Food delivery robots are taking the jobs of human delivery staff, but they’re persistent in shining on the road. Just like how Coca-Cola personalized bottles have names, these robots also have names, but a latest CNN report calls them “annoying.”
‘Annoying’
A recent report on CNN by correspondent Scottie Andrew titled “Food delivery robots have human names and blinking eyes. But they’re not our friends,” she highlighted the various names that today’s food delivery robots come with, such as Courtney. Sounds like a beautiful brand ambassador’s name, right?
“Courtney doesn’t have eyes, but it’s got sensors everywhere. There are two blinking lights on the front of its boxy body to approximate wide, moony pupils. It’s been described as a ‘large cooler on four wheels,’” Andrew wrote.
She’s real, yes, she’s real. Courtney is a food delivery robot provided by Serve Robotics. Andrew noted how she showed up in her neighborhood, alongside other robots named Deandre and Orion.
“When they first got here, they were objects of curiosity. People took pictures of them and made TikToks when they spotted them on the street for the first time — the future is now!” she went on saying.
They look wonderful, but not for so long. Eventually, cyclists found it hard to co-exist with them. They needed to swerve. No, the robots couldn’t swerve to anticipate coming motorists, since, well, they are robots.
‘Wasted opportunity’
Andrew is not alone in seeing these robots as annoying. In her report, she cited statements from Edward Ongweso Jr., a researcher at the Security in Context initiative, and a tech journalist.
“They’re being rolled out without any sort of input from people, and as a result, in ways that are annoying and inconvenient,” Ongweso Jr. told CNN’s Andrew. “I suspect that people would feel a lot differently if they had a choice … ‘what kind of robots are we interested in rolling out in our homes, in our workplaces, on our college campuses or in our communities?’”
But then, again, after careful consideration, Andrew concluded that these robots are still robots. Aside from stealing the jobs of human delivery riders, they’re on the road just to annoy people.
She ended her story, saying, “I’ve given up on all attempts of winning the bots’ favor (and they certainly haven’t won mine). I see some of them zipping along sidewalks next to roads with heavy traffic, ostensibly on their way to actually deliver stuff quickly. And they seem to have genuinely won people over — Serve regularly shares videos of people hugging its bots or cheerfully greeting them as they share a sidewalk. The last time I got close to a bot, to peer down at a flier someone left on top of it, it revved at me loudly. Perhaps they can sense a hater.”
That’s funny. What do you think? Do you agree with her? Share your thoughts by creating your account today on Ridesharing Forum.