Wendy's to install robotic kiosks across 6,000 restaurants

originally posted by: ugmold
a reply to: xuenchen
I bet you will be first in-line :-)

Actually I prefer Human.

Especially when you order raw onion on a burger and they don't understand what you mean.

a reply to: burdman30ott6

The point is not about an individual business solution. The idea is that to do this eventually will be self-defeating on a macro level.

We could do a lot of things but they have consequences

To allow every societal decision be based on an individuals personal profit motive is dangerous.

If one doesn’t see that then its no way to explain it to them

a reply to: Willtell

I'd add foolish, short-sighted, and entropic.

a reply to: alomaha

Automation isn't a bad thing especially with the threat of minimum wage increase. I see the two as separate issues. Automation may be costly for all of society on the front end, but as a staunch futurist it's a mode of progress that will ultimately open the doors for many other avenues in society (not immediately) this is a glass half full and a glass half empty debate. I do not see mechanizing as a bad thing for society like I said on the front end it may be a heavy burden but eventually it will be the best thing we ever did. Thank you for your kind words, but hey smart people can be wrong too and perhaps this is one of those times where I am wrong.

We let businesses outsource jobs and now millions of lower and middle class people are out of jobs. As well in the tech industry

(This, btw, is what Trump is talking about. Though I doubt his sincerity, but this is Trump’s main issue. Trump blames the Chinese and Mexicans but its not them its the corporations and their greed)

When does it stop?

When were all waiters…but no their even taking that away

Maybe we can be all butlers or maids

No they’ll soon have robots

I see a dystopian world with a few rich people and being served like a paradise and they won’t need poor or workers anymore

It’s called:

THE NEW WORLD ORDER!!!!

uncle kurt was right, as usual

nfluences In a 1973 interview Vonnegut discussed his inspiration to write the book:[9] I was working for General Electric at the time, right after World War II, and I saw a milling machine for cutting the rotors on jet engines, gas turbines. This was a very expensive thing for a machinist to do, to cut what is essentially one of those Brâncuși forms. So they had a computer-operated milling machine built to cut the blades, and I was fascinated by that. This was in 1949 and the guys who were working on it were foreseeing all sorts of machines being run by little boxes and punched cards. Player Piano was my response to the implications of having everything run by little boxes. The idea of doing that, you know, made sense, perfect sense. To have a little clicking box make all the decisions wasn't a vicious thing to do. But it was too bad for the human beings who got their dignity from their jobs.

originally posted by: pl3bscheese
a reply to: burdman30ott6

A return on their investment by what means? In what way are they investing. You know for some people, operating a business is about providing a service for their community, and not a mere means to maximize capital gains.

Happy talk and nonsense. A business can only "serve the community" if it is successful. That business owner has to make a living off the business, or he won't be in business. OF COURSE he'll say he's "serving the community" and I dare say that many successful businesses do give back. The biggest auto dealer in town, not a beloved business in most people's eyes, just built an entire library for the local community college after the old one's roof fell in. That owner is not working seven days a week simply to "provide jobs to residents." That's a happy effect if he is successful. Those are "living wage jobs" because a certified auto mechanic is worth it and the business, as a whole, is well-run. But that business owner does not owe anyone a job. he does not owe a "living wage job" to the high school student who comes in after school for a couple of hours and washes the cars.

a reply to: xuenchen

Shiiiiiiit, Ill use the machines. Fact: I get better service from several machines on a daily basis then the dense entitled humans that they replaced.


Cashiers are frequently double scanning my merchandise, or going too slow, or busy chatting with another cashier to work quickly. Solution: The self checkout! What a blessing it has been those self service checkout machines.

#2, THE CAR WASH
Two different car washes in my immediate vicinity. The manned one with like twenty people detailing the cars, and the automated one. The manned one is constantly pushing me to upgrade when I have already insisted on the option I want. If I said no twice, dont ask me 3 more times. Then, because I only go for the wash and do the detailing myself when I get home, they want to get upset that I did not tip them for wiping the vehicle down with towels after it already went through the air dryer. Like, I already paid for the services rendered, dont ask me to pay you for something I did not request.

The automated wash is much simpler. The screen has all the options from high to low with an explanation of the services. I give it the exact amount, it says thank you, please proceed. I come out the other end, park in a space for the free vacuum, Im done.

Machines always suck over the phone, but lately I have been finding that in person, they regularly offer me better service than the slack jawed zombies who cant even read my Taco Bell order correctly. And they want $15 an hour for a job they cannot even do right at 9$ ???

Well, basically, if they think I will buy the occasional FF dish made by a robot, especially with the obvious motivation to not pay their workers a decent wage that can help support themselves and families, the managers can eat all they want. I won't ever go back there if this happens. Too bad as well, as they have (had) fairly decent burgers.

originally posted by: pl3bscheese
a reply to: CynConcepts

That's basically what the "cloud" provides for many of these businesses. It means a lot of different things depending on what you're after, but overall the concerns of shrinking IT departments due to automation is legit. See I went around that by going the entrepreneur IT guy. I find startups that have a solid idea, but can't quite market it yet to investors, offer my monies and services, and mostly learn it as I go with increasingly larger projects, setting them up, taking a piece of the pie, and then moving onto the next.

