The robot at Giant “Marty” is seriously useless. All it does is alert over the loudspeaker that there is a spill or cleanup somewhere. How much did each one cost?? 50k? 100k? And, here’s the caveat - each one needs about 30k in maintenance every year. Most of the employees at Giant at the store level outside of management most likely don’t even make that amount per year working ft.
As I was chatting with an employee at Giant while I was there, she said she was a little angry because Giant could hire someone with special needs or maybe someone re-entering the workforce from jail for the “job” that Marty does and the cost per year would be less than Marty’s yearly maintenance. Plus the human would be able to do things Marty can’t do such as put items away, “face” products on the shelf, help customers locate items.
These companies are so willing to invest in these “robots” but unwilling to invest in actual people. We see the writing on the wall. Just remember, one large electrical surge or a hose turned on high and the robots are toast.
3
WD 40 is not a lubricant it is a water displacing agent and a solvent. Wrong medicine for Marty .
3
"[H]umans working in a control center in the Philippines review the imagery before triggering a cleanup message over the loudspeaker," according to this article in Masslive (Springfield, Mass.), from Jan. 2019.
https://www.masslive.com/news/2019/01/grocery-store-robot-marty-which-tracks-spills-data-coming-to-more-stop-shop-stores.html
Like I'm going to put complete faith and trust in a "party Marty" robot.
The last thing I would want is a robot with eyes, staring at me, "making eyes" all the while.
I never forgot that one Rod Serling "Twilight Zone" episode called "A Thing About Machines". The storyline was about machines taking over. . .
Cognitively, I realize that it was fiction and one of Mr. Serling's best fiction plots. However, emotionally, it scared the heck out of me so many, many years ago and I still wonder in the back of my mind - but what if . . .
1
If they really want to get their money's worth out of these things, they should spread a rumor that they're watching for shoplifters. Heck, tell the right guy and it will be all over Twitter by tomorrow.
3
see, the robot.. See how cute and fun it is.. Even the little kiddies like it... They give it gifts and invite it to their parties.. By the way.. Stop by the office after your shift.. The nice robot will hand you your final check... See how cute it is...it's wearing a smiley..
4
Why does this ROBOT have dim-witted cartoonish eyes- and has a FEMALE name? And a very common one at that. Why does this dim-witted cartoonish robot "party"? Human-like features? How utterly insulting, yet again, to half of the world population. Get with the times.
2
Those things creep me out. The Stop & Shop robot makes a bee line for me as soon as I enter the store, then generally loiters around and uses his girth to try and block my way. I'm not imagining it, right?
3
Checking shelves for stocking and aisles for spills used to be done by teenagers and the "slow" adults. Stop and Shop also has little or no human baggers. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Welcome to the future America.
3
We can already say one is involved in a murder case here in CT. Nothing interesting though, tried to take pictures of it/Marty in the local S&S as an alibi. I don’t think it’s going to help.
2
In Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation developed robots with Genuine People Personalities(TM) - "Your plastic pal that's fun to be with"
Is this where we're headed?
4
Apparently, I’m one of the few adults who actually likes Marty. It’s silly maybe but, in this scary world, I enjoy a little silliness. I sort of feel like I’m in some 50s s I-fi movie.
21
I despise Marty. So do the staffpeople at my local Stop and Shop. They all know he represents a future where their jobs are redundant. And it adds insult to injury that Marty is slow, loud, and serves no meaningful utility. A future where we install advanced robotic technology to accomplish one tiny aspect of a person’s job (like spotting spills) means we can look forward to a world jam packed with single-use machines. That’s nothing to celebrate
4
My 4-year-old son *loves* the Marty at our Stop & Shop. He imitates Marty’s robotic voice declaring, “caution: a hazard has been detected,” and it is so cute! My 3-year-old son is afraid of him, though, and we’ve had to leave the store to calm my son down a couple times. I’m with my 4-year-old on Marty: I think he’s cute, fun, and harmless (but also seems somewhat useless).
I doubt they are for spills which I rarely see in a supermarket. More likely these are security robots.
2
If there is even one staffed check-out aisle, I will refuse to use a self-checkout as a protest against the loss of human jobs.
If a robot comes near me and cannot answer my question about the whereabouts or availability of an item, I will knock it out of my way. I’m 85, but don’t mess with me. I may be weak, but I have my cane.
13
@Margaret Jay
These retail robots are not a threat to the human job force. They augment the human job force and elevate the quality of work humans are left with - v. the mind-numbing, repetitive labor they've been subjected to for decades. You may be 85, but you should welcome the technological advances that are capable of making your life at any stage more comfortable and possibly more joyful.
