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Comment by wefarrell | Hacker News Reader

This reminds me of an argument I got into at a bar with someone who claimed robots would inevitably replace bartenders. I took the view that bartenders would be the last occupation to be replaced by robots because if the goal was to minimize the cost to consume alcohol people wouldn't be coming to bars in the first place.

There's a misconception that jobs with higher pay and more prestige will be the last to be replaced by robots. In many cases I think the opposite is true and in this case I think upper management will be replaced by robots before middle management.

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> I took the view that bartenders would be the last occupation to be replaced by robots because if the goal was to minimize the cost to consume alcohol people wouldn't be coming to bars in the first place.

And the elephant in the room, people want human contact

The "AI revolution" is a business owner dream, not a worker's dream, nor a citizen's dream

> The "AI revolution" is a business owner dream, not a worker's dream, nor a citizen's dream

Yes, but since money is power, that's whose dreams get to be enacted.

Money only gets you to give orders. For those orders to be followed efficiently, you need what the above posters talk about.

>> I think upper management will be replaced by robots before middle management.

You are already correct.

In a sense, the highest level of management is the shareholder/owner. Capital allocation is one of the most highly automated tasks currently. We see this with SAA (Strategic Asset Allocation) programmes being run across all major capital managers and owners.

How is that an example of AI replacing management? The AI might determine what to invest in and thus who the owners of a company are, but humans still need to make decisions for the company.

Less humans involved per decision.

For a traditional bar, I agree. In places where the "bar" is not the primary attraction, such as sports arenas, concert halls or even some types of night clubs, the bar may be just a bottleneck where you may have to wait 5-15 minutes to order a drink during breaks. If you could order your drink on the phone, and have a robot (or even a waiter) serve it at your table, it may be quite convenient.

There could still be 1-2 bartenders in the bar in places where there used to be 5.

In a traditional bar the robot will mix drinks, while the bar tender talks. A few bartenders have mixing the drink part of their act, but the rest don't need to pour drinks.

Science fiction had long suggested bartenders have a degree in psychology or some such field as realistically that is what they are, just not paid / trained like the medical profession it is

The robot will probably pour you a far less boozy well drink though

Half the fun of having a bartender is to influence the alcohol content of your drinks. If the bartender has no influence on the drink the bartender/customer relationship is weak.

Is the bespoke robot with a service contract from a for profit company cheaper than someone you are paying $12/hr? That's the equation here. Lines are long, but that just means you have to pay fewer bartenders, and people will still wait in line anyway. Sometimes these venues aren't even mixing drinks already. They might have cocktails premixed next to the beer taps.

We see all sorts of automation behind the counter, without considering them "robots".

Many bars will have a tap where you place a cup and click a button and it will be filled. Every Starbucks I've been to in the last year has had a fully automated coffee machine. The barista places a cup and pushes a button. The same for filling any sort of cup and fastfood chains. It's either the customers job or the clerk pushes a button and leave it to fill by itself.

I think this furthers your point: The people behind the counter aren't there to make your orders. They are there to take and deliver the orders with some amount of human touch.

Wouldn't upper management be in charge of taking the decision of replacing upper management with AI? Or is this only applicable to small companies (or workers' cooperatives) that had access to these functions from their foundation?

The owner(s) would be the one(s) replacing upper management with an AI.

And as robots replaced more jobs, more people would be going to bars.

Higher unemployment wouldn't necessarily mean fuller bars. Probably more at home drinking.

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