low pay and bad conditions of “unqualified” jobs often gets excused because they, allegedly, are “stepping stones”, a means of sustaining oneself while working towards more specialized careers.

If you destroy a significant amount of those positions, where does that leave those people?

This is happening not just in “unqualified” jobs. A good chunk of junior level professional positions are evaporating too. High functionality automation has taken a bite out of lots of IT jobs. I look at my own path in rising in IT and see it largely doesn't exist anymore.

I don't have any answers as far as what the end game of this looks like or what could or should be brought to bear to change course. I'm thinking there will be small pockets of seasoned IT professionals that are kept on to maintain system/processes until those age out and are replaced. This could take decades at the normal pace of giant corporations and government.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

When it comes to IT, it's important to keep things in perspective, there's a limit on how much it can be impacted. It may be able to give you the foundations of that Python code you need, but it sure as hell won't be able to make sense of the fucking mess that your organization has made out of the venvs (I won't either, but sssshhhhhh). I think most if not all of IT specialties have that kind of situation.

If there's anything my time in IT has taught me, is that any solution or paradigm change that gets introduced doesn't really outpace the difficulties and challenges that are constantly emerging, and more often than not they create their own positions without completely eliminating the ones they are trying to streamline/replace. You introduce Ansible to automate and streamline the configuration of your storage systems, you think the people that were doing the deployment and config until now are now obsolete... Joke's on you, you now need both the Ansible dev as well as the guys that were already in charge of deployment and configuration, because inevitably something goes wrong periodically, something needs to be adapted to the particularities of the environment, or any other number of other things.

In the short term, yeah, maybe some entry positions might be affected under the direction of directives with lack of foresight, but I hope that, in the end, it won't end up being as severe as we expect, or at least that there will be an eventual course correction.

Do not despair at 100% is what I'm trying to say.

Only like, 70%.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

If it's anything like Maggie's legacy in the UK. It just leads to generations of poverty and society degradation that even now don't look like they will be reversed. Like it's mad that life was better when people crawled in a hole to mine coal by hand.

But hey it least it was an excuse for a party when she died.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

We already have fully automatic coffee machines - and they make shit coffee. Adding a robotic arm will not help because it's not about mechanical control it's about getting the process right and consistently repeatable. And that can be done without AI if anyone wanted to invest enough money.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Most coffee places use automatic coffee machines, as long as they have good beans the coffee is good. Getting the correct weight of grounds and tamping them down is not a process difficult to automate.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I'm from Australia, and visit Germany regularly.

Australian coffee is sublime. Made manually, it's a profession of pride for many, and in all my travels to many countries, the coffee of Australia has never been bested.

German coffee is made through exact, automated machines, and it's crap. It's some of the worst coffee I've experienced.

Machine after machine, I've tried them all, and I've given up.

I don't know what the human does, but whatever they do that the machine is not doing, makes av huge difference, and no manufacturer has cracked the magic formula yet.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 11 months ago

I can't help but feel like your sampling might be skewed.

Vollautomaten (I. E. Fully automated coffee machines that brew espressos and cappuccinos etc) tend to make worse coffee, I agree. That's why I don't use the one in the office.

Having an experienced barista grind you an exactly measured dose fresh for your coffee at a good Café is quite nice, on the other hand.

But that's nothing to do with Germany or Australia.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Experienced humans know all the variables - roast levels, grind size, water temperature, slight differences in timing depending on exact coffee in question... And more importantly they can apply them intuitively without mentally processing each variable separately.

Machines could do all that but such a machine would need good programming (expensive) and a lot of sensors (expensive).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

In the long run machines are cheaper (also don't take days off nor try to unionize), which is why many companies are looking to automate things with AI or just robots in general.

In assuming that it's simply impossible for a machine to accurately follow the same process as a person and make quality coffee (in his own subjective judgement), @makingStuffForFun sounds much like wine snob to me.

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[–] Qwaffle_waffle 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

So you're saying there's a chance? How far away do you estimate this threshold is reached? My personal guess would be within 15-20 years.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It already happened 15-20 years ago for 90% of people.

Coffee snobs (myself included) sometimes forget that the vast majority of people just want a cup of brown that makes them feel slightly less like shit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Cup of tan for me, please.

Coffee to creamer ratio should be approximately 1:1.

:p

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I went to a donut shop once (sugar isn’t my thing, especially early morning, so yes, once) on my way to work at 3:30am, and ordered a coffee “the color of a plain or egg bagel before toasting” and they actually got my milk ratio spot on.

This was a very long time ago in my early 20s, and I like the coffee flavor more now; I drink coffee in soup bowl cups, which are appx 4cups. I milk and sugar the first cup (1/4 cup whole milk, 1 heaping tbsp sugar) and top off with plain coffee every inch or so as I drink it or it cools, so whatever’s in the first flavor cup is all I use.

