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Burger-Flipping Robot Will Grill Meat in 50 Fast Food Restaurants

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday September 14 2017, @02:23PM   
from the how-many-hours-@-$15 dept.

MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd

The kitchen assistant, known as 'Flippy', was designed by a startup called Miso Robotics which specializes in "technology that assists and empowers chefs to make food consistently and perfectly, at prices everyone can afford."

[...] Flippy uses feedback-loops that reinforce its good behavior so it gets better with each flip of the burger. Unlike an assembly line robot that needs to have everything positioned in an exact ordered pattern, Flippy's machine learning algorithms allow it to pick uncooked burgers from a stack or flip those already on the grill. Hardware like cameras helps Flippy see and navigate its surroundings while sensors inform the robot when a burger is ready or still raw. Meanwhile, an integrated system that sends orders from the counter back to the kitchen informs Flippy just how many raw burgers it should be prepping.

Flippy in action!

Source: http://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/burger-robot-flipping-meat-0432432/

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Original Submission

• Re:And a bunch more jobs are lost (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 15 2017, @07:03PM

  by khallow (3766) on Friday September 15 2017, @07:03PM (#568627) Journal

  First off, cost restraints have very little to do with hiring practices. Businesses fluctuated in size and when there's a cut back in the amount of work being done, that doesn't mean that there's necessarily a cut back in the number of employees. It also doesn't guarantee that when there are cutbacks that those cutbacks come from deadwood. Cut backs tend to come in response to budget and there isn't necessarily the correct number of jobs cut. A large business can carry a surprising number of employees that are technically doing something, but not necessarily something that's useful.

  I see how we've gone from claiming that every business has useless people to "it doesn't guarantee". I never made the argument that businesses are perfectly efficient at allocating work.

  Secondly, of course you can do that. It just requires that you actually provide some incentives to people to go looking. Under the current system where we pay employees by the hour, of course they're not going to be looking for ways of saving time. Saving time either renders themselves redundant or it results in being asked to do more work. But, if we let employees actually go home early if they've finished the work for the day, you'd be shocked at how much less time was spent at the office. And the results would probably be as good as what we're getting. In some cases, the amount of hours the employees work is counterproductive, as in they get less work done than if they had gone home hours earlier.

  I don't buy this feelgood. Let us keep in mind that businesses already have huge incentives to employ their employees as efficiently as possible. If they're not doing it now, they're not going to do it under your scenario.

  Thirdly, that's an ad hominem. Collectively, we have more than enough money to make that happen. But, it would require actually taking away the incentives to rack up obscene levels of wealth. Considering that the richest 10% of Americans holds more wealth than the bottom 75% of the households, we could drastically reduce the numbers of hours worked without having any particular issues.

  Those incentives to rack up obscene levels of wealth also are incentives to rack up obscene numbers of good jobs.

  If you can't see the train coming, then you're probably the dumbest person on the planet. Paying people to do busy work only works out when there's a small portion of the work. You can't expect people to spend 20 or more hours a week on pointless bullshit without there being consequences. Better to just pay for the remaining time and let them have time off and possibly hobbies.

  Smart and dumb looks the same to the ignorant. We'll see what actually happens, right?

  Parent