Shall I tip the robot?

Roberto Saracco July 14, 2018 Blog 1,250 Views

A robot-waiter serving in a China restaurant. Image credit: cfp.cn

Robots are entering the Chinese restaurant scene. Robot-waiters, robot-cooks, robot-cleaners have made their appearance in China restaurants and several signs seem to indicate that they are there to stay.

In Kushan city, watch the clip, there is a robot welcoming you and taking you to your seat, another will promptly come to take your order and another yet will bring it to you. The restaurant owner claims that his goal is to promote “harmony” between humans and “robots”.

Now, that is a very ambitious statement and for few years more it is not reflecting the situation: you can have the goal of humans living harmony with robots, but to have a robot living in harmony with humans first the robot shall become self aware, have empathy and understand what harmony means. So far we are quite far from that.

Anyhow, it is getting more than an advertisement stunt. Alibaba is starting to use robots in some of it grocery stores in Shanghai to whom you show what you want to eat. They will pick up the food (fish and sea-shells) and take it to the kitchen for cooking and then they will bring it to your table.

JD announced in May 2018 the opening of the first of 1,000 restaurants that they plan to have fully robotised by 2020, taking care of showing the sit, helping in ordering (you are supposed to do that by yourself using an app on your smartphone and reading QR tags on food displayed on shelves), cooking and bringing you the food.

Of course the question is: am I supposed to tip the robot?