A hard-working employee named Sabrina Bergman has been relegated to working behind the bar at the Tipsy Robot inside Planet Hollywood on the Las Vegas Strip, but not to pour drinks or make cocktails.
Instead her job is to monitor the robot pouring alcohol is filling the cup to the right amount, and if the robot spills a drink, she cleans it up, NPR reported.
In what I consider to be a form of denial, Bergman said she’s not worried about the machine replacing her entirely — even though the bar just opened a second location earlier this year.
Check-in kiosks have replaced people at the front desk of hotels. Text-bots now make restaurant recommendations instead of a concierge.
Robots can serve food, and behind the bar, machines are pouring out drinks.
Automation and technology replacing jobs has long been a conversation in Nevada’s most populated city. Studies show that between 38% to 65% of jobs there could be automated by 2035.
With the use of artificial intelligence on the rise, the economy of this city –which relies on tourism and hospitality — is at an inflection point, as companies look to technology to reduce labor costs.
More than 386,000 jobs in Las Vegas are in the tourism industry, KOLO reported. With the rise of automation and A.I. technology, the city must diversify its economy and introduce more skill-based jobs, according to John Restrepo, principal at RCG Economics in Las Vegas.
“We need to move … to those occupations that are more highly skilled, that are not easily replaced by A.I. and that provide a greater level of balance and resilience so we’re not so hard-hit,” Restrepo told NPR.
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The reality of robots and new technology phasing out workers has been a concern for the Culinary Union, which has represented 60,000 hospitality workers in Las Vegas and Reno for at least five years.
5 years ago the union fought with service industry employers in its contract to have a six-month warning for new technology being introduced into the workplace as well as free training on it.
Ted Pappageorge, the secretary-treasurer of the union, said it is currently preparing to fight greater demands to prevent the phasing out of service workers.
“We’d like to say we’re going to be able to get an agreement,” Pappageorge told NPR. “But if we have to, we’re going to have a big fight and do whatever it takes, including a strike on technology.”
It is not just workers in the service industry threatening to go on strike due to the rise of robots and A.I. technology.
Breitbart News reported that the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) — now in the third month of its strike against studios — are also seeking authorization
While the rise of A.I. technology is a great fear for service workers and those in the entertainment industry, Holly Lang, an MGM Grand cocktail server, told NPR that it could never replicate the human element at the heart of all customer service jobs.
“We have a lot of guests that are regular guests, and they come for the personal interaction,” Lang said. “They don’t come for the technology.”
Well, this may be true for the baby boomers and even some in Generation X, but millennials and Generation Z tend to be more interested in minimizing their involvement with other humans, instead, they rely on and expect technology to take care of an increasing number of their wants and needs.
When you add in the millions of low-skilled illegal aliens streaming across the US/Mexico border, the future for the US is coming to a crossroads.
If the people say NO and fight to preserve the future of humanity, the use of technology could usher in a smooth transition to a new economy and community structures.
But, if technology takes a majority of the jobs we could end up as a highly unemployed Marxist state; a series of dystopian high-density metro areas subordinate to a fascist government.
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