Robot versus human. Who will get a job in a restaurant and why?

Hello.

Ten years ago, one of the main attractions at electronics shows was kitchen robots,

sort of manipulators in the form of a hand that hung downfrom the ceiling or stood on large tables. Customers from a short distance looked at how quickly and quickly they cooked. They took the necessary ingredients, mixed them, put them on the stove and took out a whisk from the counter, which was used to stir the brew. The best demonstrations ended with you being offered a taste of what happened. I remember how such a hand placed a bowl of soup in front of me, a crab bisque prepared according to the chef's recipe with a couple of Michelin stars. Tasty, there was no difference in the quality of food with a good restaurant. No one hid the admiration for the possibilities of technology, and many journalists in their columns dreamed of the possibility of food processors, which in any corner of the world will give you dishes from famous chefs.

At that time, there was a debate in society thatrobots will take jobs, in much the same way as it is discussed in the aspect of AI technologies. It seems that technology has been swapped, but the horror story has not been modified - the person himself always turns out to be superfluous in any equation. Both then and now, these fears seem far-fetched to me, the penetration of robots is growing, there are more and more of them, but they do not look at all like they seemed to us until recently. And they are taking away some jobs, while creating completely different ones, ones that we could not imagine until recently. And without the participation of robots, there have been shifts in technology in the past that have made some professions endangered. Switching to electricity in factories not only reduced the number of coal miners that served them, but along the chain affected the manufacturers of wheelbarrows, tools for coal mining. I had to look for new product niches. The number of mechanics who worked in factories also went down, the machines became more powerful, simpler and, most importantly, more reliable. The restructuring of the economy took different periods of time, but unemployment always remained within the usual limits, did not become total. We do not take into consideration the periods of wars and catastrophes, since these are anomalous situations.

Claim that a robot chef can replaceman, looks somewhat naive. Let's try to look at the reverse side of such a process, namely the entire food preparation chain, in order to assess how a robot can replace a person.

I often go to White Rabbit Family restaurants, inOn the one hand, they bribe Moscow with different locations, on the other hand, there are always some familiar things, it’s hard to make a mistake in choosing. WRF loves different experiments, including with technology, the same Krasota restaurant is not unique by world standards, but in our latitudes it gives a good combination of technology, art and food. It can be described as a gastronomic theater where people go for impressions.

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At the end of 2020, WRF opened She restaurant.In a market saturated with new places, promoting such a place is a tricky thing. Ksenia Sobchak was brought in as a media person. The move is hackneyed and not giving novelty, but then it turned out that this was a multi-move. In addition to Ksenia, Sasha Weiner appeared in the restaurant, an avatar of artificial intelligence who allegedly participated in the creation of the menu.

I noted for myself that I want to drop by and seeon the Sasha Weiner doll, at the beginning of 2021 she was no longer there, but her image was played on the monitor. The menu is only partially created using AI algorithms, to a greater extent it is the work of ordinary, living people. For Sasha Weiner, they created an account in one of the social networks *, where they even tried to do something for some time, then everything naturally died.

The topic of artificial intelligence in She did not take off,and the institution itself has not become particularly popular within the framework of the WRF, they have places that are much more interesting. In general, the She concept itself looked like a bold experiment and nothing more. It is possible that the concept was a little ahead of its time, today AI delights are perceived better, as they are being talked about more and more widely. But the very logic that menus and dishes can be created by an algorithm that does not have taste buds, which cannot evaluate the result by trial and error, looks at least strange. I do not believe that chefs in the form of AI algorithms will appear in the near future, there are no prerequisites for this. As a result, all that will be happening here is marketing and PR, in which different catering establishments will use the growing popularity of AI.

People will create food for people, recipewill remain with us. Let's go to the next level of the chain - cooking. Exactly what was shown at exhibitions many years ago, and it seems that there are no problems here. In fact, we forget about such small things as food delivery, the choice of food. Even in the Japanese market, where they try to standardize the approach to food as much as possible, the same vegetables are sorted according to a variety of parameters - by color, shape, size and weight, automation is minimal, and live people are responsible for purchases. Not to mention the famous auctions that sell tuna or other products. Everywhere people are involved, and it is impossible to entrust the choice of products to robots. Even if we talk about mass food outlets, choosing products, checking their quality - all these types of work will remain with people in the foreseeable future.

