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0 pointsben_w10mo ago0 comments

> or a waiter serving food at a restaurant,

Over the last few years, I've seen a few in use here in Berlin: https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/robot-waiter-for-sale.html

> or someone who restocks shelves at grocery stores

For physical retail, or home delivery?

People are working on this for traditional stores, but I can't tell which news stories are real and which are hype — after around a decade of Musk promising FSD within a year or so, I know not to simply trust press releases even when they have a video of the thing apparently working.

For home delivery, this is mostly kinda solved: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZ_8cqfBlE

> Plus, in the case of service work like being a waiter, I imagine some customers will always be willing to pay for a human face.

Sure… if they have the money.

But can we make an economy where all the stuff is free, and we're "working" n-hours a day smiling at bad jokes and manners of people we don't like, so we can earn money to spend to convince someone else who doesn't like us to spend m-hours a day smiling at our bad jokes and manners?

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trealira10mo ago

> Over the last few years, I've seen a few in use here in Berlin: https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/robot-waiter-for-sale.html

Wow. I genuinely didn't think robotic waiters would ever exist anytime soon.

> For physical retail, or home delivery?

I was thinking for physical retail. Thanks for the video link.

ido9mo ago

It’s more a dishwasher level of automation than 3CPO- when you order they enter your table number and the kitchen staff puts the prepared dishes in the shelves in the robot, which the drives to your table. Once it gets there you take the dishes from the robot.

Tech-wise this could have existed 30 years ago (maybe going around the restaurant would have been more challenging than today but it’s a fixed path and the robots don’t leave the restaurant).

ben_wOP9mo ago

This is a long-standing trend with AI.

Often people will say "AI will never do X, or at least it will take decades", and then it does X, and it turns out you can cheat a lot to get X done really easily.

I'm old enough to remember when X was "play chess at top level", followed by 19 years of X = "play Go at top level". Irregardless of what you think of GenAI, the script writers of I, Robot chose X = "compose music and draw pictures".

pesus10mo ago

I've seen robot waiters at one restaurant in SF as well, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were more. They'll most likely be here on a large scale faster than we think.

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