Automatic snack machine
David Armano
A funny thing happened to me on my way to the Augmented World Expo or “AWE”. For context: AWE started out as one of the flagship events that gather pioneers of virtual and augmented reality technologies under the collective term “XR”. What’s still up for debate is where does the Metaverse fall under the XR umbrella, or does it sit above it? Metaverse is all up for debate right now, but as far as AWE 2022 goes, the Metaverse has been a key theme.
But back to the autonomous economy — I didn’t expect to be writing my next column about the Santa Clara Convention Center vending machine experience, but if we’ve learned anything in our post-pandemic frontier world, it’s how to live in the unexpected Way. After exploring some of the booths at AWE and preparing for my presentation, I realized I needed something to eat quickly and didn’t have time to leave the premises. Luckily, I found an area with three fully autonomous vending machines with, believe it or not, quite appetizing options. One had a selection of Asian-style hot noodles, while another offered all manner of warm treats, from soft pretzels to croissants and more, and a third offered a selection of healthy-looking smoothies.
Punctually at the right time, I paid for a hot pretzel and a green smoothie with my cell phone. Then the magic happened. Both machines spoke to me, reassuring me that my order was being processed and all sorts of sounds coming from the machines, including visual status updates of the pretzel being reheated – just missing the small talk, but more on that later. In less than five minutes, my warm pretzel popped out and my fresh smoothie was poured into a mug. And here’s the thing – as far as the vendors’ food goes, it was decent – pretty good actually. Especially the smoothie. If I could have left a tip for my standalone smoothie maker, I might have.
Signs that the autonomous economy is accelerating
Interestingly, self-driving company Cruise (a GM venture) announced just this week that it is the first company in its class to receive approval in the city of San Francisco to charge passengers for automated “robo-taxi” services . This brings us one step closer to driverless ridesharing and automated deliveries. Will we miss the small talk with our rideshare drivers? What is happening to workers in the gig economy? This transformation will take years and decades, but it is in full swing. And it will also create new, diverse jobs that will replace some, but not all, of the old ones. It’s not a bad idea right now to pursue a career that either enables you to design, construct, or even maintain autonomous systems and machines (they won’t maintain themselves – some things always require human intervention).
Make the autonomous experience more empathetic
In my talk at AWE, I pointed out the good, bad, and ugly aspects of the autonomous customer experience. We’re all familiar with outdated automated phone menus that drive us nuts — that’s the ugly part, but on the other end of the autonomous spectrum, experiences like the state-of-the-art Amazon Fresh stores remove the least pleasant part of the customer experience — checkout. Amazon simply keeps track of what’s in your shopping cart and you pay for it without even knowing it. This is future-proof automation that will replace status quo automation, which is the automated scanners in stores that people need to make sure they’re working correctly.
But can those experiences feel more empathetic—more human? I think they can and will. My presentation at AWE focused on something called “Empathetic Customer Experience” or ECX, which strives to bring more human empathy into all customer experiences, especially the one that will need them most in the not too distant future – the autonomous customer experience. So how does this work in practice, going back to my autonomous vending machine example… instead of the machine just telling me when my pretzel is ready, it could and should address me by name. It could also ask me if I’d like restaurant recommendations in the area (which I actually would have said yes to) and the robotic voice and standard interface could and should feel more human. Why not?
The autonomous customer experience is inevitable, but needs more humanity
As the autonomous economy continues to grow, so do the expectations we have of machines. It only lasts so long that we endure experiences that come to nothing, don’t meet expectations, or don’t pick us up where we are right now. Whether in the real world, on one of our many screens, or perhaps in a metaverse of our choosing, we will increasingly encounter avatars without humans controlling them, kiosks serving us, and digital services increasingly knowing more about us, based on Data and Preferences. The question is, do these experiences only become artificially intelligent or also emotionally intelligent. I think both are ultimately inevitable.
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