Project Concept

Humans have been using the mechanical advantage since some of our earlier recorded histories. We conceived of automata that could help us in our everyday lives long before we had the technology to make them a reality. Now, we are at the cusp of creating robots that could “pass” as real humans. Conversely, multinational corporations are publicly considering replacing their human workforce with assembly line-style robot arms to prepare our food. These recent developments in technology have allowed humankind to blur the boundary which separates robots and humans. A lot of this development has aided people in the healthcare industry and more extensively military forces. Even in the current news-cycle, there have been rising concerns of the use of these technologies in the fast food industry especially America’s beloved McDonald’s franchise.  But it’s not just any simple piece of technology that would help aid its employees in making their jobs easier; on the contrary, it would eventually lead to the unemployment of countless workers. With this project, our group aimed to create a robot that would embody the ideas of class and ability to challenge people to think critically about the issue of machines replacing humans in the workforce.

Research Questions:

  1. Who would be the benefactors/non-benefactors of replacing the human fast food workers with robots?
  2. What are the moral/ethical consequences of replacing human workers with robots?
  3. Are minimum-wage workers human?

 

Design Decisions

We constructed our robot out of various materials such as cardboard and PVC pipe that we cut down to size to reduce as much weight as possible. We spray-painted it a metallic silver to help our audience recognize our creation as a robot, which are typically constructed using metal. We adorned our robot with McDonald’s logos where a worker usually has them. The robot wears a McDonald’s baseball cap, and is holding a McDonald’s “To-Go” bag to resemble a McDonald’s employee. The robot has no mouth and has no opinion. It is built on the chassis of a repurposed remote control car, which can roll forwards and backwards, and steer left and right. The only communication function it has is through its LED screen display with the message, “Am I worth $15/hr?” We chose the $15/hour amount to reference the current effort of fast-food and minimum-wage workers to increase America’s federal minimum wage. All of these design decisions were made to question whether people wanted workers to be replaced by robots. In other words, by answering yes (green), the person would be indicating they would rather have the workers replaced by robots. By answering no (red), the person would be indicating that they wanted workers to receive $15 an hour minimum wage. We chose Pike Place Market on Memorial Day for our venue to get a variety of responses and perspectives from a diverse audience. Our intended audience was people that had expendable income to go to Pike Place on a vacation weekend, who may not have had experience working in a minimum wage position. We were open to getting reactions from audience members who have earned minimum-wage positions before sometime in their lives. But we believe for the majority of people that we hit our intended demographic.

 

Our Findings

An audience member that interacted with our robot stated that customer service wouldn’t exist if robots were to take the role of humans. This is important because we begin to see the blurred line between the human and the object. In Margaret Rhee’s Racial Recalibration: Nam June Paik’s K-456, she mentioned one of Paik’s performances was created for intended purpose of “…humanizing and blurring the boundaries between human and object.” (Rhee 304) By blurring that line, and creating an approachable robot, we believe that several audience members empathized with our minimum-wage robot by pressing the red button which showing their . On the other hand, if we had created a robot arm with no personality, the likelihood of the audience empathizing for minimum-wage workers would have been much less.

This exchange would cause problems with rising unemployment rates as McDonald’s is the largest fast food chain in the in the US. Considering that Ed Rensi (Ex-CEO of McDonald’s Corporate) is against the $15 an hour minimum wage, we have to remind ourselves that replacing the human with the machine would cause issues in society’s working class.

Referring back to Dixon’s text, Norbert Wiener states,

“… cybernetics acts to open all boundaries and connections between machines, nature, and humans, but the boundaries of morality and liberal humanism are sacrosanct and must never be crossed. (Dixon 149)” With this statement, Wiener demonstrates that people are encouraged to explore these boundaries and mental/physical connections of human and machines, however the very essential human qualities we possess should never be replicated or breached.

“Robotic movement mimics and exaggerates but never achieves the human.” (Dixon, 280) As the human commands the machine, the machine will follow their commands. McDonald’s ex-CEO, Ed Rensi, stated that it would be better to have robots take the responsibilities of McDonalds’  workers. Whatever we tell a machine to do, it will follow our orders, but if we replace it with a robot, this would replace a human worker. Our performance challenges individual’s perspective on the issue of machines replacing humans in the work force. Based on the feedback from our performance, some individuals said, “No, it’s shooting the straw man. Giving a misrepresentation of what a $35,000 robot looks like and then asking  ‘Am I worth…?’ No, obviously not. However, McDonald’s $35,000 robot might be.” This individuals supported Ed Rensi in his approach to replacing humans with robots. But others thought differently, “Customer service? Where does that exist?” Based on this feedback, the machine can never achieve human-ness like Steve Dixon states. This is important because even though the machine is cost-worthy, it wouldn’t understand the customer fully like a human would. For example, a person asked “If an order was made by mistake, will the robot fully understand the problem?” The machine is a cost-efficient tool, but it will never replace an interaction with a real human being. To answer our research questions, Who might be the benefactors/non-benefactors of replacing the human fast food workers with robots? The obvious answer is that the corporations would ultimately benefit from this occurrence considering the amount of capital they would be taking in and not paying these employees their $15/hr. The non-benefactors would be not just the employee’s but also the customers who would miss the human interactions that come with eating at McDonald’s. The machine wouldn’t have an authentic human to human connection. Secondly, what are the moral/ethical consequences of replacing human workers with robots? Corporations are not concerned with these consequences. Other humans might be. The robot might be more efficient at making our food but they can not replicate the unique human characteristics that we possess. Finally, are minimum-wage workers human?

We learned that making a robot with human characteristics is confusing, both to those analyzing the interactions, and those interacting with the robot. By giving the robot human characteristics, we made people want to empathize with it. People were excited by our robot because it has human characteristics, and assign emotions/meaning to them. The responses were biased because of people’s interpretations of our robot’s aesthetic. Because our robot resembled something new and adventurous, their responses were swayed and showed their support for new technologies replacing humans.  We speculate, in hindsight, that viewers may have empathized with our humanized robot more than with an actual human fast food employee. Corporations have turned people into machines, and now are trying to turn machines into people.