Posted on 03/01/2020 7:50:52 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
If your job is working at a restaurant flipping burgers you may soon find yourself replaced by a robot that works for only $3 an hour.
The new robot named Flippy developed by Miso Robotics costs less to employ than a minimum-wage worker. Currently, Miso Robotics charges an up-front fee of between $20,000 and $30,000 to install Flippy into restaurants.
The LA Times reports:
“As a result, Miso can offer Flippys to fast-food restaurant owners for an estimated $2,000 per month on a subscription basis, breaking down to about $3 per hour. (The actual cost will depend on customers’ specific needs). A human doing the same job costs $4,000 to $10,000 or more a month, depending on a restaurant’s hours and the local minimum wage. And robots never call in sick.“
According to Digital Trends, Flippy is a “burger-flipping robot arm that’s equipped with both thermal and regular vision, which grills burgers to order while also advising human collaborators in the kitchen when they need to add cheese or prep buns for serving.”
When Miso Robotics set out to create their first units, off-the-shelf robotic arms sold for upwards of $100,000. Today, they’re going for about $10,000 and are only getting cheaper, according to the LA Times. Get the latest from The Mind Unleashed in your inbox. Sign up right here.
In 2017, international chain CaliBurger was the first to install Flippy, which can flip 150 burgers an hour.
Flippy isn’t the first robot to take over the kitchen and it won’t be the last. It turns out Taco Bell was the first to use a robot in the kitchen with their “Automatic Taco Machine”—a long-forgotten relic from almost 30 years ago, because it failed due to too many problems. However, Taco Bell has given up on automation and is looking elsewhere in the form of self-ordering kiosks, which it had planned to install at all its 6,000+ locations across the United States by the end of 2019, according to Business Insider.
Last year international fast-food chain McDonald’s reported they would begin employing automated fryer robots throughout their different branches across the world. Former McDonald’s USA CEO Ed Rensi told Fox Business, “It’s cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who’s inefficient making $15 an hour bagging French fries.” McDonald’s has also introduced touchscreen ordering kiosks to some of its stores.
Restaurant chains that are using automation include McDonalds, KFC, Panera, Wendys, Dunkin’ Donuts, and Arbys according to Business Insider.
Meanwhile, in China e-commerce giant Alibaba has a chain of automated grocery stores with attached diners staffed by robot waiters that take your order. Real estate giant Country Garden Holdings recently opened its first fully robotic restaurant in Guangzhou, China where computers and robots handle ordering, food prep, serving, and even the cleaning of tables.
Robots aren’t just taking over restaurants, a report by the McKinsey Global Institute indicates there are 800 million careers (or 30 percent of the global job force)—from doctors to accountants, lawyers to journalists—that will be lost to automation by 2030. The report concludes that hundreds of millions of people worldwide will have to find new jobs or learn new skills.
A report by the University of Oxford suggests we will soon face a robot job apocalypse predicting that 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk of being replaced by robots and Artificial Intelligence over the next fifteen to twenty years.
$2000.00 a month rent... and $3.00 an hour... The restaurant would have to run flippy for 666 hours a month for it to work out to that.
replacing everyone with robot’s means less people that can afford hamburgers so the price will drop accordingly. The savings from labor will be passed on to the remaining consumers.
Maths is hard.
This has to be an exaggeration or I would have been working there......$120K per year
Where’s Bender? He show ‘em how it’s done.
The illegal can get a $3.00/hour job in many places in this country. The problem lies with HOW FAR with that $3.00/hour job get him?
If he lives in New York, the West Coast big cities or Chicago...he is DOOMED. He best work in Puckerbrush, Iowa, where he can do LOTS with $3.00/hour.
He sends home most of his money anyway and where HE'S from the Yankee $$ goes much farther.
So he will continue to enter this country ILLEGALLY and get what money he can. He has little to lose.
If illegals were PUNISHED for breaking the law then there would be FAR FEWER of them here.