1
Since Marty came to our Stop and Shop my 3 and 5 year old kids can’t wait to go food shopping! Even better, they don’t cry or throw tantrums anymore. Instead, while I’m shopping they look for Marty, and get so excited every time they spot him. Thanks Marty for making this mom’s life easier!
2
The funniest thing about Marty is we all know where he is in the store. "Clean up in aisle 6", only means Marty is in aisle 6. Of course there is nothing to clean up there. It has become a running joke in all the Stop n Shops we go to. He is totally useless, but lovable. I doubts if he ever has actually discovered an actual need for a clean up.
2
Marty is seriously annoying! The noise he emits gets on my nerves. He is huge; thus always in the way, blocking aisles and holding up traffic, especially when I'm in a hurry. This particular type of robot is useless: Marty can't check a price, tell you where a product is located, or any other useful information. He just follows you around like a creepy stalker. I can't understand why someone thought this was a good idea. And the folks at my local Giant have the nerve to claim Marty is a SHE. Anything that useless is certainly male.
10
@Ann Wong too funny ))
3
By this time Stop n Shop corporate must realize that the Martys mostly just annoy customers. They annoy the staff too, especially when Marty gets stuck saying, "Cleanup needed in aisle two!" even though cleanup is not needed in aisle two. Huge public-relations fail. So, how long can they last?
3
The robot was the last straw for me at my local Stop ‘n Shop - bye!
6
Kids do like Marty but I never met an adult who does. Besides being it weird to see this large device moving around the store the robot makes it harder to steer a shopping cart through the aisles. It is mind boggling why these supermarkets are using robots that shopper object to. Shoppers don't get it. Don't they care about what customers think anymore?
29
@Bob simply put, “No.”
9
That robot with the big googly eyes slowly rolls down the aisles of my local grocery store. Last time my teenage daughter was with me she looked at it and said, "well, that thing is going to be in my nightmares."
38
Stop and Shop markets use these robots to patrol the aisles, looking for spills. They are annoying and are in the way. Never once have I seen them find a spill as they drive right over it. Useless in the extreme.
30
@Victoria Morgan -- I work at a Stop & Shop, and I can't think of anywhere on our floor where an employee wouldn't notice a spill within a few minutes, or where a customer wouldn't very soon alert us to the spill.
10
People being people I would think the employees will game the stupid machines. For example, spills will just be ignored as long as "Marty" does not alert anyone. "Marty" and his ilk will just become handy excuses for lounging around pretending they don't see problems in the task-domains off-loaded to the robots. How exactly Capital is going to stop Labor from tweaking around with Marty's sensors is going to be an endlessly esculating game of cat-and-mouse. Of course, teenage boys will soon devise any number of pranks, like attaching rods that cause the robot to sweep jars and bottles off the shelves leaving spills and havoc in the robot's wake. No doubt another favorite pastime of boys will be making fake-spills out of epoxy/goop and super-gluing them to the floor. I guess it is better the rascals will be tormenting robots instead of the neighbor's cat? Then there will be the productivity of the American worker lost to watching YouTube videos of pranked robots when they are supposed to be 'working.'
5
@Coldnose
What great ideas. You've just done more for humanity than a flock of Luddites...
5
I don't want humanized machines. That's scary to me. These lines of code someone calls "Alexa" -- no, I will not say that name. It's not a person, so emotions are being wasted bonding with it.
9
Anyone who doesn't think Stop & Shop wants to get rid of human workers need only check the checkout lines, which S&S consistently understaffs in order to push people towards their annoying and failure-prone self-checkout. When I'm paid real money by them to scan and bag my own groceries I will be happy to do so, but until then I refuse to accept them shifting the labor onto me and I refuse to listen to them cheerfully lie that it's better for us consumers this way. And is having their robots in the U.S. all controlled remotely from Europe (yes, the "cleanup on aisle 2" message is initiated by humans in Europe) really the best way to accomplish anything at all? Marty is a solution in search of a problem, and his googly eyes don't help a bit. It all reeks of a real desperation to get rid of human workers.
86
The robots wandering the aisles are awful in the extreme. I swear they are following me. They have missed about half the messes on the floors that I have seen over the last few months.
On the other hand, I despise food shopping and will do anything to save myself time so I use the scanner and then the self checkout. I save tons of time. Putting items in the cart only to take them out to put them on the belt for a human to scan them and then put them in bags makes me nuts. The scanner is great.
7
@Dave Agreed. CVS in particular expect me to work for them for free, with most locations having one or no cash registers with people. And they have probably the most inconvenient machines to navigate. The only upside is I saw in center city Philadelphia they switched mostly back to human checkouts. Perhaps the sheer amount of shoplifting made them reconsider! haha
9
@Dave I totally agree. I stand in front of it just to stop it and when it takes off in another direction I stop it again. I tell it to go away. I've overheard the workers complaining about how it is always calling for cleanups when none is needed. And I will stand in a check-out line for 15 minutes rather than use their self-checkout. Guess I'm a Luddite.
