Focused Read in 3 minutes
Personal Commentary ~
Remembering when President Obama was putting the finishing touches on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, designed to bring The Common Good to the Global Table in an effort to work with like-minded nations to improve on NAFTA and to expand trade, particularly with emerging nations, while seeking peace and prosperity for all.
As the United States becomes more isolated and as progress moves forward, as progress does, one has to wonder where we will be when we've not only lost those new markets but when we've also lost our jobs to robots, as well?
I don't believe I've heard robots mentioned by the Trump GOP at all...
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"Robots Will Transform Fast
Food
That might not be a bad
thing
Visitors to henn-na, a
restaurant outside Nagasaki, Japan, are greeted by a peculiar sight:
their food being prepared by a row of humanoid robots that bear a
passing resemblance to the Terminator.
The “head chef,”
incongruously named Andrew, specializes in okonomiyaki, a
Japanese pancake. Using his two long arms, he stirs batter in a metal
bowl, then pours it onto a hot grill. While he waits for the batter
to cook, he talks cheerily in Japanese about how much he enjoys his
job. His robot colleagues, meanwhile, fry donuts, layer soft-serve
ice cream into cones, and mix drinks. One made me a gin and tonic.
H.I.S., the company that
runs the restaurant, as well as a nearby hotel where robots check
guests into their rooms and help with their luggage, turned to
automation partly out of necessity. Japan’s population is
shrinking, and its economy is booming; the unemployment rate is
currently an unprecedented 2.8 percent. “Using robots makes a lot
of sense in a country like Japan, where it’s hard to find
employees,” CEO Hideo Sawada told me.
… Sawada speculates that
70 percent of the jobs at Japan’s hotels will be automated in the
next five years. “It takes about a year to two years to get your
money back,” he said. “But since you can work them 24 hours a
day, and they don’t need vacation, eventually it’s more
cost-efficient to use the robot.”
This may seem like a
vision of the future best suited—perhaps only suited—to Japan.
But according to Michael Chui, a partner at the McKinsey Global
Institute, many tasks in the food-service and accommodation industry
are exactly the kind that are easily automated.
Chui’s latest
research estimates that 54 percent of the tasks workers perform in
American restaurants and hotels could be automated using currently
available technologies—making it the fourth-most-automatable sector
in the U.S.
The robots, in fact, are
already here.
Chowbotics, a company in Redwood City, California, manufactures Sally, a
boxy robot that prepares salads ordered on a touch screen. At a Palo
Alto café, I watched as she deposited lettuce, corn, barley, and a
few inadvertently crushed cherry tomatoes into a bowl. Botlr, a robot
butler, now brings guests extra towels and toiletries in dozens of
hotels around the country. I saw one at the Aloft Cupertino.
… This has typically
been the story of automation: Technology obviates old jobs, but it
also creates new ones—
the job title radiology technician, for
example, has been included in census data only since 1990.
Transitioning to a new type of work is never easy, however, and it
might be particularly difficult for many in the service sector. New
jobs that arise after a technological upheaval tend to require skills
that laid-off workers don’t have...
A college education helps insulate
workers from automation, enabling them to develop the kind of
expertise, judgment, and problem-solving abilities that robots can’t
match. Yet nearly 80 percent of workers in food preparation and
service-related occupations have a high-school diploma or less,
according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
... Of course, whether
automation is a net positive for workers in restaurants and hotels,
and not just a competitive advantage for one chain over another (more
business for machine-enabled Panera, less for the Luddites at the
local deli), will depend on whether an improved customer experience
makes Americans more likely to dine out and stay at hotels, rather
than brown-bagging it or finding an Airbnb. … “
You
can read more here
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( 📎Interesting note: Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were great partners in their work for women's rights. Stanton was married and the mother of several children and she was not at liberty to leave her home as often as Anthony was. So Stanton wrote many of their speeches and Anthony delivered them as she traveled the country advocating for their shared cause. )
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( ⬆⬆⬆ Wallace is new to the job but for right now
her work on Trump GOP has been credible, IMO)
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Curated by Gail Mountain, with occasional personal commentary, Network For #StrongerTogether ! is not affiliated with The Democratic Party in any capacity. This is an independent blog and the hope is you will, at a glance, learn more about the Party and you will, with a click or two, also take action on its behalf as it is provided!
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