The First Burger Built by a Robot Is About to Hit the Bay Area

DooKey

DooKey

[H]F Junkie
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There's a new chef in town and he's a robot that makes burgers all by himself. The robot simply needs the ingredients loaded up and then it goes to work. You can find this neat contraption in a new restaurant called Creator in San Francisco. They claim it is the first robot to fully transition any segment of food to automation. What's really amazing about this is you get a high-end burger for only $6. This is unheard of in an expensive place like San Francisco. The owner claims they can do this because the robot is so cheap to run and it leaves money on the table for expensive ingredients. You go burger making robot and take those $15 an hour fast food jobs with you.

Using the machine makes it possible to improve the quality of a burger while keeping costs low; the burgers start at $6 (a Big Mac costs $5.79 in San Francisco), but the robot is so cheap to run that the restaurant can afford higher-quality ingredients, like pasture-raised beef. Rather than using cheap, pre-sliced hamburger buns, it can use fresh rolls with no preservatives.
 
Sure,..it's flipping burgers today,....but just like its human counterparts,...it will grow tired of it, and instead of going to college to get that degree so it can get out of its mundane job, it will strike out on a rampage and KILL US ALL! Why? Because IT CAN! IT DOES NOT CARE if it is flipping cow meat or human meat!!!!!!!

OPEN YER EYES PEOPLE!
 
Hmm... A machine making a "high-end" burger...

A machine can't examine and pick the perfect ingredients by sight, smell, and feel. Sure it can slice a tomato very precisely for the perfect size. It can't decide which tomato is perfect for the burger though. It doesn't know if it has that somewhat mealy texture that they can get that ruins the flavor, or if it's a perfect, juicy tomato. I'm sure it can do pretty well with cooking to the right temp for a particular person. Medium rare (assuming high quality meat) for example is probably easy for a machine, so I'll give it that. There are a lot of factors to cooking something well that a machine can't do.

I think a machine can raise the bar for the low to mid range, but I don't think it can compete with truly high-end food. There is only a very small handful of restaurants that I go to once in a while that REALLY know how to cook steaks properly. There are a lot of others that are supposed to be good, but really aren't. I don't think a machine is going to be in the few here. It might work at Ruth's but it's not going to work at John Howie.

Aside from all this foody talk though... ...BSmith is right. This is just another step to people-steaks.
 
J3RK said:
Hmm... A machine making a "high-end" burger...

A machine can't examine and pick the perfect ingredients by sight, smell, and feel. Sure it can slice a tomato very precisely for the perfect size. It can't decide which tomato is perfect for the burger though. It doesn't know if it has that somewhat mealy texture that they can get that ruins the flavor, or if it's a perfect, juicy tomato. I'm sure it can do pretty well with cooking to the right temp for a particular person. Medium rare (assuming high quality meat) for example is probably easy for a machine, so I'll give it that. There are a lot of factors to cooking something well that a machine can't do.

I think a machine can raise the bar for the low to mid range, but I don't think it can compete with truly high-end food. There is only a very small handful of restaurants that I go to once in a while that REALLY know how to cook steaks properly. There are a lot of others that are supposed to be good, but really aren't. I don't think a machine is going to be in the few here. It might work at Ruth's but it's not going to work at John Howie.

Aside from all this foody talk though... ...BSmith is right. This is just another step to people-steaks.
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Humans give the robot the ingredients, or did you miss that part?
 
Cyraxx said:
Bye bye burger flippers demanding $15/h with pension retirement funds and other laughable demands. You reap what you sow dumbasses.
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People working fast food deserve it, simply because they have to deal with people, quite often really shitty people, I mean come on can you name something worse than hungry people with unsupervised hungry shitty kids? But be careful what you say about automation, because AI and automation is coming for us all.
 
I've always said minimum wage jobs are not a career. They are there for you to get your foot in the door to lead to better things. People just want to stagnate and not advance their status, its funny I thought "oh well there goes McDonald's cooks" lol. First the kiosks next the cooking robots.....soon it will be fully automated....lol
 
Lakados said:
People working fast food deserve it, simply because they have to deal with people, quite often really shitty people, I mean come on can you name something worse than hungry people with unsupervised hungry shitty kids? But be careful what you say about automation, because AI and automation is coming for us all.
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As someone that helps implement the automation... bring it on. Adapt or die.
 
First the automation came for the factory workers, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a factory worker.

Then the automation came for the service industry, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not in the service industry.

Then the automation came for the truck drivers, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a truck driver.

Then the automation came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.



I'm not against automation. I'm not against efficiency.

But this will have sometimes unforseen and negative impacts on society. It can be addressed, but it's not.
 