The worst thing is that they are getting rid of human workers not so that they can lower prices, but so that they can give more millions to the top executives.
It's what George Ritzer calls the McDonaldization of society.
21
At my local Stop & Shop, I have yet to meet anyone -- employee or shopper -- who thinks Marty is an improvement. It beeps constantly, gets in the way along aisles, and mistakes pieces of paper for a spill. Employees roll their eyes at it, and fellow shoppers can be heard saying "Shut up already!" Kids like to follow it and see if they can trick it into moving around them or calling for a spill check. Googly eyes won't be enough to get our Marty much love.
52
@MountainFamily I like to put things around it so it can't move.
6
Many people focus on the job destroying aspect of robots and artificial intelligence but this grocery store robot is a great example of why that is not necessarily true (and I have one of these in my local Stop & Shop). This robot looks for spills and other debris in the aisle. I’m pretty sure Stop & Shop didn’t employ anyone to walk around looking for spills. This robot is (hopefully) finding problems before a customer slips and falls. But it’s not taking anyone’s job. And while there will be robots who do perform work a person used to do, someone has to build these things and program them and maintain them - all jobs done by humans. And some of the folks who no longer have to move boxes in the back of the store are now able to help customers in the front of the store. The point is a lot of these robots are going to make things better for us without taking jobs and overall there are a lot of new jobs boing created in the industry that has to make and support these things.
1
Whatever Marty sees is then viewed by someone in the Philippines, who then alerts the store intercom. So I read in the local newspaper last year.
1
@Fred Watching footage of grocery store floors all day long? Talk about a boring, monotonous, soul-killing job.
1
I see Marty as a real threat to jobs! Yay companies save more money and shift the burden of work away from human-beings all the while not paying their fair share of taxes!
1
@Jason
A sure recipe for future social unrest.
1
@Jason )) poor Marty, it looks like along with the googlie eyes he needs a pair of earplugs
1
I loath the Marty at my local Stop and Shop. Just about the only thing it seems to be useful for is uniting shoppers in our mutual hatred for that infernal thing. I have definitely found myself shopping at Stop and Shop far less since Marty started creeping around there. I now go out of my way to travel to a further off market that doesn’t have annoying creepy roaming robots in the isles.
6
Such an interesting article, probably the best one I have read so far by the NYTimes. Thank you for sharing
1
Just finished reading Gish Jen's "The Resisters". This article sounds as if the dystopia she writes about in her novel has already arrived. I wonder which workers in the Giant stores have become part of the "Surplus" nation that she describes in the novel.
2
@Raul
Humans are definitely surplus. Look at our numbers. Lots to spare.
2
One less disgruntled employee who will take it out on his fellow workers.
2
@Molly Bloom Best Comment Award!...very good.
That's what that thing is supposed to be doing? Cleaning up messes? But there aren't enough messes to keep it busy. I hate it and think one day it's going to snap and ram my legs. It's just a matter of time before the robots get as sick and fed up and the human beings they're replacing, and they won't ask permission to revolt. They'll just crush us.
Seriously, though, I think they're probably part of store security.
1
@Penn They don't clean the mess, just look for it. If they cleaned it, that would make it actually useful, which by all accounts here in the comments, they are not.
1
Pied-piper 2.0.
1
Marty is Forky’s doppelgänger!
Stop and Shop is completely detached from its customers. From prepackaged meats in Greenwich CT ?? to clueless worker benefits, to bathrooms that make you want to burn your shoes when you leave - I’m so fed up. Fire Marty- hire a high school kid. Take care of your co-workers and customers they will take care of you. Till then, I’m done. Hello Big Y. By the way the article was mildly interesting but, sorry, I knew the whole story before I read it. I KNEW those googly eyes were some middle-age lady's idea of personality. I’d rather hire a kid. And that’s saying something!!
5
@Jonathan F "I'd rather hire a kid and that's saying something" So Good !!!!
1
Will robots buy goods at Giant and Walmart?
5
Marty needs to go away...face or not....he’s abt 7’ tall and sneaks up behind you with barely a sound. He’s more likely to cause falls (and heart attacks) than prevent them.
1
I have not seen a "Marty" yet which is good for Marty. I can get in a mood and would find it enjoyable to "accidentally" run it over with my shopping cart. I'm tall, don't wear glasses unless I'm home reading, and have a hard enough time avoiding dogs and toddlers in the store. Or just toss him into my cart, go to checkout and punch in 4011 for bananas, and buy Marty for 59 cents a pound. Its what I think about doing with all of the organic produce. Just type in 4011. I'm sure The Connors would approve:)
And aisle cleanup? Don't tempt me to "pass-out" into the wine display, get up looking dazed and say, "What happened? Did I just have another grand-mal seizure? I thought my neurologist had this under control".
