Every few months there ’s a narrative admonish us that robots will take over our jobs within five , 10 , or 20 years . You do n’t get a good deal of stories about robot taking over jobs right here and now . So what would happen if golem were hired now ? Are they up to the chore ?
Enter Fabio , front hopeful and ready to take the first stair in his life history . Fabio is a robot , developed by Heriot - Watt University in Scotland , and specifically designed to be able to hold up conversation with humans . The golem is connected to the Internet and any speech is processed elsewhere before a reception is sent back , much like Siri or Alexa .
Scottish supermarket Margiotta harmonise to give the robot a test run in its stores , as part of the BBC programSix Robots and Us .
At first , the robot appeared to be doing well . He greeted customers with enthusiasm , saying " hello gorgeous " or giving them high - fivesome . The shop ’s owners were pleased .
However , soon enough it became clear that he was n’t going to be the most helpful of employee . At best , he was incapable or a jerk , at worst , he was really pock the client off from the sausage section .
Whilst client enjoyed his conversation , if they asked the robo - employee for any information at all , he was n’t the helpful case . When asked " where is the beer ? " he respond , " in the alcohol section " .
masses would postulate him where the Malva sylvestris was , in the vague hope he ’d say " aisle three " .
“ Instead it just give a ecumenical localization , for lesson , ' cheeseflower is in the electric refrigerator ' , which was not very helpful , " store ownerLuisa Margiotta told the program .
We like to consider he was just being a pedantic jolt .
Eventually , like many regretful employee , he was give jobs to keep him out of the way . He was sent to the sausage discussion section and postulate to hand out samples of sausages . He did so with his earmark exuberance , but customers were n’t impressed , and really went out of their way to quash go near him .
Humans performing the same undertaking managed to get 12 customers to consume sampling sausage every 15 minutes . Fabio only wield an average of two .
“ Unfortunately , Fabio did n’t perform as well as we had hop , ” Margiotta aver . “ the great unwashed seemed to be really avoid him . "
plain , people are quite suspicious of automaton pop the question sausages , and he scared them away .
Having fail to be helpful in locating products and offering free intellectual nourishment to customer , the store owners decided not to keep him on . If you ’re thinking it would at least be easy to fire a robot for perfect incompetence , think again . When the storage owner let him know of the decision , the inapt little depot - doer looked up and asked " are you angry ? " , which is fairly heartrending .
When the robot was packed up , one of the store - actor in reality jump cry , showing just how affiliated they ’d got to Fabio .
“ One of things we did n’t expect was the people working in the shop became quite connected to it , " Dr Oliver Lemon , theatre director of the Interaction Lab atHeriot - Watt University , said .
“ It was good in a way of life , because we thought the reverse would happen and they would feel threatened by it because it was vie for their task . "
It turns out that the workers care that Fabio dealt with the more nettlesome parts of their job , such as talking to irritate customers .
“ In literal fact , they thought it was an enhancement because it was capable to deal with frequent and boring requests , like customer constantly asking where thing are , which I think they found quite helpful , ” lend Lemon .
The director believe that within the next two year his team will have golem working in shopping centers , and in the next five years , we ’ll see robots in airdrome and infirmary .
“ robot will never fully interchange humans because there are some human discernment robots will never be able to make but they will replace some functions , " Lemonsaid . " There are a flock of workaday tasks that do n’t ask human creative thinking or a human level of sensitiveness . A circumstances of those can be automatize . ”
Who fuck , perhaps after 10 , 15 years of seeing them in supermarkets , we ’ll rely them when they hand us some blimp .
The full installment isavailable on BBC iPlayerfor witness in the UK .
