[ExI] robotic lunch counters

[spike]

From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
Subject: Re: [ExI] robotic lunch counters

 

William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> , 25/6/2014 8:16 PM:

​>>…But seriously, I think many people will be turned off after the initial excitement, at the idea of replacing people​.  Some oldies go out to eat just to talk to people at counters, etc.  So maybe if they pass the Turing test.....  BillW

 

Ja.  Of course there will be their counterparts, those who are turned on by the idea of replacing people.  I like it, for it forces us to confront a growing problem rather than keep hitting the snooze button: in modern society we find more and more people who have no use and no place in the working world.  What do we do?  The American political scene is dominated by two major parties whose positions on that problem differ.  One party is doing nothing while the other party is doing all the wrong things.  Take your pick.  

 

My notion is that as minimum wage goes up, we increase the viability of robot restaurant staff, robot janitorial services, robot lawn services, robots generally filling those kinds of jobs subject to minimum wage, which forces us as a society to face this growing problem now, rather than one of the two traditional reactions: doing nothing or doing the wrong things.

 

>…Yo Sushi's (and similar chains) conveyor belts are clearly working, without even robots. Although there there is (1) a constantly updating temptation, and (2) you can signal a waiter for extra orders not on the belt. …

 

Ja, Anders that local sushi boat place you and I went to is essentially that: a floating circular conveyor.  This would be a more sophisticated version of that, where the customer would make voice-command orders, and the possibly-mechanized cooks would prepare the plates, then the robots would fetch the plates.  A 50s era lunch counter theme would be great fun, along with a sign: 

 

Please do not tip the wait-bots (we never leave here.)

 

Or perhaps: If you wish to tip the wait-bots, please leave nuts, bolts and screws.

 

{8^D

 

That sorta thing.  How many fun signs can you imagine?  This is creative marketing, something at which the ExI crowd excels.

 

>…How much social interaction is worth varies from eatery to eatery; some make a big deal out of it, others try to win by price or good food. ..Anders Sandberg…

 

Ja, and with the robo-waiters and cooks, we bring in an entirely new aspect: sterility of the food.  If the food is being prepared entirely by robots, the kitchen can be kept at refrigerator temperatures, which would discourage most beasts.  Then if you could have a closing time of perhaps half an hour in the middle of the night, you could flood the kitchen with pure nitrogen to slay any extant insects or other vermin, then follow that with pure oxygen to slay the anaerobics.  The kitchen would be always completely dark to deal with any phototrophic organisms.  We could flush the whole area once a day with steamy hot water, or for that matter, just steam, with enough force to dislodge any stray food debris.  If you wanted, you could even irradiate the food as it comes into the kitchen area in the form of raw produce, all the better to slay any pathogen.

 

We would then have the cleanest possible kitchen, entirely free of human-borne pathogens.  Kewallll…

 

spike  

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