If you're a jack of all trades in IT, and willing to take big risks bypassng the corporate madness, then you can still be relevant for some time yet.

I don't know much about the hardware side beyond managing my own servers but if international wages are anything to go by for the CS side of things (programmers, systems engineers, etc), you should expect that field to fall quite a bit over the next decade or two. It's really only the US where that field is highly paid. Being a mid level programmer should get you around $175k in total compensation in the US right now if you're living in NYC or SF (or 90k somewhere reasonable), but it's only 50k if you go by the wages in the UK, or Japan or many other nations.

Being realistic though, that's not going to be the majority of jobs. The company making the kiosks is going to have 1 or 2 teams of a handful of people writing the software for their products, maybe 20 people. Then they're going to have a small team of support technicians to fix things when they're broken, and then a small team to do incremental upgrades and maintenance, and then some other assorted people and management. I bet that for every 1000 kiosks there's only 100 jobs returned and that the majority of those jobs are going to be low paying, using the analogy before a kiosk technician is basically their version of a geek squad technician... it's not a highly paid job.

originally posted by: Willtell
We let businesses outsource jobs and now millions of lower and middle class people are out of jobs. As well in the tech industry

(This, btw, is what Trump is talking about. Though I doubt his sincerity, but this is Trump’s main issue. Trump blames the Chinese and Mexicans but its not them its the corporations and their greed)

When does it stop?

When were all waiters…but no their even taking that away

Maybe we can be all butlers or maids

No they’ll soon have robots

I see a dystopian world with a few rich people and being served like a paradise and they won’t need poor or workers anymore

It’s called:

THE NEW WORLD ORDER!!!!

That dystopian world still requires the poor to have purchasing power though. Those poor create demand for the products the rich create. If they have no ability to purchase the products then the rich have no ability to sell their products and bring in revenue. This is why basic incomes are essentially a necessity with a high wealth inequality. A persons contribution isn't in how much money they circulate through the economy, it's in how many minutes of labor their needs/wants/desires demand the economy provide.

originally posted by: Konduit
The future looks friendly...

WHy...did you post that... I had nightmares of that scene with the female robot/persons brain in a robot body. Those filthy humans deserved what they got in the matrix's world. The machines were treated worse than any jew was treated by hitler in that universe.

WHat disturbed me the most was the cruelty on display by supposed fellow humans. This is why if i ever get the chance im getting a cyborg body so i can stop feeling connected to such barbaric creatures.

originally posted by: DBCowboy
a reply to: xuenchen

If I were young, I'd be training to be a kiosk-robot-technician.

$12/hr job most likely, I can't imagine it's very difficult.

What did Liberals who SHOUT about $15 dollars an hour think would happen?????

??????????

What, is this some Utopia where certain wages are paid to you because you scream loud enough? You think "The Market" answers to YOU?

With Obamacare on the verge of defaulting by the new Federal Court judgment, with Payroll taxes being as high as they are, with energy and licensing restrictions, penalties, local and state taxes....I'll be surprised if in the not too future, most businesses don't automate more.

So bizarre. Liberals always talk about the impending doom of automation...and they do everything to make it happen.

Oh well, Dystopia is AWESOME!

a reply to: BatheInTheFountain

All this really highlights is how utterly flawed and close to collapse the capitalistic world we live in is.

The quicker we move away from capitalism and money and greed the quicker we can advance our species into more than just consuming, barbaric beings.

Star Trek had the most ideal vision of our future

originally posted by: BatheInTheFountain
What did Liberals who SHOUT about $15 dollars an hour think would happen?????

??????????

What, is this some Utopia where certain wages are paid to you because you scream loud enough? You think "The Market" answers to YOU?

Not a liberal, but I'm on the side of $15/hour. It looks like for that $15/hour we're going to get an expansion to our robotics sector, maybe catch up to the rest of the world in automation, and have a few "decent" paying jobs for people on the low end of the scale. I call that a win even if it does come with unemployment, because progress means we would have that unemployment in a few years anyways.

Before the debate rages too far...this is the inevitable outcome, regardless of the minimum wage. If I've said it once, I've said 1000 times on ATS - just as soon as the PTB can replace us with robots, they will.

Read a stat a month or so ago that basically said that 80% of the job that kids today will eventually work at, haven't even been thought of yet.

a reply to: Aazadan

I'm not a developer. I design systems for fault-tolerance, and high availability without breaking the bank. What you get out of me is a passionate guy that's no-bs solution oriented, seeing the vision you have for your software, putting it on an accelerated course for deployment.

I take people who have most of what it takes, but need some support to get off the ground level. People like me are invaluable.

all you cheering on the defeat of the $15 minimum wage, you realize there are still people working at these stores, right ?

these kiosks replace about 2 jobs per store

there is still going to be a battle for decent wages

sorry