Author, Thomas Germain
Role, BBC Future
Posted 16 minutes ago
Reading time: 3 minutes
Machines are stretching out their digital palms. Your response may shape the future of the service industry.
If you're not interested in slot machines at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, you can have some fun at a bar called "The Tipsy Robot." There’s a cheesy gimmick there: two robotic arms that automatically mix cocktails.
I pressed "Margaret" on the screen and watched them suddenly move. They mixed tequila with lime juice and orange liqueur, took a few unnecessary turns to show off their skills, and finally bowed slightly and handed the glass to me. All this might have amazed me 20 years ago. Today, this is almost a cliché.
The drink cost $17 (£12.55), but I noticed there was an extra charge on the bill: a 10% "service charge". Tipsy wants a tip.
This isn't the first time this has happened to me. At Artly Coffee in New York, a similar robot barista asked me for a tip. At Newark Liberty International Airport, a self-checkout machine at an unmanned kiosk suggested I tip when I bought a bottle of water. Across the country in Portland, Oregon, a real person took my order at Burmese restaurant Top Burmese, but my dinner was wheeled out by a robot waiter.
I was happy to tip 20% on that live waiter; on other occasions, I hesitated. When robots extend their digital palms, the rules of tipping are thrown out the window, and it's often unclear who the money ultimately goes to.
But is this the new normal, or just a short-lived robot craze? The answer may depend on how you decide to reach for your wallet.
Representatives from both The Tipsy Robot and Artly Coffee said tips are split equally between human employees and the companies take nothing. Artly even turned off the tipping feature after my visit. However, these may be exceptions. In fact, some experts told me that robot tipping may be part of a larger campaign to squeeze more out of both employees and customers.
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“We have every reason to believe that some unscrupulous employers are taking the tips given to robots and keeping them for themselves,” said Holona Ochs, associate professor of political science at Lehigh University and co-author of the book “Gratuity.” "The key question is who benefits from this and who pays the cost," