[brucemoose]

As someone who works remotely I'll go out to the coffee shop for some brief human interaction. Sometimes it's the only time in the day I interact with people outside my home.

Personally I don't see the draw to a goofy robotic arm that slings espresso. Vending machines are already a thing, coffee included. This just seems like an excessively expensive way to implement one.

[sopooneo]

I work at home, and if I wanted to, I could have a computer right by my bed, and I’d never have to leave it. But I use a typewriter, and afterwards I mark up the pages with a pencil. Then I call up this woman named Carol out in Woodstock and say, “Are you still doing typing?” Sure she is, and her husband is trying to track bluebirds out there and not having much luck, and so we chitchat back and forth, and I say, “OK, I’ll send you the pages.”

Then I’m going down the steps, and my wife calls up, “Where are you going?” I say, “Well, I’m going to go buy an envelope.” And she says, “You’re not a poor man. Why don’t you buy a thousand envelopes? They’ll deliver them, and you can put them in a closet.” And I say, “Hush.” So I go down the steps here, and I go out to this newsstand across the street where they sell magazines and lottery tickets and stationery. I have to get in line because there are people buying candy and all that sort of thing, and I talk to them. The woman behind the counter has a jewel between her eyes, and when it’s my turn, I ask her if there have been any big winners lately. I get my envelope and seal it up and go to the postal convenience center down the block at the corner of 47th Street and 2nd Avenue, where I’m secretly in love with the woman behind the counter. I keep absolutely poker-faced; I never let her know how I feel about her. One time I had my pocket picked in there and got to meet a cop and tell him about it. Anyway, I address the envelope to Carol in Woodstock. I stamp the envelope and mail it in a mailbox in front of the post office, and I go home. And I’ve had a hell of a good time. And I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.

Electronic communities build nothing. You wind up with nothing. We’re dancing animals. How beautiful it is to get up and go do something. [Gets up and dances a jig.]

- Kurt Vonnegut https://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/04/11/r-i-p-kurt-vonn...

[xiphias2]

I'm also working remotely and whenever I move to a new city I find the nicest coffee place and spend half of my work time there to be around people.

[Gpetrium]

I think it is worth noting that if it becomes cost effective to have a robotic arm setting up your coffee and enough customers appreciate the intrinsic benefits, businesses will move towards that direction. In the future, we might see human-led coffee shops as a niche market!

In terms of human interaction, just like in the past, humans will always find ways to get their share of interaction.

[gammateam]

> In the future, we might see human-led coffee shops as a niche market!

Basically Tokyo right now

[cbau]

The draw is that you can get barista-quality espresso drinks for cheaper. Labor is the biggest expense of coffee shops.

[metabagel]

Doesn't sound like it is barista quality.

"As for flavor, it tasted like a blend of Nescafé and shelf-stabilized milk. Convenient, serviceable, like coffee from an office vending machine."

[haihaibye]

I'd be interested in them doing a blind taste test.

Yes, there's human interaction and other subjective factors going into what people report taste as - much like knowing whether an artist traced a photo when making art (demonstrates skill without technological assistance)

But sometimes this changes - eg Europeans initially rejecting Californian and Australian wines, then grading them well in blind tests, then accepting them more (with some hold outs for traditional regions or high prestige makers etc)

[claudiulodro]

I agree 100%.

Baristas are great for customer loyalty, and a good barista will have dozens of daily regulars that look forward to interacting with them and are emotionally invested in the coffee shop. A robot-staffed coffee shop won't.

A barista is not just someone that makes and brings coffee; there are a bunch of other tasks that need to happen at a coffee shop. This robot misses a ton of tasks that would be critical for any real coffee shop:

- Pastries, paninis, food handling of any sort in general.

- Bussing tables, cleaning messes, washing dishes.

- Refilling/rotating creamer, sugar packets, etc.

Most importantly, robots have no passion for coffee so your customers will have no passion for your coffee. Good baristas have pride in their craft. May as well drink office or 7/11 coffee if a robot is making it.

Also I think the goal of this project is ethically questionable; it's not freeing people from the tedium of the assembly line. It's replacing fulfilling, social, OK-paid jobs that many people enjoy, and for the exclusive benefit of the capitalist class.

[magduf]

This is ridiculous. By your logic, people who have a "passion" for cars wouldn't want to buy a car built on an assembly line that has lots of robots on it, which every car factory does today.

I don't know about you, but when I go to a coffee shop, I never talk to the barista. The barista is behind a machine, where I can't talk to them. I talk to the person at the counter where I place my order, and who takes my card, gives me my pastry, etc. Why do I need a human making a drink when a robot can do it better.

It's insane how tech people, of all people, will try to claim that humans can do easily-automated, repetitive things better than machines.

[sexyflanders]

I’d say it’s more like a car enthusiast scratching their head at the new self driving car model that is controlled by a giant robotic arm and a giant robotic leg that occupy the entire drivers seat.

The machine is already a machine. it doesn’t need an external machine to physically control it. Thats what networks are for.

[magduf]

No, that's an entirely separate issue and only particular to this one dumb machine in this article. Yes, I completely agree, having an automatic coffee machine run by a big mechanical arm that just presses the "start" button is really stupid and inefficient. But that's not the issue here in this comment thread about replacing human baristas with machines, in an ideal situation where the machines really can make drinks as good as, or better than, the humans. People here are decrying this automation and claiming that "human interaction" is oh-so important, and it's not. I don't talk to baristas: they're standing behind a big machine, and are busy doing something, so why would I interrupt them? If I want to chat with someone, that's what the cashier and/or server are for. Do these silly people go and talk to the cooks at restaurants too? And do they decry the obsolescence of telephone operators and elevator operators?