discussion Coffee shop uses AI to surveil and measure productivity of their employees

[GraceRandolph]

 

[simplywohoo]

No coffee shop job is that serious nor important, I'd quit on the spot

[Tropez]

13 minutes ago, simplywohoo said:

No coffee shop job is that serious nor important, I'd quit on the spot

It will likely be replaced by AI, so you're correct it's not worth it.

[The7thStranger]

I'd never set foot in that establishment again.

[Young Volcanoes]

everything from the way the AI is used to the twitter replies is truly dystopian. I wonder how many areas of our lives AI will take over until people wake up and realize we're ****** if we nothing is done  

[Juánny]

36 minutes ago, Tropez said:

It will likely be replaced by AI, so you're correct it's not worth it.

AI can't run a coffee shop and won't be able to for a very long time. Too difficult of a task. Once it is theoretically possible, it will be more expensive to use the AI than to just pay a human. 

 

--

 

On the subject of this thread... measuring worker productivity by "cups" or "pastries given out" doesn't even make sense. You can just measure that based on orders paid and fulfilled and just do it that way. Training and paying for AI use for something that is already measured is so silly. If an order was paid for and fulfilled, whoever was on bar, that's the number of cups they did... It is what baristas do between customer orders (making drip coffee, stocking pastry case, cleaning counter, taking garbage out, inventory, cleaning dishes, etc.) that represents their "above and beyond" productivity, and obviously AI is not smart enough or even needed to automate and process that from video right now. Because if management is going their job they can just look at the cafe, customer satisfaction, and purchase data themselves to see if someone is working and if the cafe is clean. Also, I'm just wondering about the implementation of this, what model was used, etc. and if this is true AI or a fake video that someone edited. 

 

This is a classic example of just taking the trend and throwing at something to see if it sticks. AI's use is primarily to scale non-physical, labour-intensive, and simple tasks. AI has very little application or relevance to operations in a standalone brick-and-mortar business like an independent cafe. 

[Tropez]

1 minute ago, Juanny said:

AI can't run a coffee shop and won't be able to for a very long time. Too difficult of a task. Once it is theoretically possible, it will be more expensive to use the AI than to just pay a human. 

 

--

 

On the subject of this thread... measuring worker productivity by "cups" or "pastries given out" doesn't even make sense. You can just measure that based on orders paid and fulfilled and just do it that way. Training and paying for AI use for something that is already measured is so silly. If an order was paid for and fulfilled, whoever was on bar, that's the number of cups they did... It is what baristas do between customer orders (making drip coffee, stocking pastry case, cleaning counter, taking garbage out, inventory, cleaning dishes, etc.) that represents their "above and beyond" productivity, and obviously AI is not smart enough or even needed to automate and process that from video right now. Because if management is going their job they can just look at the cafe, customer satisfaction, and purchase data themselves to see if someone is working and if the cafe is clean. Also, I'm just wondering about the implementation of this, what model was used, etc. and if this is true AI or a fake video that someone edited. 

 

This is a classic example of just taking the trend and throwing at something to see if it sticks. AI's use is primarily to scale non-physical, labour-intensive, and simple tasks. AI has very little application or relevance to operations in a standalone brick-and-mortar business like an independent cafe. 

10 years ago people said the same thing about AI. Yet here we are. It’s not a good idea to assign absolutes to a rapidly advancing technology. There’s already robots that make burgers. And that was created 5 years ago.

 

Companies care about profit. Once the tech advances, it will become cheaper. Humans are easily replaceable to a company. 

[Daddy]

There's a million easier was to track the productivity of your workers. ID cards, their own profile on the check-out etc....

[If U Seek Amy]

I mean... most companies are already tracking productivity and surveilling their workplace. This is just a different way of doing so honestly. They measure time to complete stuff, how much is done, often track individual employee performance, and more. If you don't know they're doing this (unless its a smaller company maybe) they are

[Juánny]

3 minutes ago, Tropez said:

10 years ago people said the same thing about AI. Yet here we are. It’s not a good idea to assign absolutes to a rapidly advancing technology. There’s already robots that make burgers. And that was created 5 years ago.

 

Companies care about profit. Once the tech advances, it will become cheaper. Humans are easily replaceable to a company. 

We are behind what people were imagining or theorizing about AI beforehand. Watch any science fiction movie created in the 90s and early ideas and fears conceptions of what AI could do. What we have now are a few robots that cost billions of dollars of investment so that they can flip burgers, and an expensive LLM called GPT that cost billions and continues to cost millions so people can write high-school level poetry. LLMs have been around for a very, very long time, and the public are just seeing its impact with the release of GPT chat. The robot burger business is an impressive technical flex but it will experience many issues of scale and profit. It is not a business positioned to make a profit, it is a flex and publicity stunt for the firm that developed these robotics so that they can see who comes forward with a use cafe for the robotics. 

