North Carolina offers employers a relatively low-cost labor pool. Nonetheless a two-day trip showed how companies are able to reduce the number of workers. I visited one of the world’s most successful business enterprises, which enjoys tremendous pricing power and commensurate profits. The buildings had all been designed with receptionist-staffed lobbies. Their empty desks were still there (what to do with them?) but in front of each desk was an automated badge-printing kiosk with a keyboard for entering one’s name and the name of the employee being visited. The little guard houses at the drive-in entrances were vacant, having been replaced with an audio/video system to allow a single guard to run multiple gates from a comfortable air-conditioned office.
The Nordstrom department store cafe where we ate was designed like a Chick fil A . We ordered our food at the register and it was brought to our table when ready, thus enabling the waitstaff to be substantially reduced. I wanted headphones for the return flight to Boston. I purchased them from a BestBuy robot at the RDU airport.
Marshall Brain (ironically, a resident of North Carolina) was onto this many years ago: http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm
Need a “where is it” robot. A kiosk (several, maybe even many) for customers to locate items in big box stores, Walmart’s, Lowes, etc. Type in “flashlights” and [ Camping, Isle 7, middle, right ]. I know stores want us to wander around and do some impulse buying. I don’t want to wander around.
@paul: http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/12/this-in-store-robot-can-show-you-the-hammer-aisle-but-not-the-bathroom/
The writing is on the web
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/05/21/408234543/will-your-job-be-done-by-a-machine
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/future-of-artificial-intelligence/