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New machine about to replace ALL fast food workers -- and why that's awesome!

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See the machine that prepares the burger to order without making mistakes!

Fast food workers, say goodbye to that grimy job with surly guests and overbearing managers. Your fight for $15 is over. No, you didn't win, someone has invented a machine that makes hamburgers better and faster than you do.

Highlights

By Marshall Connolly (CALIFORNIA NETWORK)
CALIFORNIA NETWORK (https://www.youtube.com/c/californianetwork)
4/14/2016 (7 years ago)

Published in Technology

Keywords: fast food, $15, workers, machine, robot, AI

LOS ANGELES, CA (California Network) - There's a new machine that makes hamburgers better than any person can. A company called Momentum Machines claims to have perfected a robot grill that cooks hamburgers better than humans, serving a fresh one every 10 seconds.

The machine is so sophisticated it can grind and mix beef to order. It slices pickles and tomatoes at the last moment so the customer gets the freshest burger possible. Finally, it bags the burger so humans are wholly removed from the process. Combine this with touchscreen ordering and the only need  for humans now is to clean and stock the restaurant and to deal with exceptional circumstances. One or two people could run an entire fast food joint, cutting employer costs to virtually nothing.

The machine is being marketed as a job killer. The creators are proud of the fact and say, the "device isn't meant to make employees more efficient. It's meant to completely obviate them." They add, "It does everything employees do, except better."


Oddly enough, the invention of this machine is a blessing for everyone. The cost savings will help struggling employers in the restaurant industry to turn a better profit. This is important because restaurants already operate on thin margins as it is.

Customers will be netter served more rapidly with less risk of error. Few things are as frustrating has being held in lane waiting for fast food, or arriving home to find your meal isn't what you ordered.


For employees, most who will be pink-slipped, this may sound like a disaster, but it's actually great news. Low wage jobs like fast food work pay so little the workers qualify for public assistance. The jobs also feature highly variable schedules, and mind-numbing, repetitive labor. In other words, these jobs provide very little value to the workers. Now, workers can seek education or better quality work elsewhere.

For the best employees, human hands will still be needed to clean and stock the store, as well as to deal with unusual requests and circumstances. Wages for these employees should rise because they will be of a higher caliber of skill, be capable of working with and maintaining the new robot, and will provide a crucial human element to the customer's experience. Fast food work will no longer be minimum wage work.

As the robots get smarter and more capable, more jobs will be replaced. This is the inevitable march of artificial intelligence into the workplace. And this new revolution is peculiar, because unlike previous revolutions in industry, this revolution will not create very many new jobs.

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Already, estimates show that for every 200 jobs replaced by automation, just 1 new job is created.

Regardless is that is an accurate statistic or not, there is expected to be a net increase in unemployment.

What will we do with these people? This is an important question, and we need to be careful how we answer it because within the next few decades the vast majority of jobs performed by people today could be replaced by robots and AI. Particularly vulnerable are jobs where people believe they are immune to replacement. For example, a robot recently created a work of art that is indistinguishable from an original Rembrandt. If am artificial intelligence can paint as well as a master artist, there may be few things it cannot also do later.

Subsidized college or technical school could help these displaced workers, and possibly someday you, to retrain for a new job in the new economy. Other options include a guaranteed basic income so people will have enough to survive at a basic level, and can then concentrate their energy on something they choose. This option can lead to new invention and entrepreneurship.

What is certain is that fast food workers are about to be replaced. It may take several years for these machines appear in fast food joints, but the day will soon come. Once the printing press was invented, it replaced handwritten copy. Nobody went back from there. You can expect to see the same with your hamburgers.

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