 

I work at the leading edge in the AI industry and the AI is not in a position to replace physical labour on a massive scale. Robotics is extremely, extremely expensive and they do not operate in anywhere near the same capacity as humans. At some point, the capitalists running these business will understand that humans have been shaped by billions of years of training data (the brain, a much more impressive neural network that the inferior computer that was crafted... by human brains) and are much less expensive than training AI models to perform tasks that are easily performed by humans at a fraction of the cost. 

[Dula Peep]

we are all so ****** 

[Tropez]

11 minutes ago, Juanny said:

We are behind what people were imagining or theorizing about AI beforehand. Watch any science fiction movie created in the 90s and early ideas and fears conceptions of what AI could do. What we have now are a few robots that cost billions of dollars of investment so that they can flip burgers, and an expensive LLM called GPT that cost billions and continues to cost millions so people can write high-school level poetry. LLMs have been around for a very, very long time, and the public are just seeing its impact with the release of GPT chat. The robot burger business is an impressive technical flex but it will experience many issues of scale and profit. It is not a business positioned to make a profit, it is a flex and publicity stunt for the firm that developed these robotics so that they can see who comes forward with a use cafe for the robotics. 

 

I work at the leading edge in the AI industry and the AI is not in a position to replace physical labour on a massive scale. Robotics is extremely, extremely expensive and they do not operate in anywhere near the same capacity as humans. At some point, the capitalists running these business will understand that humans have been shaped by billions of years of training data (the brain, a much more impressive neural network that the inferior computer that was crafted... by human brains) and are much less expensive than training AI models to perform tasks that are easily performed by humans at a fraction of the cost. 

It’s expensive because it’s new and largely still in its infancy. As the technology matures, and becomes more efficient it will become cheaper in time. People from the 90s also didn’t expect the amount of wireless tech we have today, how much cellphones changed since then, the really high quality screens that are at the basic  consumer level.

 

I bet if we are both still alive and on Atrl in 2040 which is the same time span from the 90s till today. You’ll be impressed about what AI has done. And what jobs it has replaced. 
 

Humans need to sleep, they need to eat, humans have families, they want to have increased pay. Humans have opinions, they have wants and needs. Humans want rights, they want workers protections. AI as we currently know it don’t. And to companies that’s what they want. 

[NoOneDiesFromLove]

Um 

[Miley Cyrus]

oh absolutely not

[rzal]

 

Why is Olga not doing anything though 

 

[Selegend]

i hate this

 

 

but Olga sis maybe u do need to be fired

[Bloo]

2 hours ago, Tropez said:

It will likely be replaced by AI, so you're correct it's not worth it.

Recently, I went to one of the biggest computing conferences in the world very recently. One of the demos involved a robotic barista. It was cool, but hilariously inefficient and required so many roboticists to get it to work and make a latté for me in 30 minutes. 
 

Human baristas are safe and do valuable work. 

[Pendulum]

Anna, Olga, Elena, Vika

 

yeah, this is Putin's Russia. an absolute dystopia

[Bloo]

1 hour ago, Tropez said:

It’s expensive because it’s new and largely still in its infancy. As the technology matures, and becomes more efficient it will become cheaper in time. People from the 90s also didn’t expect the amount of wireless tech we have today, how much cellphones changed since then, the really high quality screens that are at the basic  consumer level.

 

I bet if we are both still alive and on Atrl in 2040 which is the same time span from the 90s till today. You’ll be impressed about what AI has done. And what jobs it has replaced. 
 

Humans need to sleep, they need to eat, humans have families, they want to have increased pay. Humans have opinions, they have wants and needs. Humans want rights, they want workers protections. AI as we currently know it don’t. And to companies that’s what they want. 

Robotics is not new.  It’s always going to be expensive and inefficient for the vast majority of work. 

[Tropez]

15 minutes ago, Bloo said:

Recently, I went to one of the biggest computing conferences in the world very recently. One of the demos involved a robotic barista. It was cool, but hilariously inefficient and required so many roboticists to get it to work and make a latté for me in 30 minutes. 
 

Human baristas are safe and do valuable work. 

PC computers were massive, taking a whole room, had way less computing power, required teams of people to work it, was very complicated, and not user friendly. Fast forward to 2024 and we have a whole computer in our pocket that is much, much more powerful than the computer that helped Armstrong walk on the moon. 
 

Your arguments are what they said in the 50s to 80s. Yet here we are. Technology moves fast. 

[MatiRod]

This has got to be an elaborate troll post right? Like.... it's a coffee shop. But evil and deranged if true. I would quit on the spot and find a way to sue, maybe you could argue that it's scanning your likeness without consent or something.

