Hotels and Restaurants Expand Use of Automation
08/11/2017
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Robot bellhops were introduced to the public as a coming thing in 2014 when trials began. Now they and other automated technology are becoming normalized, as reported in a CBS Los Angeles TV segment.

As is often the case, the media doesn’t know how to handle the automation issue and the CBS piece wanders all over the place. It begins thoughtfully by asking whether smart machines threaten human jobs in the future but then veers into a Jetsons clip and from there to existing businesses with robots in use. Questions of whether humans are being displaced are laughed off as managers emphasize the appealing novelty aspect of the bots. Finally, serious person Martin Ford, author of Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, appears with a warning, “The way these technologies always begin is they begin as tools helping people do their jobs, but they eventually do evolve.”

A purpose-built hotel robot acts as a bellhop when it delivers desired items to the rooms of customers.

Service jobs in hotels and restaurants are popular among immigrants, particular in diverse locales, so the government should get serious about passing the RAISE Act to decrease immigration substantially, because many unskilled jobs will be disappearing under the automation onslaught.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts bellhops and baggage porters together, and the May 2016 number of persons employed in the category was put at 44,750. It’s not a huge number as jobs cohorts go, but alternative choices are shrinking for unskilled people because of immigration and automation.

Experts have described he automated future as they believe it will play out. Oxford researchers forecast in 2013 that nearly half of American jobs were vulnerable to machine or software replacement within 20 years. Rice University computer scientist Moshe Vardi believes that in 30 years humans will become largely obsolete, and world joblessness will reach 50 percent. The Gartner tech advising company believes that one-third of jobs will be done by machines by 2025. Forrester Research Inc. has a more optimistic view, that there will be a net job loss of 7 percent by 2025 from automation.

Does it make sense for Washington to continue importing immigrant workers when the workplace is changing fundamentally from automation? It makes no sense at all, but the government is pretending the problem doesn’t exist.

As Hotels, Restaurants Expand Use Of Service Robots, Are Jobs At Risk?, CBS Los Angeles, August 9, 2017

He’s a robot butler at the Residence Inn LAX on Century Boulevard, and his name is Wally.

“In this particular brand of Residence Inn, if you called down and you wanted something, you’d really have to come down and get it yourself,” Residence Inn LAX General Manager Tom Beedon told CBS2.

But employees can program the butler to deliver anything to a room that fits in Wally’s compartment, even fresh towels from housekeeping.

“You’re going to hear somebody check in that says, ‘Oh, this is the hotel with Wally the Robot, right?’ ” says Beedon.

And if you think a robot delivering hand towels to your hotel room seems cool, you should check out the Gen Korean BBQ restaurant in Montclair.

It’s here where a human server takes your order with a tablet, another human loads your food in the kitchen, and a robotic system of trays and tunnels delivers it all to your table.

“I don’t think anybody 10 or 15 years ago would have thought, ‘Hey I’ll be at a Korean barbecue house with a robot bringing food out to me,’ ” says Gen Korean BBQ VP David Ghim. . .

(Continues)

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