Manufacturing, for all its technical potential, is only the second most readily automatable sector in the US economy. A service sector occupies the top spot: accommodations and food service, where almost half of all labor time involves predictable physical activities and the operation of machinery—including preparing, cooking, or serving food; cleaning food-preparation areas; preparing hot and cold beverages; and collecting dirty dishes. According to our analysis, 73 percent of the activities workers perform in food service and accommodations have the potential for automation, based on technical considerations.
Pointer from Timothy Taylor.
I can’t wait to see the results of higher minimum wages.
The recent news story about a restaurant in China eliminating its robot servers struck me as a problem solved by restaurant design rather than robotics. I can imagine many service-sector storefronts being redesigned for robot service. Most likely we will see interior designers and engineers working on robotics-enabling design innovations for restaurants, stores, nursing homes. Wide hallways are for humans.
I often hear people in healthcare smugly saying their work can’t be automated. But people forget that the key substitution is not present-day (“The robot’s here; you’re fired.”), but the reduction in need for future jobs. The invisibility of those never-created jobs will lower resistance to automation, just as computers did for all those never-hired secretaries and bookkeepers. The other part is that people adapt quickly to interacting with machines where they would previously have dealt with a human. The need for human verisimilitude may also not be as high as believed.
When I saw “Pret a Manger” in the UK it seemed to me a good way to keep the amount of labor down in response to higher minimum wages.
Why don’t we already see this where wages are high, like in Europe? Or do we?
See Michael’s comment above yours.
The two big questions are:
1. What will the chart of “Percent working age population that are zero marginal producers vs. Time” look like, and
2. What jobs will be left? I think the answer is the ‘hard’ ones according to Moravec’s paradox. Also, ‘security’.
The most easily automatable tasks in food service (which they mentioned but didn’t emphasize) is the taking and transmitting of orders and processing of credit card payments via app or kiosks. Also, I would expect a lot of the automation of food preparation to be done off-site rather than in the restaurant kitchen itself.
On the other hand, it’s long been possible to replace the waitstaff with ordering at the counter, but a waiter seems to be part of the upscale experience that people want and are willing to pay for, so that may stay around even after automation transforms the kitchen.
Good for employment as large scale investment always is, just limited for low skilled.
A few things we underestimate:
1. The willingness of users to switch to machine interfaces
2. The amount of “irreplaceable” human presence that is actually overvalued or where errors are under-measured
3. Many people’s tolerance for boring work.
Is the falling cost of robotics figured into estimates like McKinsey’s? It seems their report is mostly focused on the technical feasibility of replacement.
Japan has the most developed restaurant industry in the world; it’s as efficient as it can be made. The cheaper places have ticket machines to process orders; many restaurants get around with a single person doing the cooking and serving.
There’s no automation nor robots or high-tech involved. It’s just very efficient food processing; some restaurants just process the food at a central location and distribute frozen food across the country. A famous chain of italian restaurants famously brags that “there isn’t a single knife in their restaurants”.
Part of that is that Japan is a very safe country. Nobody would ever brake the ticket machines, or the drink vending machines which are everywhere. Where I live in Europe drink vending machines get destroyed and robbed every weekend.
This whole automation-robotics thing just looks like the latest fad from the consulting industry who need a new topic to churn reports about. There’s nothing t it.
If one believes what the BBC reports about a survey commissioned by the Resolution Foundation then the answer is: none.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-36760387
Of course, raising prices for the consumer is OK, and reducing profits is overwhelmingly OK.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/12/pf/starbucks-prices/index.html
And not creating jobs that aren’t there today doesn’t matter for tomorrow – of course! Who’s seen “tomorrow”? Ask the Resolution Foundation!