I wouldn't mind technology if the geeks would actually use it right. I have shopped at the same grocery for years and every time I swipe the card, a robotic-female voice says, "Welcome valued customer". I gave them my name, email addy, phone number and this is the best I get? Considering how much corporate America has tracked my every move, they should have figured out that I hang out in gay leather bars. And that voice should immediately switch to a Marine Corps drill sergeant who says, "Oreos? Oreos? Down and give me 20, grunt!". No, I just get the lame welcome valued customer greeting. Come on geeks. Walk away from the Playstation and get back to work! You can do better than this.
4
It would be fun to program them to wander the store saying "Must kill all humans." while hovering menacingly near a shopper.
5
Marty is huge, creepy and always in the way. If you want to clean the aisles, use a Roomba.
2
I've seen this robot at the Stop and Shop stores in Connecticut, and it creeps me out every single time. Between the oversized eyes and the constant beep-beep sound it makes, even when it's not moving around, it's just downright strange.
3
We have one in our local Stop and Shop. I don't go there very often but every time I do, I hear, "Cleanup in aisle 11." It is not the robot that is speaking but an automated announcement recorded by a woman. After repeating that several times, the aisle changes. Then changes back. It is mighty annoying. I have checked, there is no cleanup needed in the aisles. A cardboard display can trigger it, or nothing at all. If the robot is as bad at any of its other duties as it is at watching for spills, humans need not worry about their jobs.
2
Dress it up all you want, give it a name, and call it "she," but this is just more steps to remove humans from the equation. Chase wants us to use robots in the branch instead of human tellers. Delta and Hertz want us to look at a camera and screen instead of dealing with a human. Massachusetts wants us to pay-by-mail when the machines scan our cars instead of paying tolls to humans. They are training us to accept what they call "inevitable."
Why isn't it ever discussed about how it is on the other side? Do we really want to live in a world where humans are removed from shops and stores, banks, and other places? It seems to me that the more we remove humans and replace them with robots, cameras, screens, and scanners, the colder and less human this world is going to be.
3
@Todd
It has been there for a while, we've only just started noticing and talking about it, that's all
Besides, you do agree, that a human thought develops and grows, don't you. A robot is a product and result of such development. There are always younger minds who catch up on a previous interesting idea, contributing talent of their own in this particular area or any other area for that matter. And so idea grows - instead of horse carriages- there are cars now, instead of hot air balloons - there are airplanes and spacecraft's. Yes the first computer was a size of refrigerator and look at it now
But it is still up to people to make it all human, to make environment friendly and among it all not forget the basic human values especially respect
And that was the main idea of this article, how cute robot as decorated
See a little smile can still make a lot of difference
1
Perhaps it is a new step towards a newer system of different value exchange.
A step towards a better, more exciting and complete future that would require of people deeper understanding of own Talants and capabilities.
If robots do the work, there would still be a value exchange but on a different level for people
Wouldn't you agree
1
@Maria
Like what?
They have one of those things at the Stop and Shop here. It’s seriously weird and creepy. I don’t shop there anymore.
11
@WesternMass. I agree. I hate that thing and have called Stop and Shop multiple times to tell them. Always beeping around the store. Makes me anxious. I don't want to shop with robot. I have honestly shopped there less and less because of it.
2
Let's not start viewing robots as cute and forming attachments. They cannot reciprocate, they cannot feel. They don't have a conscience. Our biology makes us want to bond and view things with a certain form or attribute. Like the unease I felt watching a robotics engineer kicking over a struggling four-legged hunk of metal. That can be a weakness. A weakness that can be exploited by those who create, program and market such devices. Let's not lose our perspective on the need for real attachments and relationships, both human and animal. Automatons don't require or deserve our attempts to bond.
6
@Topher S I completely agree. I never refer to a computer or voice as "she" or "he." It is not human and we should never attach human qualities to these machines. Never.
2
Remember, the bottom line is these robots are taking jobs away from humans and this is just the beginning.
13
As robots go, Marty looks friendly enough -- but he/she is actually an abject failure when it comes to functionality. At my local Stop 'n' Shop, Marty just wanders around uselessly -- unless an anomaly is detected on the floor. It cold be a sticker, a banana peel, or a smudge -- "Hazard detected" is loudly proclaimed, and the lights flash yellow. Maybe the robot is secretly taking inventory, but so what? Point-of-sale and inventory systems already do the same without roaming the aisles. If I owned this grocer chain, I'd cancel the contract with the robot, and pay my workers more to do the jobs they already do quite well.
