Tech news that turned my tum

Aman walks into a bar. The barman says… Well, nothing. Because he’s a blimmin robot. Forgive my tizz. It’s just that I’ve realised that I am that frog from the fable. You know the one? He’s in a pot that’s slowly being brought to the boil and by the time he realises it’s too hot, he’s halfway to the dinner table.

You see, I’ve been a barman for more years than I can remember (mainly due to alcohol-related memory loss). It’s a great job and so long as the wowsers don’t take over, there’ll always be work. Or so I thought.

Just this week, news broke that a bar in Prague named Cyberdog, has a robot bartender. My stomach turned.

With the advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the rise of robotics, we all knew some jobs would be consigned to the scrapheap of history.

I was excited about this. I bought into the pitch that with good AI, many lawyers and accountants would lose their jobs. My hope was that with computers running the show, we might be able to inject some humanity into the professions.

But shit just got real. A robot bartender.

A good bartender is a thing to behold. Part psychologist, part mixologist, they spend their days listening to people’s woes and glories. They’ll facilitate friendships and negate conflicts before they even arise.

A good bartender will make or break an establishment.

It’s not just jokes though. It’s going to be super serious, really soon.

The computers and the robots are coming. And they’re coming for our jobs. And while we can’t halt the tide of technology, we should certainly be thinking about how we can have our boats rise on it.

A few times lately I’ve realised I’m living in the future and that a computer is doing a job that a human did in the olden days.

The subterfuge lies in the fact that the thing that’s taken the job looks more like a computer screen than some Jetsonsesque robot.

Have you bought a movie ticket recently? Did you buy it from a person or from a computer screen? I bet you didn’t even notice some pimplyarsed teenager was out of a job?

I signed in to a large office yesterday. The interaction was handled by a computer when in the past I would have had a human engaging me in a trite discussion about the weather.

How about the supermarket? Have you noticed that there are more self-service checkouts and fewer human staff members with each refurb?

I bet you didn’t stop to think about that young person who used to use that job as a means of saving for uni. Or that woman who used it as a second income for her family.

The robots aren’t coming. They’re here. And we need to have a serious talk about what this means for New Zealand.

What are we going to do with all the out-of-work humans who’ll have their jobs taken by a group that doesn’t have a union and will happily work on Christmas Day? Should we be having a discussion about Universal Basic Income?

Because once you’ve got a country full of robot bartenders, who will provide the sass and the laughs?

In fact, I just realised a robot bartender would tell way better jokes than a human:

‘‘A man walks into a bar.

‘‘The barman says: ‘1000 1110 0010 0100 0101.’’’ If you think that’s not funny then think about a world where a chunk of our jobs are done by mindless automatons. Then think of an even scarier future where all the jobs are done by robots.