Xueba's computing system

Chapter 250 Lin Yuan’s Loud Slogan

The concept of algorithmic tax proposed by Lin Yuan has far-reaching significance beyond his entrepreneurial success in the food delivery field.

This concept quickly sparked a heated discussion in society, because over the years, there has always been a cloud of doubt in everyone's mind - how should technology develop, and is the development of technology necessarily beneficial?

In the early days, "technological progress" was regarded as the golden rule.

Technological progress is seen as an improvement in productivity, and technology is thus engraved with a holy glory like religious fanaticism. Anyone who doubts this is like a stubborn old man who has walked out of the feudal society.

The most important argument for this view is that technology will improve productivity, so that the same amount of manpower can produce more products. Then the freed-up manpower can be invested in other fields, thus bringing prosperity to other fields.

This logic was flawless when industrial technology was in its infancy, because industrial production capacity was insufficient and a large number of people were needed to produce.

But production capacity cannot expand indefinitely, because people have to buy the products produced.

So, overcapacity arrived.

After industrial overcapacity, the remaining manpower can only be invested in the tertiary industry.

But the core of the tertiary industry is the service industry. What is the core of the service industry? Of course, it is to serve people. It is impossible to serve machines.

The reasonable proportion of the tertiary industry is a very complicated issue, so let’s not discuss it for now and first look back at the topic of “overcapacity”.

The overcapacity is caused by the development of science and technology. After overcapacity drove a large number of people into the tertiary industry, it did not stop there.

Overcapacity in a broad sense refers to industrial overcapacity in the secondary industry. However, with the development of science and technology, people will eventually realize a painful fact - overcapacity will spread to the tertiary industry.

If Lin Yuan does not control the "AI Manager" algorithm he has developed, a large number of medium and large chain catering companies will be born in the catering industry. These chain catering companies will replace a large number of small and medium-sized catering businesses with their more efficient operation efficiency.

Therefore, the catering industry, as the tertiary industry, will lose a large number of jobs because the operating efficiency will be improved and so many waiters will not be needed.

Then, combined with the increasingly powerful AI technology and smart hardware, these medium and large restaurant chains can also use robots to replace manual labor on a large scale.

It is impossible for small and medium-sized catering businesses to establish a unified central pre-prepared food kitchen. The pre-prepared food here does not mean the pre-prepared food in the traditional sense, but refers to some pre-processing of the dishes, such as: washing vegetables in advance and freezing them in the cold chain. In fact, many vegetables sold on the market today will go through the cold chain. Another example is the unified configuration of hot pot ingredients in advance.

To give the simplest example, a local hotpot restaurant cannot compete with Haidicao, which produces and prepares hotpot dishes in a unified manner in terms of cost advantage.

It is impossible for small and medium-sized catering businesses to invest in a large amount of equipment to achieve the maximum automation of the catering production process, but chain catering companies can do so because they have volume. As long as there is volume, there is no need to worry about the large asset investment in equipment in the early stage, because sooner or later the cost can be diluted by increasing volume.

So we will be able to see this scene in the future.

Every city has one or several large central kitchens, where vegetables and meat are pre-processed on the automatic assembly lines based on the city’s daily catering consumption estimated by AI.

The meat required for braised pork is cut and marinated in advance, and its size can be precisely controlled to the millimeter level by introducing an optical recognition system. Even the weight of the meat can be provided with a controllable deviation range, for example: the weight of each piece of braised pork is 10g +- 1g.

The fat lamb rolls and fat beef rolls for hot pot can be produced fresh on the same day, that is, the production of live lambs and beef rolls can be completed on the same day. As for vegetables, they can also be picked from the fields and sent to various restaurants on the same day. With the help of advanced production lines, they can be put into the pot without washing after unpacking.

If drone technology and low-altitude economy develop further, the catering industry will be able to do even more.

For example, most dishes can be cooked in a terminal cooking kitchen. The so-called terminal cooking kitchen is where the food is finally served.

The kitchen that each restaurant originally needed to be equipped with can greatly reduce the size and manpower of the back kitchen under unified cooking, because the unified terminal cooking kitchen can receive orders in a unified manner and then deliver them by drone.

This is not a joke. In fact, the key to every restaurant having a kitchen is that if the kitchen is located elsewhere, the heat preservation of the dishes cannot be guaranteed, but drones can perfectly solve this problem.

Imagine setting up a unified cooking kitchen next to a large shopping mall. It is responsible for cooking dishes for a large number of restaurants in the mall. After the dishes are ready, drones are used to take a special low-altitude air channel and deliver the dishes to each restaurant in an insulated box.

Don’t worry about the dishes becoming homogenized. There is no homogenization in front of the program. It’s just a matter of writing a lot more code.

That's right, as long as the people who cook are not humans. Once a unified cooking center kitchen is established, sooner or later it will be a row of robotic arms cooking.

Robots only need electricity and don’t need to be paid, so why do we need to hire people?

What’s more, robots can be horribly customized.

A human chef cannot accept a wide range of spiciness for the same dish. At most, he can accept: mild spicy, medium spicy, very spicy and so on.

The definition of spiciness between two strangers is very confusing, but with the robot, the diners can be given a portion of chili in advance to anchor the spiciness. The spiciness can be subdivided into 1 to 10 levels, and the diners can give the spiciness that suits them after tasting it. Then the robot will never make a mistake in the spiciness, because the program only has bugs and not errors.

Just think about it, how can you expect a human chef to compete with a robot chef?

You say humans have handcraft characteristics? What a joke, now that even math competition questions can be solved by AI, you human chefs have only so-called characteristics. You just need to prepare learning data for the robot, and it will be copied by you in minutes.

All this is not just Lin Yuan's fantasy. Lin Yuan holds a simple view - standardization will inevitably lead to mass production, and mass production will in turn promote standardization. Standardization and mass production will eventually lead to automation.

Isn’t this the process of the Industrial Revolution? After automation became popular, the demand for manpower decreased.

Then, people will eventually realize that the tertiary industry does not need so many people.

What will happen then? Where will the freed-up people go? They will lose even the right to be exploited.

No value means no dignity. Human beings are not brainless animals. They cannot live by having a full stomach. Without economic status, one will lose social status, and then lose human dignity, and eventually choose to lie down.

Therefore, Lin Yuan put forward a loud slogan - we must be cautious in popularizing new technologies in the tertiary industry, because we humans do not have a fourth industry to absorb the unemployed.

(End of this chapter)