While researching the wild claims that everyone is going to lose their job forever, because of AI, I came across a claim that struck me as strange. A large number of organizations, which claim to help understand potential job displacement have indicated food service and restaurant automation would soon be coming to take the jobs of cooks, waitstaff and everyone else who works in the sector. In fact, some have predicted that within a year we may lose 80% of jobs in the restaurant sector to robots.

I was pretty stunned. A large number of commentators, for many years, have smugly preached that the waitstaff, cooks, chefs and everyone else who works in the sector were in a terrible position, where their jobs were about to go away for good. Really?

The restaurant sector has been on of the most resistant to automation, and for obvious reasons: it’s a messy, irregular, fast moving business that operates favorably with human labor economics and seems to be purpose built to be hostile to automation. Still, this idea is not new at all.

In fact, restaurants have been the subject of nearly constant efforts to automate processes. There is really nothing at all modern about the idea. Fully automated kitchens and restaurant that deliver food by motorized cart or conveyor have been a staple at Worlds Fairs for decades and other novelty settings. The concept is rehashed every few years and with it comes the predictions of the robotic takeover of food service work. Of course, this never happens.

From the numerous attempts to replace the service staff in restaurants, which many engineers have spent much time on, since at least the 1930s, and the ongoing hype, this presents an interesting case study in an attempt to automate jobs that really have no rational reason to be automated. What is clear here is that there are many roles that technically can be automated, but are far worse off by automating and have little to no economic incentive to do so. It’s an important lesson to keep in mind with the “AI will take everyone’s job” rhetoric that has been making the rounds.

Here is a video on the topic from 1966