So let's move on.You have brought food, they are unloaded and distributed to refrigerators and pantries. This is cheap labor of workers, it is difficult to use any kind of robot here, unlike automatic loaders somewhere in huge warehouses. Even in huge restaurants, using a robot to load products looks wasteful, you need a lot of traffic, which will give the necessary loading for the robot. That is, trucks with products should arrive non-stop, and the room for maneuver should be large. Most restaurants do not have specially equipped areas for unloading, the configuration of the premises varies greatly. But the main thing is that their area is very limited, these are not huge premises of thousands of square meters. Ancillary workers can sleep peacefully, their labor is inexpensive, and buying a robot will not be able to pay off, since it will cost as much as ten to twenty years of work for one worker in a restaurant. Business does not have such planning horizons in any country in the world.

Next, we need to wash the products and prepare them.for cooking. Here again there are no equals to people, robots still do not know how to work with tomatoes, meat and fish, their manipulators are too rough in most cases. And those who know how to create “correct” manipulators charge such amounts for them that restaurants will never pay for them. And even with the development of this direction, the cost of robots will be very high, it will be easier to attract people, and no special qualifications are required here. Any person can cope with washing vegetables and other products according to a certain algorithm, quickly learn how to cut them as needed. And the price of such an employee will be negligible against the background of the cost of the robot. As well as the notional cost of "exploitation". Any breakdown of the robot will cost a pretty penny.

An attempt to humanize cooking withmanipulators is commendable, but the operation algorithm itself requires special attention. You need to prepare the place with greater care, arrange all the necessary items, wash and lay them out in time. Cooking ingredients in a certain style, any mistake will automatically mean a spoiled dish, for example, a piece of shell will fall into an omelette. Today, such manipulators are part of the show, which should attract people, make them spend money. For example, in Zaryadye Park there is a kiosk where coffee is made by such a manipulator arm, later a robot body was added. Mediocre coffee for big money, coffee takes much longer to prepare than a regular coffee machine would. There is no benefit in the speed of cooking, just as there is no economy in such a process.

We can safely close our eyes to today'sthe shortcomings of robots, the speed of their work, the quantity and quality of skills, all this will change in the foreseeable future. But the only thing that will remain unchanged is that the more complex the robot, the more expensive it will cost. And lose competition to a person who can “sell” his services depending on market conditions. The global crisis increases the cost of operating robots, the costs are not only electricity, but also the cost of maintenance (attention, an amazing thing, mechanics and programmers are also people in the coming decades). Therefore, many companies that focused on the segment of mass robots simply stop their development, leave this niche.

Startup Zume planned to create robots forautomatic pizza making, in 2018 it was estimated at 2.25 billion dollars, Softbank invested in it, which brought this project to the first lines. The idea was that the pizza would be automatically cooked in the van, as soon as the order comes in, pizza preparation starts, and the car goes to the desired address. The startup faced the problems described above, they needed people who prepare all the ingredients for the robot. Delivery using a van turned out to be an invoice and lost to bicycles, scooters with ordinary couriers. And it was difficult to place the robot somewhere else, there was not enough space. Already in 2020, the startup stopped making pizza. Four years passed from idea to conditional death.

There will be more and more stories like this.more, since a person always wins in competition with robots. Automation is not only possible, it is necessary to speed up processes inside restaurants and cafes. We see this kind of automation every day in the form of panels for quick ordering, buttons to call the waiter, and even devices that allow you to quickly pay your check and not wait for it to be brought to you. But only, it is a tool in addition to people who cook food, bring it to the table.

Last process tried multiple timesautomate is the delivery of food from the kitchen to your table. All attempts to create a robot cart turned out to be a failure. They slow down, break down, people don't like them. And almost always this is an attempt to play PR, and not a real need.

The conclusion we can draw isdisappointing for robots: they are too expensive for the mass service of people. It makes sense to create a robot for those places where a person cannot be. For jobs that require high precision, unattainable by humans. That is, these are specialized and very expensive tools that expand the capabilities of a person, but do not replace him in any way. We did not know how to operate in open flame conditions, but firefighter robots are designed for this. And they do not replace people, but expand our capabilities.

I wanted to remember robots becausethe story with neural networks is very reminiscent of what it once was. The fears are exactly the same, as well as the result of these fears. Look at the results of the survey that took place in our Telegram channel. You can find it here.

Many media like to scare us with stories aboutthat people will not be left. Such fairy tales sell well, but there is very little real in them. I hope that after this material you will begin to calmly respond to the development of both robots and neural networks.

*Meta Platforms, which includes the social networks Facebook and Instagram, has been recognized as an extremist organization and banned in the Russian Federation.

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