9
@Russell Potter I work at a store with Marty, and don't kid yourself, Marty is a Narc. Marty isn't just detecting floor slicks, Marty also takes pictures of shoppers, my co-workers, me, you. And not in a friendly way.
4
I look forward to my trips to stop & Shop. No one listens to me at home or work, so it’s nice to follow Marty around the store and unload all my troubles on him. He’s very non-judgmental.
12
Was this written by the companies that manufacture robots? Because I don't know of anyone who likes them, and everyone knows that they put people out of work.
If we don't go to a guaranteed minimum income, there will be disastrous upheaval.
48
@KarenAnne There is indeed a concerted push to journalism-market these labor replacements as acceptable and helpful.
None of the articles I've seen mention the costs incurred in their roll-out, nor in their upkeep. Is a million dollar beeping aisle obstacle really worth putting an $8/hr employee out of work? Or is it really about surveillance and tracking customer's "habits"?
12
@dodolurker
"to journalism-market" Thank you. I haven't heard that phrase before, and it's useful. This article itself is clearly part of the public-relations effort to get people to accept these ugly changes. Look at the way the piece is set up, with the picture of the friendly robot prominently displayed. It's exactly what the company would want people to see.
7
Marty creeps me out. I suspect it's for surveillance, not spills. While a camera is good for detecting criminal activity it still feels invasive.
35
@PK Exactly. Ant not just criminal activity, marketing activity.
I suspect the greater purpose here is to track shopper's habits - where we go in the store, what products we look at, how long we stay in certain areas, etc. It's the next step up from the shopper ID/discount card we've all been financially coerced into using.
10
@dodolurker Surveillance makes more sense as being the real purpose of this thing. But it seems to me an overhead camera system would be better to track shopper habits. They could watch more shoppers / departments at the same time, and people would not be aware of it.
3
We did this In 1976 at the Connecticut Bank & Trust Co., which introduced the first automated teller machines (ATMs) in the state. To make consumers more comfortable dealing with a machine, we named "him" Barney and gave him a cute round face, glasses and a bow tie. The Barney character became so popular in the state that any bank's ATM came to be known as a "Barney machine" and any access card, a "Barney card."
8
@NO
We are humans and our motto is....
Moo!
2
I hate being followed by those things.
15
The reality of “AI” the movie that Kubrick/Spielberg collaborated on was mostly unpopular because viewers had a hard time accepting a robotic child. It was based on Ian Watson’s, “Supertoys Last All Summer Long” written in 1969. Watson would be amazed.
We’re here, like or not.
5
@denise. The tedious Pinocchio/ Blue Fairy digression didn't help.
They are in our local Stop and Shop. They even gave them a birthday party!! I find them obnoxious and stupid and not worth damn, and I am not a Luddite, I know about fifteen computer languages all the way back to 1966 and hard wiring computers. Aside from the obnoxious dings, bells, and noises the machine is always in the way and affront to decency. You have no need; absolutely no need for a big piece of machinery following you around. Pretty soon , the booboisie will decide they need a computer and a robot to defecate. This is almost as bad. It has NO utitlity, and you can turn a key in car door too, without having a blast whistle go off, scaring the hell out of a passerby. These robots STINK...take it from an engineer!!!!
18
I don't like Marty. It follows me throughout the Giant. It blocks the aisles. it would be one thing if we could ask it what aisle an item is on and get an answer but that's not it's function.
11
I love Marty. Everytime I see him, I get a huge smile on my face.
4
Marty is incapable of caring.
2
I don't shop at stop and shop and this is major reason.
24
If I was the person getting middle of the night phone calls I’d make sure to program the robot so it wouldn’t be in the pharmacy during my sleeping hours. Or, arrange an alternate point of communication for robot malfunctions. Can’t be that hard.
1
Interesting article, thanks. These simple robots are definitely going to be taking jobs away from people, but they're menial, labor-intensive, uninteresting jobs that nobody should really miss. Checking shelf inventory is not an artistic passion for anyone.
There will always be jobs that robots can't do, so people just need to transition gradually to those jobs. Freezers in the home made the ice delivery person's job obsolete, and all the ice delivery workers didn't starve, they just got other jobs.
But the funny thing with the googly eyes and birthday parties is how much we anthropomorphize things. These robots have no AI, they're following fairly simple programs, so they have no real thoughts at all. They don't care about parties, or anything, they don't need presents, they don't look at people as anything other than obstacles. When they have AI, we're really not going to comprehend how they think, and we're going to make mistakes most of the time, thinking that the robot has gotten angry or sad, when such emotions will probably be impossible for them.
