It's like people who want help shopping at the grocery store. A robot is basically useless.
My average interaction:
"Do you have this thing?"
Is it a food thing or a non food thing?
"It's a bin, for food"
Okay, you want a big bin or a little one, disposable or resuable? Made of glass or plastic? Aisle 2.
"It's food, I can't eat plastics or glass."
Okay... You want beans maybe?
"Yes yes beans that's what I said"
Okay aisle 5, right hand side halfway down.
Customers frequently don't know what they want, or even how to say it. So I spent 5 minutes looking for a Greek spice ziitar when they were looking for an arabic/north Africa spice Zaatar that is in the world food section.
Imagine a robot trying to decipher this, especially when many people have accents as well, or they just show you a picture of a thing. I can work it out, it takes a little to time. The robot would also be useless because our store carries like millions of things and has at one point carries most things but it's a luck of the draw if we currently carry something. So ask a robot, do you carry tahini sauce? Yes we do, we currently have 0 at negative 1 dollar located in section not found. Because that's all the computer is going to say for like 90% of the tahini stuff we carry since we've switched brands a dozen times and they all are still stores there even though we haven't carried many for over a decade.
It's like people who want help shopping at the grocery store. A robot is basically useless. My average interaction:
"Do you have this thing?"
Is it a food thing or a non food thing?
"It's a bin, for food"
Okay, you want a big bin or a little one, disposable or resuable? Made of glass or plastic? Aisle 2.
"It's food, I can't eat plastics or glass." Okay... You want beans maybe?
"Yes yes beans that's what I said"
Okay aisle 5, right hand side halfway down.
Customers frequently don't know what they want, or even how to say it. So I spent 5 minutes looking for a Greek spice ziitar when they were looking for an arabic/north Africa spice Zaatar that is in the world food section.
Imagine a robot trying to decipher this, especially when many people have accents as well, or they just show you a picture of a thing. I can work it out, it takes a little to time. The robot would also be useless because our store carries like millions of things and has at one point carries most things but it's a luck of the draw if we currently carry something. So ask a robot, do you carry tahini sauce? Yes we do, we currently have 0 at negative 1 dollar located in section not found. Because that's all the computer is going to say for like 90% of the tahini stuff we carry since we've switched brands a dozen times and they all are still stores there even though we haven't carried many for over a decade.