Much has been made in recent years about how “artificial intelligence” is going to change society. Here’s one way that it will not: robot bartenders.
In our lifetime, you will not see the widespread adoption of “autonomous” machines with articulated limbs that use “deep learning” and “neural nets” to serve you drinks. Anybody who says otherwise is dumb, lying, or both. This should be obvious to anybody who lived through the “Web 3.0” boom and bust just a few years go, or even just anybody who has ever worked behind a bar. Less obvious but more important is why so many of these techno-maximalist AI boosters are so thrilled by this fiction. I have a theory.
Earlier this month, Tesla, a federal welfare scheme with a failing car company attached, announced a slate of new “products.” I’m using smart quotes there because none of them are real, and given the longstanding record of right-wing chief executive Elon Musk pumping his firm’s stock with outlandish lies, it’s doubtful they ever will be.
Even the business press and investment bank analysts—two of the most stunningly credulous accomplices in Tesla’s absurd ascent to the global pinnacle of electric vehicle manufacturing—were unimpressed by the latest vaporware on display at the event, “We, Robot.” (Irony is dead.) Musk’s loyal legions of Silicon Valley “libertarians,” Trump supporters, and divorced condo dads are fully bought in, though. Predictably, they loved it. In particular, they loved Optimus, a laughably lazy I, Robot ripoff that was pouring draft beers for attendees while wearing a cowboy hat.