Robot Burger Update

Momentum Machines' robot delivers a burger

Earlier this month I wrote an essay on the issue of technological unemployment, "Hello Robots, Goodbye Fry Cooks." It featured an unusual press release from a company called Momentum Machines. The essay attracted a significant amount of attention and was subsequently picked up by the technology blog Cyborgology.

Momentum Machines touted in its release the benefits of a hamburger-making robot that would make it possible for fast food restaurants to get rid of all their line cooks, saving the "Quick Service Restaurant" (QSR) industry billions of dollars annually in labor costs. 

At the same time the release expressed the company's desire to help displaced line cooks find new jobs as engineers by offering opportunities for discounted technical education. The release also cited the theories of economists who have long argued that technological advance eventually produces more rather than less employment.

My essay questioned some of those assumptions and described a brief email exchange I'd had with the president of Momentum Machines, Alexandros Vardakostas.

This morning on a whim I looked in on the Momentum Machines web site and discovered that its original press release has been changed.

The original, somewhat inflammatory headline ("The Restaurant Industry Is The Most Labor Intensive Industry In The Country; Our Technology Can Save The QSR Industry $9 Billion/Year In Wages.") has been replaced by a friendlier claim:

Our Technology Will Democratize Access to High Quality Food

Making It Available to the Masses

A subhead elaborates on this theme: "Fast food doesn’t have to have a negative connotation anymore. With our technology, a restaurant can offer gourmet quality burgers at fast food prices."

Much of the original copy remains, with an occasional tweak. For example, the company still promises that its machine will make it possible to replace all the line cooks in a restaurant, but now the point is made that what management saves in labor can be spent on higher-quality ingredients. 

The new release still promises to help train cooks displaced by its technology (no details offered), and still endorses the historical economic argument that advances in technology ultimately produce increases in employment. It ignores the rash of recent articles, cited in my essay, that question whether the sorts of radical advances now being realized in automation technologies might make those historical arguments obsolete.

Note also that since my essay appeared, the CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes presented a piece addressing the same issues, and asking the same question.

Photo credit: Gizmag

©Doug Hill, 2013

 

Cyborgology and Me

Just a note to say that the wonderful technology blog Cyborgology has posted my two recent essays on technological autonomy, the first on the dilemma of nuclear power in Japan, the second on global sales of snack foods and SUVs.

Many thanks to PJ Rey for opening the door.





Image credit: Grandfather Smiles

Technology Fixing Technology

 

One of my many unappealing qualities is a propensity to say "I told you so!" This comes to mind because yesterday the New York Times ran an article that affirmed the conclusion of a recent essay of mine for the technology blog, Cyborgology. I hasten to add that my conclusion was hardly earth-shattering; still, it's always nice to see science weighing in on the side of common sense.

The subject of my essay (an adaptation of an earlier essay posted here) was the problem of taking effective action to stop global warming in the face of our utter dependence on the technologies that cause global warming. After describing the various forces that comprise what I call "de facto technological autonomy," I noted that some scientists, in desperation, are beginning to examine various geoengineering techniques that might be used to reverse the problem without having to radically reduce emissions of carbon dioxide.  

After listing a couple of examples of the exotic techniques being contemplated, my essay came to the following conclusion:

One looks for hope where one can find it, but the problem here is obvious: Even if they did work for the purposes intended, nobody knows what the unintended results of such radical measures might be. Technological autonomy is a process that proceeds without regard to original intention.

Two weeks after that essay posted, the Times' Justin Gillis reported on two new studies in the journal Nature Climate Change, both predicting that significant complications would almost certainly arise from the deployment of geoengineering techniques. Those complications range from unpredictable disruptions of various environmental processes to uneven distribution of the effects of geoenginnering, which could be a source of new international tensions.

Gillis' article concluded as follows:  

The bottom line of these studies is that even as they dive into research questions on geoengineering, scientists are perhaps inevitably coming to the conclusion that we would be better off limiting our emissions now rather than handing future generations a mess that may not be at all easy to clean up.

The Environment vs. Technological Autonomy

Just a note to say that Cyborgology published my essay today on the environmental implications of technological autonomy. The basic question addressed: Can we control global warming if we can't control our machines?

Again, this is a condensed version of an earlier post.

Cyborgology and Me

 
Just a note to say that yesterday the tech blog Cyborgology published a commentary of mine regarding the new ebook, Race Against the Machine. I make some of the same points there, and use some of the same material, that I used in my earlier commentary here, "Losing the Race Against the Machine," but this new version is (I admit!) more concise.