It makes sense to put cartoon eyes on a robot to make people more comfortable with their presence, but throwing parties for it and so on makes about as much sense as throwing a party for your refrigerator.
4
@Dan Stackhouse It might not be a passion for anyone but there are quite a lot among us who frankly aren't capable of doing much more. Its an ugly truth but at ruth nonetheless. Unless we become a Sanders style nanny state I fear for the future of our less brain-endowed individuals.
7
Dear Brian Brennan,
That's a good point, but there will always need to be people to clean and service these robots too. And eventually we might need to become more of a welfare state, but that might not be such a terrible thing.
1
@Dan Stackhouse
Sometimes I find art in the most mundane things.
Menial labour can be a very zen-like experience.
Take it from someone who knows.
We don't all get paid to do our art full time.
For example, I am musician on 20 years and run a small moving company.
Loading and unloading can be an 'art' in the right mindset...Walking backwards up a staircase with a $5000+ sofa in a brand new house is like an HD version of that old board game "operation"
9
30K-plus years ago natural selection began to shape the facial musculature of early dogs so that they could communicate more effectively with humans and — eventually — make googly eyes at us.
Fast forward to 2020, and my flatulent furball has her own seatbelt, bedhogs 5 times the area her body actually requires on our bed, gets me into the kitchen to cook her dinner every day while I gulp down a yogurt at the sink to save time, and is responsible for the must-be-near-a-dog-park proviso of all our house-hunting.
Do not underestimate the power of googly eyes.
37
@Sam Lyons ha ha ha that was awesome. Spot on.
2
Fantastic comment!
2
Don’t be too relaxed, it will be an exponential displacement of humans with robots and before we know it, massive unemployment of the structural kind - the hardest to solve
Andrew yang was right
27
@Pedro Andrash Capitalism gives you enough rope to hang yourself with, as they say. It may even give itself enough rope to destroy itself if we are left with masses of unemployed people at the hands of googly eyes robots.
6
Jeez, I love robots. I love my vacuum robot, even though he seems to have a real instinct for trouble (the ONE cord I forget to pull up, or a single discarded sock lurking under the sofa, is unerringly eaten, and panicked rescue request beeping ensues).
Those short rectangular food delivery robots they were testing in Silicon Valley or college campuses or wherever? Super cute.
Is the technology perfect? No. You know how it gets better? Field work and subsequent refinement.
I feel like the reaction of 'but what about the jobs???' is valid within a short time frame -- over the longer view, isn't reassigning people away from the mindless and dangerous and thankless tasks ultimately going to be better for them? Better for us as a society?
That does, of course, absolutely require companies to not just squeeze every recouped dime by axing those 'freed up' employees, but by reskilling the displaced, by realizing that consumers WANT companies that offer a human to help. But I not only believe smart companies are realizing this (think of Delta vs. American, the positive response in customer loyalty when faced with happier and more committed staff, and this even in the notorious airline industry!), we also always have the opportunity to vote with our wallets.
3
@Lara Maybe the retail stores will continue to employ a handful of "greeters" and loss prevention types. But Amazon doesn't need a human greeter for its website, and will have vast warehouses run mostly by robots, delivered via automated cars, and ordered on a website run on an algorithm.
1
I hope Ms. Sorg has received a promotion and a significant raise. In Japan, creators of robots have long known that they need to appear or act more human like to be used or be of benefit— eg the robot stuffed animal seals for the elderly which has proven to be effective providing companionship among the elderly and reverse/prevent depression-anxiety and increase happiness.
3
In the interest of full disclosures, yes, the robots/ cameras should have a distinct face.
3
I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.
33
No, no faces ever. Why are we in such a rush to make ourselves irrelevant? Create a whole lot more of permanent unemployment? Make the world worse?
12
I don’t care what it looks like, if I encounter a robot in public I’ll do anything possible to impede it’s function.
36
@Paulie
It’s quite surprising that the lawless among us haven’t shot out the traffic ticket giving cameras, yet.
For more modest attempts there is always garage door grease or hornet spray. 20’ range.
5
@Paulie I prefer not to go to Stop & Shop because its prices are not great, but more than that, I do not want to see that robot. Or, more accurately, I do not want to be seen by that robot. It gets me so mad that I try to give it the finger whenever possible. One day I was especially annoyed and gave it a sustained finger, aimed at the "googly eyes." It stopped, began flashing yellow instead of green, and kept saying something about a "hostile enviroment." It's baloney for anyone to claim that this machine can only scan the floor for spills. I'm so tired of our society of surveillance. And maybe more tired of most people's indifference.
14
@Amy Yes! Another NYT article weeks ago touched on the surveillance aspect of these robots. There seems to have been a flood of these "oh they help" articles in publications since with no mention of surveillance. My local newspaper has been pushing the "benefits" of these beeping store aisle blockers for months.
