It didn't take long for Harshraj Ghai to respond to the impact of California's new 20 an hour minimum wage for his 3,700 fast-food employees. Ghai and his family operate 180 Burger Kings, Taco Bells and Popeyes chicken restaurants across the state, and one of the first things they did after the law took effect April 1 was to start capping workers' hours to avoid overtime pay. Also, they're closing some outlets a little earlier, and opening others a bit later to avoid paying workers for less profitable periods. But the biggest thing Ghai and his family are doing does not directly involve workers at all: They've speeded up and expanded their use of technology, especially AI. With the state's mandatory minimum wage for fast-food workers set to increase to 20 an hour, many restaurant chains are preparing to raise prices.

I found that the reality of drone delivery is still far from ideal, and people may be turned away by the steep learning curve. But at the same time, it was an exciting experience--the prospect of routine drone delivery feels more realistic than it's ever been. Meituan currently operates more than a hundred drones from five delivery hubs (or launchpads) in the city. Together, they completed over 100,000 orders in 2022. While the platform itself can deliver basically anything, from dinner to medicine to fresh flowers to electronic devices, the drones are mostly used for food and drinks.

The drone delivery service I was trying out is operated by Meituan, China's most popular food delivery platform. In 2022, the company engaged some 6 million gig delivery workers to deliver billions of orders. But the company has also been developing drone delivery since 2017. And in Shenzhen, a southern city that's home to a mature drone supply chain, Meituan has been regularly operating such delivery routes for the last year and a half. Many big corporations have had their eyes on drone delivery: Amazon first proposed doing it in 2013, but its progress has been limited by regulations and a lack of demand.

Despite their growing popularity, many public kiosks with touchscreens are inaccessible to blind people. Toucha11y is a working prototype that allows blind users to use existing inaccessible touchscreen kiosks independently and with little effort. Toucha11y consists of a mechanical bot that can be instrumented to an arbitrary touchscreen kiosk by a blind user and a companion app on their smartphone. The bot, once attached to a touchscreen, will recognize its content, retrieve the corresponding information from a database, and render it on the user's smartphone. As a result, a blind person can use the smartphone's built-in accessibility features to access content and make selections. The mechanical bot will detect and activate the corresponding touchscreen interface. We present the system design of Toucha11y along with a series of technical evaluations. Through a user study, we found out that Toucha11y could help blind users operate inaccessible touchscreen devices.

This paper addresses the question of how bar robots can contribute to the well-being of guests. It first develops the basics of service robots and social robots. It gives a brief overview of which gastronomy robots are on the market. It then presents examples of bar robots and describes two models used in Switzerland. A research project at the School of Business FHNW collected empirical data on them, which is used for this article. The authors then discuss how the robots could be improved to increase the well-being of customers and guests and better address their individual wishes and requirements. Artificial intelligence can play an important role in this. Finally, ethical and social problems in the use of bar robots are discussed and possible solutions are suggested to counter these.

For speedier entry into the U.S., your most important travel tool is now your face. All three of the Bay Area's airports are deploying new facial recognition technology, called Simplified Arrival, to screen incoming international passengers and testing it in San Jose to track some departing passengers too. "You get instant verification," said James Hutton of U.S. Customs and Border Protection on a recent morning as hordes of bleary-eyed travelers streamed through San Francisco International Airport's immigration control booths and paused for a snapshot. "The camera does immediate identification," he said, "telling the customs officer that, 'This is the person that's in front of me.' " The old approach we've long relied on -- passport scanning and stamping -- has vanished. Instead, in a major overhaul of its strategy of processing travelers, government officials have installed cameras next to customs officers at all 238 international airports, 13 seaports and every pedestrian and bus processing facility along the nation's northern and southern land borders.

Couchbase Lite's Predictive Query API allows applications to leverage pre-trained, Machine Learning(ML) models to run predictive queries against data in embedded Couchbase Lite database in a convenient, fast and always-available way. These predictions can be combined with predictions made against real-time data captured by your app to enable a range of compelling applications. The Predictive Query API in Couchbase Lite is the first of it's kind in an embedded database. We had announced the Developer Preview version of Predictive Query API with Couchbase Mobile 2.5 last year. With Couchbase Mobile 2.7, we are happy to announce the General Availability of this feature.

With industries taking the digital route, only automating the processes for customers to avail services is something that should be left in the past. Helping customers make use of those automated services and still binding the benefits of the digital world to real world offerings is something that needs to be considered by businesses today. For example, a digital assistant to guide people on digital platforms is essential to allow customers the flexibility and convenience to experience a certain activity according to their preference and also get assistance when needed to get things done quickly and accurately. Addressing the elephant in the room, the way in which a service is provided has become crucial. With waves of technology hitting industry shores, digital customer experiences have found place in everyone's life.

One day soon, a menu may judge you. You'll walk up to a kiosk in a quick service restaurant and a tiny camera will scan your features, registering your height, age, gender, and mood. Instantly, it will adjust its display, selecting meal options picked just for you. Once you've ordered and moved on, the person behind you will step into the menu's gaze, and the process will start again. This is the idea behind new software from Raydiant, a San Francisco-based software company that plans to roll out its AI-driven kiosks by the end of this year.

Have you ever looked at something and been creeped out by it's almost, but not quite, human-like appearance? Be honest - does the Sophia robot creep you out?People find things that are human like, but not quite human, to be creepy. The feeling of creepiness can range from robots, to CGI animation, animatronics like you see at theme parks, dolls or even digital assistants. This concept is called the "uncanny valley". And, believe it or not, is actually a particularly significant reason why many AI projects are failing.