[21CW]killerofall said:
Humans give the robot the ingredients, or did you miss that part?
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There's a different between chopping the tops off of things, and dumping them in a tube, and cutting them by hand. Like I said, I can see this upping the game at the low-mid levels. I still can't see this competing with a proper chef though. I'm not even saying it can't make a good burger. If it actually made the ones in the pics, they look pretty decent.

There are other issues with something like this. If you mis-calculate your burger throughput, now you've got things sitting in tubes longer than they should. All of a sudden your higher quality "fresh" ingredients are getting stale. I also think a flat cutting or prep surface is easier to clean than a bunch of tubes, but maybe they've solved that too.

These are just some off-the-cuff thoughts though. Who knows, maybe it's the burger revolution we've all been waiting for. Or... I don't know... maybe I haven't been waiting for a revolution. :D

I can just go down to Lunchbox Laboratory and grab an amazing burger that someone got paid to make, and to me that's kind of a win-win.
 
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CombatChrisNC said:
First the automation came for the factory workers, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a factory worker.

Then the automation came for the service industry, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not in the service industry.

Then the automation came for the truck drivers, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a truck driver.

Then the automation came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.



I'm not against automation. I'm not against efficiency.

But this will have sometimes unforseen and negative impacts on society. It can be addressed, but it's not.
Click to expand...

All of this is great IF we as a society adapt to where we can pursue other types of activities. Something like the renaissance period, where people moved more into arts and leisure, because they were no longer just subsisting. If we automate all of the things you've listed, and can then focus on arts and sciences, then we all progress.

However, we all know that's not happening anytime soon. This is going to turn into a big clusterfuck before we go onto anything bigger and better. Jobs will be displaced, some will adapt, some will slip through the cracks.

I work at an industrial company (systems admin). We've been automating several processes. You know what happens though. Instead of a guy sitting there doing the same thing over and over, he goes, gets trained to maintain the robotics, and the robot does the repetitive thing. He keeps track of it, fixes things as necessary, gets paid a bit more because it's a skilled position now, and all of a sudden he's a specialist. That's the best case though for this situation. The opposite is, he gets let go, and someone else who's already trained comes in to take his place. There are some in-between scenarios though as well.

I'm not at all against progress, but I'd like to see the necessary training, retraining, and other lower-end type positions open up for those who are a bit late in the game to fully adapt become available. Just forcing people out isn't a good solution. Allowing them to keep up and adjust is better.
 
heatlesssun said:
There's WAY more expensive jobs for machines to take. This is just the beginning, not the end.
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Expensive jobs yes but convenient jobs no, the food industry is automating fast and hard specifically on the farming side of things and that will spill upwards there will come a day when you can get a good burger and fries out of a vending machine and it won't be too far away.
 
Lakados said:
Expensive jobs yes but convenient jobs no, the food industry is automating fast and hard specifically on the farming side of things and that will spill upwards there will come a day when you can get a good burger and fries out of a vending machine and it won't be too far away.
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We are currently in midst of a large wave of automation across the restaurant, retail and transportation industries that employ how many people? Worker automation is going well beyond the poster child of the $15/hour burger flipper. If the technology proves successful we're going to have to deal with it one way or another as there simply won't be enough jobs to go around and it won't be only minimum wage and unskilled labor positions.
 
Lakados said:
People working fast food deserve it, simply because they have to deal with people, quite often really shitty people, I mean come on can you name something worse than hungry people with unsupervised hungry shitty kids? But be careful what you say about automation, because AI and automation is coming for us all.
Click to expand...

Yes. Pretty sure anyone that's ever served in a combat zone, chased thugs through an urban ghetto, kicked down the front door of a burning building, brought an addict back from his third OD that month or anyone working any of a billion actually meaningful jobs that don't pay shit can think of something worse.

People working in fast food deserve exactly what they have.
 
bigddybn said:
Yes. Pretty sure anyone that's ever served in a combat zone, chased thugs through an urban ghetto, kicked down the front door of a burning building, brought an addict back from his third OD that month or anyone working any of a billion actually meaningful jobs that don't pay shit can think of something worse.

People working in fast food deserve exactly what they have.
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And everybody here would all agree that the people who do those jobs get shit pay too and they deserve more.
 
BSmith said:
Fortunate for me, a robot cannot take my place. No one would be stupid enough to try and program that one. :)
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Have you met humans? I wouldn't have thought someone would be stupid enough to make a small trinket that tricks Tesla's autopilot nanny system, and yet here we are.
 
