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The next class war is here. He who owns the robots (means of production) wins. Leasing out pizza robots. Ewww.
Or hear this out, maybe automation is how we make socialism viable. The masses don’t need to work, and those that are curious and creative can dedícate themselves to innovation, art and exploration. I know that sounds utopic so I will make the bet that in reality we will land somewhere in the middle, which is still an improvement from where we are now and from where we were 500 years ago.
Yes. In a world where resources and production are plentiful -- the hypothetical post-scarcity world -- then you could theoretically have this.
But the above article is about a business model that is as far from that future as possible. In fact, going in the opposite direction. It's a late stage capitalism business model and it is met with fanfare from the tech press somehow.
Make robots that produce a thing. Lease those robots to franchisees or whatever. Take a cut, and funnel money upwards while ceasing to innovate or produce anything, and defend the "tech" through litigation. Stock bubble, cash out. New owners enshittify by raising rates, decreasing quality, until product is no longer viable. Sue customers for breach of contract.
It's fucked. And it'll only get unfucked if legislation and enforcement of legislation is not wholly captured by the people doing the fucking.
You can not reach that post scarcity world without automation.
Human civilization is a process, a long term project. We cannot leapfrog stages. Ultimately suffocating or restricting technological advancement with the intention of preserving people’s jobs, while somewhat nobles, is a myopic approach to the issue. Don’t preserve any jobs, automate it all. Everything that can be automated should be automated. At some point redistribution of wealth won’t be a choice, it will be fundamentally necessary.
although fun to see tech, the line i have a problem with is
If you have a pepperoni pizza, you need to place 50 slices of pepperoni one by one.”
there are actual demonstrations on how places like dominos employees place pepperoni, and its not remotely 1 by 1, and takes like seconds for a pizza.
of all the steps you can try to expidite, the pepperoni step isnt the one that should be the example.
Here's it in action. The dough base is pre-made.
It looks believable to me that this might be far faster than a human.
im not doubting the machine is fast. its just not really realistic to compare it to something much slower than it actually is. this video while exagerated because theyre aiming for speed intentionally, goes over a short process on how dominos would make a pepperoni pizza. the process on how they add cheese and pepperoni doesnt take that long.
i think the machine would be far better suited for personal pizza and ingredient normalization where there may be a ton of toppings, or like a papa murphies. but if all you want is a pepperoni pizza, time duration in fast food establishments is not that high to make one.
It also assumes the pepperoni step is the bottleneck and zero downtime between orders. But who cares the main thing is they get to cut a few hundred mil from a vc check. Even if the thing thanks they still never have to work again.
Two takeaways here, 1) we are rubes and 2) they want to replace us all with robots. They want to starve us, and starve our children
is it indians hidden under the desk makin the pizzas?
Yeah but how does it taste?
I'd guess it's the quality of the ingredients that matter, not if its robot or human put together.
Question stands.
Like cardboard, or sugar
This makes me wanna become the John Henry of pizza making and crank out 101 pizzas per hour.
John Henry died at the end.
I hope this leads to a price war on pizza
Hrmmmm. Reminds me of this extra stupid thing: https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/zume-pizza-startup-shuts-down-18136126.php
I'd expect to see this with humanoid robots too as they take over more and more human jobs.
I have the feeling that humanoid robots are only really a good fit in places designed for human(oid)s. We might see things change to be more optimized for the optimal form factor of machine for that job. I suppose it's possible for maintenance/health/safety reasons we don't but I don't see health and safety being important to the people doing this.
this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2025
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