It truly seems the advertisers put out a directive to the publishers to start doing more positive spin about these intrusive nuisances.
4
The fact that a corporations would have our children honor our labor replacements and future overseers with parties and other forms of inculcating is sickening.
37
Absolutely not.
Robots are tools, not humans.
Corporations are business entities, not humans.
Social media/tech has already negatively affected human interactions---1,000 "friends?"!!!
Who want to feel emotionally manipulated by a machine?
Not me!
18
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like that.
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@Jim Greenberg Genius!
1
Perhaps we could just automate McKinsey and fire all the consultants.
(Aside: Doesn’t HBS teach a single ethics course?)
21
#1) It’s a robot.
If a robot has a “personality”......see #1)
3
Re: "...Should automatons have a face? As automation comes to retail industries, companies are giving machines more human-like features in order to make them liked, not feared..."
Provided we follow (Asimov's) 3 rules of robotics*, I'm NOT afraid of these items; as for facial features...well, it depends on the application, I suppose...
That being said, there is NO, ('physics-related'), reason why a 'Terminator-like' device CAN'T exist...once reality catches, up with great, (sci-fi), movie making / story telling...
The 3 Laws:
1St. Law: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2nd. Law
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3rd. Law
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.
It should be considered a crime, against peace to make a cyborg which can pass for a live, (hominid or other...), being, w/o EVERY-/-ANYONE knowing, INSTANTLY, that the device is a device!!.
*{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics}
2
Why did this story not talk about the actual/potential use and abuse of facial recognition by robots? Seems like a huge oversight on the part of the reporter. I despise the robots and have stopped shopping at stores that use them. Only a matter of time before law enforcement and ICE start tapping into the robot's daily scans of faces to identify people for arrest and deportation. Enough with the constant surveillance.
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@AP I'm afraid that is already a concern at stores that are big on surveillance like Target. The amount of data they gather from each customer is amazing. Try to find out what they do with your data and image, they will say they can't tell you because it's a security related issue. These big box stores with cameras everywhere already have our faces in their databases. And we'll never know what they do with them.
2
So margin pressures make an automated work force inevitable according to the former employer of one of our leading candidates. That is to say, the financialization of our economy mandates that humans be replaced so that shareholders and the financial elites can continue to scrape from those with little to nothing for even more hoarded wealth. You wonder why Bernie is the front runner?
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I will stop shopping at retail stores that use robots to do tasks that have always been meant for human beings.
Googly eyes will not stop me from worrying about employees who are at risk for homelessness, because their paychecks have been stopped due to corporate greed.
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@WS Automation has always put people out of work, and will continue to do so. If you plan on not shopping at places that utilize robots, you probably won't be shopping anymore.
We will need to determine what to do with an increasingly obsolete workforce and the unemployment spikes that come from that. It is inevitable.
1
I’m a retail manager. Trust me - robots can’t replace every task that we do.
Another reason why management likes robots - no benefits to pay out.
12
I see Marty at the Yonkers Stop & Shop all the time. At first, I’d take a picture of him and send it to my family to show them (look! There it goes again!) but after a while I got used to it.
I still try to give it a wide radius, it kinda creeps me out a little even though it doesn’t look capable of actually doing anything to you. It just kinda makes me nervous.
Kids seem to either find it wonderful or completely ignore it, only a few are scared. Adults seem to find it annoying when it’s blocking the way or moving slowly, and older people seem to be angry about it.
I once overheard an older woman complain about how it’s taking away jobs. Her husband said “shh, not so loudly- it can hear you!”
10
Our local outpost of the Stop & Shop/Giant empire has one of these things roaming around. It is noisy and is yet another thing to get by up and down crowded aisles (not people but useless displays blocking access to the items for purchase behind.)
As a result, I take my wallet elsewhere more frequently now.
38
Everyone accepts that automation is the way of the future despite the cost in human employment and, by extension, the ravaging of human mental health, human families, human communities, democracy, and a precarious-but-still-more-safe-than-not world.
Why?
We know that this is going to shatter millions of Americans, and hundreds of millions worldwide -- that even if govts come through with some minimal shelter-and-food coverage (and the US won't, bc it's already cutting food benefits to the poor), the quality of life will be so reduced for some that we're going to see an accompanying, and major, uptick in antisocial behavior among the frustrated and hopeless (substance use, physical and sexual abuse, theft, possibly murder).
Why are we doing this? Why are we being so blithe about another layer of destruction, and stressors, on *top* of a society-killing wealth gap and the climate crisis?
