Rise of the Burger Bots

We pick up today where we left off yesterday: The lunacy of a minimum wage set at $50 per hour, as proposed recently by California Congresswoman Barbara Lee.

Today, we move the ball forward by discussing that which no one seems to be paying much attention to: The fact that most jobs, regardless of income level, have an expiration date.

You can thank artificial intelligence, machine learning, speech recognition, and robotics for the job destruction to come.

But do not despair…

I come bearing opportunity.

But first, the despair.

It’s a necessary element in our story.

AI and all its techo-pals are rapidly, fundamentally, and forever altering the jobs market we all know. Every job—and I do mean just about every job—is on a path to extinction, at least in terms of human involvement.

Yesterday, I used McDonald’s as a guinea pig to explain why a $50-per-hour minimum wage is economically ignorant. So, let’s keep with the Golden Arches today…

As I noted in yesterday’s dispatch, the typical Mickey D’s employs 80 to 100 workers to function, costing franchisees about $650,000 in salary and benefits.

But kiosks are quickly replacing cashiers. And there are now burger-making machines—let’s call them burger bots—that can fashion as many as 400 burgers per hour, or almost seven burgers per minute.

These burgers are crafted from freshly ground brisket and chuck, and topped with fresh lettuce and tomatoes, freshly sliced pickles and onions, and whatever fixins’ you want.

The burger bots are serviced by other robots that keep the ingredients hoppers filled.

But let’s play this out fully…

We know kiosks have eradicated cashiers. Burger bots are making burger flippers and sandwich assemblers redundant. Robots packed with AI and machine learning monitor and regularly refill the ingredients hoppers. Other robots with specialized technical knowledge and tools and probes for arms will be called upon to repair any burger bot that fritzes.

Bots with AI, geo-spatial awareness, and machine vision will take delivery of fresh meat and produce and ferry them to the appropriate place in the appropriate coolers. Electronic comrades with similar components will keep the restaurant far cleaner than do humans, and will scrub down everything at night and make sure the burger bots are up to code and spic and span.

And somewhere in a Tesla, a 25-year-old tech nerd will be playing a throwback version of Super Mario Bros. on his car’s video screen while at the same time monitoring 100 McDonald’s restaurants in the region, just in case an issue crops up that a human does need to interact with.

From a crew of 80 to 100 workers, a typical McDonald’s will basically be run by a gamer in his spare time.

That’s a bit facetious, but only by a nudge.

McDonald’s profits will soar because each store’s physical footprint will shrink (that’s already happening, by the way), and the bots will never call in sick or take vacation time or get pregnant or file a lawsuit or whatever. Moreover, once you buy a bot, there’s no ongoing salary, just a bit of maintenance and upkeep—all done by other bots that don’t require a salary and benefits.

And America will be awash in joblessness.

There’s this idea floating around that new jobs will replace the jobs technology steals from humans…

To a degree, yes.

But not to the same degree as in the past. Because AI and bots will be better, faster, and more efficient at those jobs too.

We are moving toward an entirely different form of society and governance because of the rise of the machines. I won’t dive into that, but I will say that all of this demands a vast—vast!—amount of computing power. A vast amount of instantaneous access to data and information, and a vast library of images and video for authentication purposes and for geolocation and spatial awareness.

Computers and storage devices on board robots will not have the capacity to hold everything. Nor do they need to hold everything. All they need is access to the cloud, where every bit and byte of everything bots and AI need to know will be available.

And that’s where opportunity hides…

Companies like Amazon, Netflix, Google, Microsoft and others run massive “data farms” and “server farms” in giant warehouses all over the world. These buildings are packed with thousands of data drives and servers and whatnot that allow our technology-dependent world to function. Netflix, for instance, has thousands of servers spread across more than 170 countries, just so everyone can stream—glitch-free—their favorite binge series at any hour of the day.

This is the future… but it will be on an even grander scale.

As the world loses more and more jobs to AI and robotics—and as the world moves more and more onto cryptocurrency blockchains (which is already happening, too)—these data farms are going to print money for those who own them.

Basically, it’s a way for investors to generate a return as workers of the world unite… in joblessness.

The February issue of my Global Intelligence is all about just such a company… a company that is way off the radar at the moment in this particular field, but which will soon be all over the radar because of the data farms it’s building and the demand it’s seeing even before those farms are up and running.

This is the future, and stocks like this are going to be huge winners as the AI revolution plays out.

Better yet, they’re not nearly as risky—nor are they as over-owned—as companies like Nvidia and all the AI stocks du-jour.

As I explain in February’s Global Intel issue (where I reveal my top stock pick) this is where you want to be positioned for what’s already unfolding.