The big problems then would be that families would have to:
take care of their own babies, children,
clean their own homes,
wash their own cars or take them through the auto car wash,
cook their own meals,
wash their own dishes or put them in the dishwasher AND THEN have to put them away,
make their own children lunches for school,
do their own laundry,
do their own grocery shopping,
mow their own lawns/take care of their own yards,
drive and pick up their own children to and from school,
do their own ironing,
do their own mending,
get gas for all their cars,
take in their cars for service,
get their dry cleaning taken in and picked up,
get their computers serviced/repaired,
my gawd, they'd have to EVEN sharpen their own pencils using, of course, the automatic pencil sharpener...and don't tell me that people don't use pencils anymore since EVERYONE on the planet mis-writes on occasion.
The list goes on and on. How can we BEAR to do all this MENIAL labor??? LET THE ILLEGALS STAY--- PLEASE!
No, arithmetic is hard.
Math is IMPOSSIBLE.
In some instances, this would be handy and practical.
Most the time, I like seeing the people behind the counter.
Our brief conversation adds to the experience of eating out.
Eventually, some restaurants and other retail businesses may realize the value of face to face commerce vs 100% button pushing.
Maintenance is not included here, is it?
The robot might be $10,0000 but that maintenance program will be at least that and probably triple that.
That robot will also need an expensive human supervisor. Those things cannot handle issues outside of their programming. So instead of a $50,000 manager, the restaurant will need to hire a $125,000 technical manager and probably several of those.
In other words, liberal policies will drive even cheap fast food restaurants out of business.
Minimum wage isn’t the minimum I have to pay you, it is the minimum job allowed to be performed. Jobs that are worth less are illegal.
Excellent plan, that’s why you’re the boss.
And it won’t give you Coronavirus.
“It will be a bloodbath. And it is coming.”
The insurance company where my daughter works as a claims adjuster is already incorporating more and more AI into her job duties.
Since the $1 burger is now nearly $2, with the $1 burger be $1 again? Naw, it’ll probably go to $2.50.
The pull quote that should make us all think and I have been saying this for years, especially on the topic of illegal immigration.
“A report by the University of Oxford suggests we will soon face a robot job apocalypse predicting that 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk of being replaced by robots and Artificial Intelligence over the next fifteen to twenty years.”
Our “economy” and labor market is going to fundamentally change in ways we are not yet beginning to comprehend. This will have a major impact on our nation and will swell the number of people living on entitlements as the job market shrinks.
Actually, it appears to be included.
The restaurants are leasing the robots a $2,000 per month.
It's happening already with automatic dishwashers and self-cleaning ovens in pretty much every home. I'm old enough to remember my poor mother scrubbing pots and pans and hand-washing dishes, as well has hanging laundry out on a clothesline as we had no dryer even. Oven cleaning was an all afternoon chore.
Consider the slave economy we had prior to the mid 19th Century. The slaves toiled all day long while the "masters" and "mistresses" reclined on front porches drinking mint juleps all day in white suits and dresses. Okay, I'm getting overly carried away here with the imagery. But we are headed back to those days. Only the robots are the new slaves, creating the wealth, while the human masters (now regardless of race and sex) recline on front porches, watching the corn pop up in rows while dinner is being prepared indoors.
Show me where I am wrong.
MacDonalds has been taking the fast out of fast food for several decades.
Minimum wage has never been meant to fully support anyone. It was an entry level wage. In the 60s, I started as a dishwasher for 75 cents an hour and worked my way into a job cooking. Even when I left college and enlisted in the Marines, my monthly pay before taxes was $124.50 which was about what I was making working part time and going to school. The difference was I was housed and fed although I was working three times as hard. That is how a young person learns responsibility and learns to work to achieve a better living. At least that used to be the case.
Robots in fast food will at least make the service a bit faster and more consistent. Any change is better. The snowflakes and politicians are putting a lot of people out of any work at all.
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