The only answer is that this is Nature's way of thinning the herd bc humans refuse to live in a way that keeps Earth, and other creatures, safe. Yet it astonishes me that humans just acquiesce in this hastening of the end.
8
Our local Stop & Shops have "Marty." Aside from the fact that it doesn't actually work (mistakes pieces of paper for spills, gets in people's way, and is creepy in a '1984' kind of way), it's semi -wonderful. It doesn't clean up any messes, it just alerts a human being who could have done the whole process themselves. Seems more like a slip- and - fall liability avoider than a useful tool.
When the store celebrated Marty's "birthday," one human employee correctly and virally posted that the people had just spent weeks on strike over pay and working conditions, and Stop & Shop has done nothing to celebrate them.
Instead, the store wants people to check their own groceries at machines that work no better than Marty so they can pay fewer cashiers.
I have seen the future, and it is soul- crushing, penny- pinching, and depressing.
107
At the Stop and Shop stores near me, the Marty Robots are identified as security robots. The cameras are looking for the thieves, not spills. I like to walk up to them, look into their googly eyes and say hello.
15
I’ve heard, but not seen it verified, that these machines are somehow tracking what you are looking at and for how long. Pretty soon you’ll be getting ads for those items that interested you.
3
@Herb Gingold The "somehow" is facial recognition.
1
When are robots going to replace politicians? I can’t wait.
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@Norm Vinson—- Haven't you noticed how mechanical their movements have become? ThZnks for posting such a prescient comment.
3
It seems to me this could be easily solved. These robot manufacturers should license R2D2 or BB8 from Star Wars and let them do their thing. Most adults AND children can easily identify both droids. Just give them a voice like C3PO instead of beeps and bleeps.
No rules regarding AI or robots can hold the line. AI will continue its exponential growth, robots will become whatever is commercially most viable. None of this can be stopped. It’s coming from too many different directions to be controlled. It’s all in its infancy. Don’t forget that.
5
Recently got a robot vac. It works to my satisfaction but I do wish that it had been given some sort of an identity, like that of a droid or even something like a bug or crustacean.
3
That Camp Hill store is my grocery store! I know Ms. Sorg. I can't wait to tell her I read about her in the NY Times.
Marty is still relatively new to us. He beeps CONSTANTLY. Presumably, that's to let you know he's coming. Sometimes he gets in the way when the store is crowded. He adjusts his route when encountering an obstacle, but it's a slow adjustment. Just this weekend he got in a woman's way and she told me, "I hate that thing."
My Mom loves him. She says "hi" to him and shows him off if we bring family to the store for something. Kids laugh and talk to him.
As for him taking the place of a worker, I don't see it. He often makes a misdiagnosis about a spill or a mess. For example, if it rains, he gets hung up at the entrances He doesn't move until someone resets him because he's serving as a warning and a marker for the "hazard." So, workers have to reset him when there's no problem. Also, if there really is a mess or a spill, customers usually raise the alarm. He's so slow to make his way around the store that a mess was probably made, reported, and cleaned before he found it.
To me, he's more of a novelty. "Look at us! We're such an advanced grocery store that we have a robot!"
Still, it's the best grocery store ever because we were the first to put eyes on him. ;)
7
@Jenna Maybe "he" is not going to replace a human, but "he" is training and conditioning humans to accept robots in daily life. Maybe the next "he" will replace a human job next year.
Personally, I find it gross and creepy that they are conditioning us like this; like we're simple lab animals to experiment with...
1
When I was In my 20’s every car had a name some male males some female. There will always be short simple names for inanimate objects. The better marketing people among us create faces and names to get the things sold. Pet rock anyone?
1
It depends on the robot. Do you need your vacuum cleaner to have a face? What about a robotic comfort pet or elder care companion? It seems problems could arise when robots shows glitchy sides to those being assisted by their automated caretakers. If the line is clear, ok, but what is that line?
3
As a legged robot designer, the answer is unequivocally yes. Humans anthropomorphize anything by drawing a face. Although faces may not be the most pragmatic use of electricity in a robot system, getting humans to explore the full use of any robot and give the maximum amount of maintenance requires them. I even go farther, my bio-inspired designs are given individual names. With a face and a name, it's a virtual guarantee a human will lovingly accept any robot, even if the body is unlike anything in nature.
5
@KK This is really interesting, thanks!
1
@KK
You only think it's a virtual guarantee. I want no part of them.
5
@KK I'm glad that you have a job. But what about the jobs that will be lost because of automation?
Sorry, but I will never "lovingly accept" robots.
9
The Pixar WALL-E had no face per se, but it did have two eye-like cameras. And the eyes of his friend EVE were visible on an LED screen and capable of more expression. "Windows to the soul," indeed. Maybe a soul will be in the next upgrade.
7