Japan hotel fires 'annoying' robot staff

One hotel in Japan learned the hard way that robots are not always right for the job. Henn na Hotel in Tokyo is laying off half of its nearly 250 robots because they failed to do their automated tasks and humans had to intervene in their operations, the Wall Street Journal via Business Insider reported on Jan. 17. The hotel began employing robots in 2015 with the goal of becoming "the most efficient hotel in the world" and to respond to a worker shortage. Those laid off included Churi, a pink, egg-shaped virtual assistant assigned in each room, who could not keep up with the likes of Siri and Alexa. For instance, she failed to answer guests' questions on opening hours of local businesses.