Fast Food + Automation = ???

As we all know, automation is quickly replacing the need to employ people in every industry. Well the fast food industry is next in line to be butchered. The fact that there is more and more pressure nowadays to raise minimum wages will only incentivise the introduction of more labor saving technology. It's inevitable.

These robotic arms can do pretty much anything a trained chef can and it achieves this by studying the hand movements of professionals through motion capture. The company's website, moley.com, says it'll come out this year. The idea is to sell it to people to have in their kitchens, but I could see fast food companies giving it a try.

In the last few years an increasing number of fast food chains have either talked about automating their restaurants or have begun automating some parts of the process, such as ordering. The whole idea behind fast food from the beginning has been to make it as skill-less a job as possible. McDonald's was the first major success along these lines with their assembly line approach that has become commonplace because competitors were forced to do similar things just to compete with the lower costs McDonald's enjoyed.

Whenever labor saving technology is introduced into an industry, all competitors are usually forced to adopt it just to keep up. The rise of automation in fast food will trigger an arms race of sorts, with competing corporations racing to streamline their automation as quickly as possible so as to not fall behind. Eventually no fast food place will be able to afford to employ people anymore, it'll be too cheap to automate. As tends to be the case, the new technology will probably outperform the human from the very beginning, making it a justified transition.

Should we continue with this outdated system that requires us to work for a right to life? Or should we look for solutions that embrace the coming technological innovations and share their fruits?
Something to think about...