I know some people like black coffee, and that’s great for them, but I need to cut the bitter to get the pleasant flavor, and milk and sugar are exactly it. I can do without one or the other, but not both.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

I've had the opposite experience, my regular coffee shop uses an automatic machine. They have the best espresso in the area, it might help that they roast their own beans.

[–] Radium 9 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

You are objectively wrong about coffee. You are leaving out a whole world of variables that easily effect the coffee and are the difference between a bad coffee shop and a great one. Water quality, water temperature, grind size, grind consistency, tamp pressure, bed consistency are all huge and we haven’t even gotten to roasting the beans, dialing in an espresso machine for a certain bean, etc…

Most coffee shops use automatic machines for their drip coffee and nothing else

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

I didn't leave the other variables out. A human in the loop doesn't change grind size or consistency. A human in the loop doesn't change water quality, or temperature. A human in the loop won't change bean quality.

Tamp pressure is more consistent with automated machines vs humans. It is much easier to dial in a shot for particular beans/roast, you can literally dial it in, that's why coffee shops use automatic machines. Those machines are not the cheap ones they can cost up to $10k. Over half the coffee shops in my area use automatic machines.

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[–] [email protected] 37 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This would be good news in less shit economic system where access to food/shelter etc isn't tied to employment.

We need to focus less on protecting jobs, and more on protecting people.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The problem is that any job is going to be targeted for automation in high income countries because the cost of the worker is going to be far higher than the equipment.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The problem is the system that requires people to have jobs just to live.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, but it is going to be an adjustment for society to decide what to do when a large segment of the population will never be economically or otherwise productive.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Coffee machines and drink dispensers are already a thing, though?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

My grandma used to go to people's houses in the morning and brew pour-over coffee for them and put it in an old school Thermos. Mr. Coffee killed her job and she killed herself the following year.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

That's what i was thinking. Bean to cup coffee machines...

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago

"Technology was a strike issue and one of the very last issues to be resolved,” said Ted Pappageorge, the Culinary Workers Union's secretary-treasurer who led the teams that negotiated new five-year contracts, narrowly averting a historic strike at more than a dozen hotel-casinos on the Strip."

The thing is, once robots are good enough to replace the workers, the hotels won't care about the strike. So now 5 years from now, if the robots are good enough than the jobs are gone.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago (3 children)

I've been hearing talk of mechanised coffee makers/baristas taking over for over 20 years now. In this current AI hype environment it's pretty easy to believe that now's the time. And sometimes hype can make that happen if everyone believes it's the time for it.

I'm not in the robotics space but I can imagine that more pervasive ML and/or DL techniques can bring the field forward. Whether they translates to better automatic coffee machines though? I think I'm doubtful just because of how much of the job is random fine motor control stuff. Though, to be fair, so many coffee places, even good ones, have so much variance in the quality of their product that they don't control for because they don't have to that I can see machines doing on average a better job in many cases ... where again, with AI hype, people may just be happy to accept and embrace that. I'd certainly go try coffee from a coffee robot now.

Which of course gets to the potentially oncoming reality for a lot of people ... climate change + job automation ... over a 5-30 year time scale, shit's about to get whack.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Crazy to read about the McDonald's where you don't interact with anyone but pretty sure they still have people in the back cooking the food

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Oh yea ... and happening more and more.

Just a local burger joint near me started installing automatic ordering interfaces/computers. At first I was confused that it'd be worth it for them as they don't have the most amount of business. Then I realised that their demand spikes massively and is rather variable. So, instead of hiring people for shifts that are too long such that they will just stand around for most of it ... they're investing in machines so that what little staff they can afford can be stretched more during peak demand times.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago

I think the only time I've ever seen/heard of robots in jobs like this that I can accept would be how in one cafe in Tokyo where disabled people pilot robot staff. If anything, that's the best solution for robotic staff doing customer service jobs if it ever comes down to all humans are replaced by robots.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

These were the jobs most people thought would be replaced first, not the creative ones, how the tables turn.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Some of that turn is physical plant. Kitchens, especially, are built to serve human forms, where tech solutions to food prep would rather be stand-alone boxes. It's a far harder problem to make a robot that uses a restaurant's existing grills, ovens, and deep fryers than it is to make a box that turns out perfect french fries. It's a riskier proposal for a restaurant to replace its fry station, where a human can make fries, onion rings, egg rolls, or whatever new fad hits tiktok, with a fries-and-rings-only box with less than 10 years commercial proof. Generative AI, for all its faults, is just code that runs on a computer you already have, or maybe in a cloud service with zero physical footprint. Relative to replacing your barista with a vending machine, trying ChatGPT for a quarter or two is practically zero risk.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

It’s likely going to be implemented, despite the human cost.

Then, like automated check out lanes, they’ll be discarded for a new shiny, or a return to meat sack checkers, whichever is cheaper.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

How can't you see this coming? You can see this coming from a mile away. Welcome to the world of tomorrow!

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Robots don't tell the press when the owner has it use ground up sheet rock instead of flour.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Then bones

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