[MatiRod]

3 hours ago, Juanny said:

This is a classic example of just taking the trend and throwing at something to see if it sticks. AI's use is primarily to scale non-physical, labour-intensive, and simple tasks. AI has very little application or relevance to operations in a standalone brick-and-mortar business like an independent cafe. 

I don't think you can really say that anymore when AI is capable of creating very realistic looking photos (as long as they don't include humans). I know a company that's pretty much just using AI now to create photos of its products for its online catalogue.

Edited February 2 by MatiRod

[Bloo]

22 hours ago, Tropez said:

PC computers were massive, taking a whole room, had way less computing power, required teams of people to work it, was very complicated, and not user friendly. Fast forward to 2024 and we have a whole computer in our pocket that is much, much more powerful than the computer that helped Armstrong walk on the moon. 
 

Your arguments are what they said in the 50s to 80s. Yet here we are. Technology moves fast. 

Look into Moore’s Law. Regardless, the theory behind what’s computationally solvable hasn’t changed at all since the basics of automata theory have been identified and written about during the era of World War II with Alan Turing. Hardware has accelerated, the theoretical abilities of computers has not. 
 

I have a PhD in computer science. This isn’t me speaking out of my a**. 

21 hours ago, MatiRod said:

I don't think you can really say that anymore when AI is capable of creating very realistic looking photos (as long as they don't include humans). I know a company that's pretty much just using AI now to create photos of its products for its online catalogue.

Yes you can. Generative AI isn’t going to replace manual labor. The criticism and skepticism around AI taking away all economic opportunities isn’t coming from a place of saying AI isn’t impressive. It is impressive. It’s coming from a place of trying to temper expectations to a more realistic place. Being able to use an algorithm to use statistics to generate a that look like millions of photos you’ve seen is pretty straightforward. The algorithms behind such AI are also straightforward and pretty easy to unpack. It’s not some giant paradigm shift that’s going to lead to AI replacing all jobs. That’s just a bit much. There are real threats, but the work we humans do require so many random tasks that we take for granted that designing a machine to do the same is so overly complicated. We still haven’t fully moved to eliminating jobs that could be entirely removed from non-AI technology. Look at people who bag groceries. Why has Walmart not moved to just using self checkout lanes? What about Tracer Joe’s? They don’t even have self checkout lanes? Well, people tend to like the human element involved with a human grocery store worker. Have you ever had to interact with an automated call center that uses a bot? It’s an awful experience right? Yeah, that’s AI in a nutshell. Looks nice, but it’s still not smart. These advanced Large Language Models are great at predicting the next word, but they are not thinking machines. 

[Gladiator]

This is actually part of a larger product called NeuroSpot. The main intention of it was to track thieves and other criminal acts in the beginning, but it evolved into serving other purposes. Here's video.

 

 

 

Edited February 3 by Gladiator

[Tropez]

On 2/3/2024 at 2:31 PM, Bloo said:

Look into Moore’s Law. Regardless, the theory behind what’s computationally solvable hasn’t changed at all since the basics of automata theory have been identified and written about during the era of World War II with Alan Turing. Hardware has accelerated, the theoretical abilities of computers has not. 
 

I have a PhD in computer science. This isn’t me speaking out of my a**. 

Yes you can. Generative AI isn’t going to replace manual labor. The criticism and skepticism around AI taking away all economic opportunities isn’t coming from a place of saying AI isn’t impressive. It is impressive. It’s coming from a place of trying to temper expectations to a more realistic place. Being able to use an algorithm to use statistics to generate a that look like millions of photos you’ve seen is pretty straightforward. The algorithms behind such AI are also straightforward and pretty easy to unpack. It’s not some giant paradigm shift that’s going to lead to AI replacing all jobs. That’s just a bit much. There are real threats, but the work we humans do require so many random tasks that we take for granted that designing a machine to do the same is so overly complicated. We still haven’t fully moved to eliminating jobs that could be entirely removed from non-AI technology. Look at people who bag groceries. Why has Walmart not moved to just using self checkout lanes? What about Tracer Joe’s? They don’t even have self checkout lanes? Well, people tend to like the human element involved with a human grocery store worker. Have you ever had to interact with an automated call center that uses a bot? It’s an awful experience right? Yeah, that’s AI in a nutshell. Looks nice, but it’s still not smart. These advanced Large Language Models are great at predicting the next word, but they are not thinking machines. 

 

On 2/2/2024 at 4:56 PM, MatiRod said:

I don't think you can really say that anymore when AI is capable of creating very realistic looking photos (as long as they don't include humans). I know a company that's pretty much just using AI now to create photos of its products for its online catalogue.

You guys are right. But there’s also this which is what I am referring to. The tech is already there. 
 

https://robojocoffee.com/