Posted on 04/17/2016 8:02:26 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Robot Waiters Fired for Incompetence in China
Customers liked them, but they couldn't carry soup.
Adam Toobin April 6, 2016
The world may not be ready for restaurant robots — yet. At least two restaurants in Guangzhou, China have fired their teams of artificially intelligent robot waiters after discovering the machines were unable to keep up with their human staff.
“The robots weren’t able to carry soup or other food steady and they would frequently break down. The boss has decided never to use them again,” an employee at one of the restaurants told the Worker’s Daily.
The humanoid bots cost just over $7,700 and require maintenance and electrical bills of a few hundred bucks a year. That kind of cost-saving had the regular employees concerned about their jobs, but it was the robots themselves who wound up getting pink-slipped.
A third restaurant has let go off all but one of its robot staff, though it’s not totally clear whether it was actually a better worker than the others, or it was kept on staff for PR purposes.
“The robots can attract plenty of customers, but they definitely can’t reduce the need for human labor,” one restaurant’s owner said.
(Excerpt) Read more at inverse.com ...
The customers in the first photo are seated directly across from dirty dishes and open garbage bags? Hmm...
Maybe they should invest in some re-modeling, rather than kitschy robots!
These are crude prototypes which surely can be improved. They should not have been tried until they were perfected.
Replacing self serve with an ugly robot is STUPID.
ROBOT WAR about to start??
This will be more common with a min wage of $15.
The first suspects, if there were malfunctions, should be the human waiters. How do you say “Luddite” in Chinese?
The two ‘waiters’ in China seem to have protuberance in the proper place.
Did the ‘waiters’ pick their rest room and select their own gender?
The thing in US look weird.
The question is would ‘Laz’ hit the Chinese version?
I, for one, welcome our new incompetent Chinese robot waiter overlords.
I had a Chinese robot waiter today. She never smiled and did not say thank you when I paid her.
And they'd all be programmed to vote Democrat.
"Sorry sir. But how certain are you that I did not spit 10w-30 in your soup? Now eat it and shut up."
"Ruddite".
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