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.
Bonus: Robots do not forget to wash their hands after a toilet break and do not spread hepatitis to the customers.
I would not say you are wrong. The current “construct” of our society likely fits your narrative to some extent.
Automation and AI has the potential to improve the human condition in many ways. It can increase the conveniences we enjoy in our every day life, improve many sectors of our economy lowering prices on everyday goods, and even improve our health (i.e. - preventative medicine where machines monitor our physiology and test us for common ailments or those we are at risk for). Combat during war will be more likely to involve autonomous or controlled machines vs human beings.
The downside for all of this will be that many in our nation will remain on entitlements funded by the few due to automation replacing many forms of labor. The political and social construct will fundamentally change as half of the country will have little opportunity, desire, or ability to find employment. Idle time and resentment of those with more “stuff” will likely continue to push our trajectory towards the left with dangerous consequences as politicians promote anger and division to gain political power.
Technology will change everything in ways we cannot fully comprehend.
“I’m sorry folks, Flippy has had another mechanical breakdown- we’re waiting on expert engineers to come fix it for us, so if you would quietly take a seat and wait, this shouldn’t take more than 3-4 hours- thank you for you4r patience”
And who pays taxes once most humans are replaced by machines?
Will machines pay taxes?
Or, will the few people whose jobs are not replaced by machines pays lots and lots of taxes?
Leasing. Got it. That usually includes some maintenance, but it might not cover breakdown.
Yes! I’d like some “big ass” fries!
“If they were paid more there would be competition for those jobs.”
You’d think that would be the case. But it’s not a very mentally engaging job and that doesn’t change because they throw you a extra buck or 2 per hour. Then you have to consider how much more you have to charge for “fast food” when your labor price structure goes up.
The burger and fast food robots have been around for a few years - The German Company, Festo has built an completely automated fast food operation. 50%+ of all minimum wage fast food jobs will be gone in the next 5 years.
They quoted a price to “buy it” but as you noted the real kicker here is maintenance. So Miso Robotics is quoting a $2,000 monthly fee that will include the maintenance. Pretty obvious that they are trying to get a unit in every franchise at a guaranteed, low-risk number. When these things ‘prove themselves’ and the restaurantuer see’s the actual maintenance overhead, the bigger franchises might go for a straight-purchase and create a technician position.
Jesse Jah-ckson would never...work at a fast food restaurant flipping burgers because that be reycist!
The good ones never stay in the front-line. The bad ones always get promoted, especially if they know the English language.
LOL! That’s an Oldie But Goodie! :)
That is the vision of the future that folks have had for quite some time. The robots will do the work and humans will recline in leisure. Someone has to build and program the robots however.
And what of the newly relaxed classes? They must earn their living somehow. Perhaps through programming, until all basic programming tasks are automated. Then what?
There’s an end game to be considered with that line of thought: Humans that don’t need to do anything to sustain themselves. Is that the goal?
I worked in Funeral Service in high school. 16-17 years old, wearing a suit and tie, driving a Lincoln Town Car (the boss’ car). Yep. No McDonald’s or Taco Bell for me.
A 3.00 USD job will get him/her 58 mexican pesos per hour. With an average between 8000 to 12000 Mexican pesos for the average income in Mexico, a worker in the US would only need to make 611 dollars on the high end and a little over 400 USD on the low end to equal what they make in Mexico. So a 3.00 job working 40 a week would put them into that range of the average monthly salary in Mexico. Suddenly for an illegal foreign worker having the mindset of making between 400 and 600 US dollars is not all that bad.
The logical tax base will be on goods and services themselves and not “employees” income.
However, given our recent history, they will continue to tax property and incomes.
The flow of money is easy to tax and we see this every day in our lives on most things we touch. However, you are correct to be concerned that we will have more takers (entitlements) than donors given our current income tax model.
All we can do is speculate about what it will look like and it is why we should be especially fearful of those who promote socialism or the “collective”.
This shows the utter Insanity of the liberal mindset. They START from a made-up idea of what life should be like and then try to bend economic reality to get us there. Here are some conservative principles (aka common sense) we must return to:
- There should be no minimum wages and almost no regulation of the workplace. Let employers and employees have the liberty to make agreements among themselves. Every job is taken voluntarily. The employee always knows the risks. The government has no role intervening in the employee/employer relationship.
- People should live on what they earn. Period. Full stop. We make that impossible by doing things look like imposing arbitrary standards on what is an “acceptable” dwelling and mandating that people cannot buy food that doesn’t pass government regulations. In many places around the world, people can and do survive on $1 or $2 per day. Here in the United States, we create government dependency so people can live the way they are told they’re “entitled” to live.
- Family autonomy was destroyed more than 100 years ago and the results have been a moral and humanitarian disaster for our society. Families used to lift ttemselves out of poverty by putting all family members to work — often starting at age four. Again, we’ve forced families into dependency instead of autonomy based on some “progressive,” arbitrary set of ethics based on no objective, God-given standard. We doom families to poverty and put their children in government indoctrination institutions so they grow up thinking that is normal.
- It might seem cruel to say this, but we need to be willing to let people starve. If we did, hunger would actually disappear. Back when people knew sloth equalled starvation, people didn’t starve. They found ways to feed themselves. Now, we absolutely refuse to let people starve, and people are hungrier than ever. They sit and wait for the government cheese and when that runs out, they don’t know how to manage.
At least fast food workers are willing to work.
They don’t stay because they usually find a better job.
Outside of criminal activity all work is honorable. You shouldn’t look down on people who work for a living.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.