The creepy humanoid has set a Guinness World Record for the most cups of coffee served by a robot-operated store in one hour.
A 24-hour coffee shop has been open for one day in Beijing, China, and it has already blown the rest of the barista game out of the park by immediately setting a world record of most cups of coffee served.
How did they manage it? Well, the entire staff are made up of coffee making robots.
Several videos of the robot barista in action on Sunday showed the creepy coffee maker clad in a grey-and-white jumper as a sort of uniform. It had accessorised the look with a grey cap, headphones – as if it had anyone to talk to – and silver chains around its neck. Most concerningly, it wasn’t wearing any trousers.
The robot served an eye-watering 202 cups prepared and served in 60 minutes, setting a Guinness World Record for the most cups of coffee served by a robot-operated store in one hour.
Customers place their orders through a self-service system, allowing them to tailor the sweetness and/or intensity of their coffee.
And all of that with an average wait time of less than 30 seconds per cup. One customer said her coffee was “pretty well-balanced” while her partner marvelled at how it took no time at all to get his cuppa despite a massive throng of people vying for a cup.
“When I first saw the place, I thought it would take a while to get a cup. But I walked in and got it almost right away,” he said.
Bonkers footage shows the chain-laden robot racking up the cups and putting them in cute little pigeon holes for customers to collect.
According to Australian economist Dr Leonora Risse, from the Queensland University of Technology, the only sticking point could be the lack the human connection that so many of us crave in an ever-saturated, tech-filled world.
She said that humanoid bots and AI were well-suited for routine and repetitive tasks – like making a recipe or, dare we say it, coffee. They do offer productivity gains, but, overall, if variety is needed then things tend to fall to bits.
“This shows how the essence of hospitality jobs is about human interactions,” the academic said, as per news.com.au.
“The jobs at highest risk of being replaced by AI are clerical and administrative jobs, as these involve routine processes, which can increasingly be done by digital tools. Telemarketers and call centre workers are top on the list, but clerks, bookkeepers, secretaries, receptionists and personal assistants are also in this mix.
“This places women more at risk of losing their job to AI, given that most of these are mostly female-concentrated occupations.”
Your female-gendered author is thrilled on that one, by the way. But we digress.
As per a recent article penned by Dr Risse and the Australian National University’s Elise Stephenson, clerical and administrative jobs made up more than 70per cent of women and provide almost one in five jobs for all women in the Australian workforce.
Dr Risse said we need to be ready to assist these displaced workers to transfer their skills to other roles.
“I expect that AI will make the ‘human’ side of our jobs even more important and valuable. “These skills that make us human – like empathy, care and emotional intelligence – are the skills we don’t want to outsource to robots and automation.
“Critical Judgement is also a skill that we’ll need to focus on more strongly. AI can perform the mechanics of a task. But how will it navigate complex decision-making processes where there is not a clear answer? This is where human ethics, morals and experience matter.
“As for the record-breaking coffee-serving robot, Australians love their coffee shops. There might be some novel exceptions, but I can’t see a huge wave of robots replacing Aussie baristas.”
In the US, Morgan Stanley predicted 62.7m American jobs could be replaced with humanoid robots by 2050. The bank stressed this was not a forecast of mass joblessness.
In the UK, analysis from the Office for National Statistics indicates that about 1.5 million jobs in England face a high risk of having specific tasks automated. Whereas the Institute for Public Policy Research estimates that a worst-case “full displacement” scenario could eliminate up to 7.9 million UK jobs.
So should we be afraid of barista-bot? Yes. The inevitable, probably Terminator-filled future ahead of us is bleak and jobless. But, hey – coffee!
And if you’re in Beijing, check out the barista-bot in the Chaoyang District at Galaxy SOHO; a futuristic office, retail, and entertainment complex and a probable sign (or warning) of things to come.