Lakados said:
And everybody here would all agree that the people who do those jobs get shit pay too and they deserve more.
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Sure, but those are typically government taxpayer funded positions. And we all know how much people love the government and taxes.
 
heatlesssun said:
Sure, but those are typically government taxpayer funded positions. And we all know how much people love the government and taxes.
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Yeah, but that comes down to a case of government waste and efficiency. I would love to see AI's applied to government spending and resource allocation the results would probably be interesting to say the least.
 
Lakados said:
Yeah, but that comes down to a case of government waste and efficiency. I would love to see AI's applied to government spending and resource allocation the results would probably be interesting to say the least.
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I'm thinking of some of the AI research that's been done when AIs are exposed to certain behaviors. Just imagine what an AI would become with dealing folks paying taxes, traffic tickets, fixing the sewer line, etc. It would be happy to kill us all.;)
 
J3RK said:
Hmm... A machine making a "high-end" burger...

A machine can't examine and pick the perfect ingredients by sight, smell, and feel. Sure it can slice a tomato very precisely for the perfect size. It can't decide which tomato is perfect for the burger though. It doesn't know if it has that somewhat mealy texture that they can get that ruins the flavor, or if it's a perfect, juicy tomato. I'm sure it can do pretty well with cooking to the right temp for a particular person. Medium rare (assuming high quality meat) for example is probably easy for a machine, so I'll give it that. There are a lot of factors to cooking something well that a machine can't do.

I think a machine can raise the bar for the low to mid range, but I don't think it can compete with truly high-end food. There is only a very small handful of restaurants that I go to once in a while that REALLY know how to cook steaks properly. There are a lot of others that are supposed to be good, but really aren't. I don't think a machine is going to be in the few here. It might work at Ruth's but it's not going to work at John Howie.

Aside from all this foody talk though... ...BSmith is right. This is just another step to people-steaks.
Click to expand...

A machine also can't wipe it's ass and forget to wash it's hands. Or pick its nose, or cough/sneeze snot into your food.
 
BSmith said:
.it will grow tired of it, and instead of going to college to get that degree so it can get out of its mundane job
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More like instead of going to college to get out of its mundane job, it'll demand that the minimum wage be increased because an individual can not live off that amount in one of the most expensive cities in the nation.
 
sfsuphysics said:
More like instead of going to college to get out of its mundane job, it'll demand that the minimum wage be increased because an individual can not live off that amount in one of the most expensive cities in the nation.
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Hehe.

All kidding aside. If I am told a robot made my meal, I am not going to eat it. Hell, you never know if the damned thing might have leaked lubricants all over it! :)
 
hmm, after going through the article, interesting. the machine itself is part of the attraction. Not sure if this would be replacing a normal fast food burger flipper anytime soon as they usually multi-task a number of different food items.
 
BSmith said:
Hehe.

All kidding aside. If I am told a robot made my meal, I am not going to eat it. Hell, you never know if the damned thing might have leaked lubricants all over it! :)
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Just imagine what the people currently making your food are leaking all over it...
 
workshop35 said:
Just imagine what the people currently making your food are leaking all over it...
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There is that. At least, for the most part, I would die from natural causes, rather then being poisoned by a damn robot. :)
 
heatlesssun said:
I'm thinking of some of the AI research that's been done when AIs are exposed to certain behaviors. Just imagine what an AI would become with dealing folks paying taxes, traffic tickets, fixing the sewer line, etc. It would be happy to kill us all.;)
Click to expand...
Than we probably deserved it.
 
J3RK said:
Hmm... A machine making a "high-end" burger...

A machine can't examine and pick the perfect ingredients by sight, smell, and feel. Sure it can slice a tomato very precisely for the perfect size. It can't decide which tomato is perfect for the burger though. It doesn't know if it has that somewhat mealy texture that they can get that ruins the flavor, or if it's a perfect, juicy tomato. I'm sure it can do pretty well with cooking to the right temp for a particular person. Medium rare (assuming high quality meat) for example is probably easy for a machine, so I'll give it that. There are a lot of factors to cooking something well that a machine can't do.

I think a machine can raise the bar for the low to mid range, but I don't think it can compete with truly high-end food. There is only a very small handful of restaurants that I go to once in a while that REALLY know how to cook steaks properly. There are a lot of others that are supposed to be good, but really aren't. I don't think a machine is going to be in the few here. It might work at Ruth's but it's not going to work at John Howie.

Aside from all this foody talk though... ...BSmith is right. This is just another step to people-steaks.
Click to expand...
So what you're saying is this could only be practical for 98% of prepared burgers.
 
Everyone knows that robots are going to replace any kind of job that involves repetition. I'm sure burger king and mcdonalds is very interested in this tech. The money they can save would be massive.
 
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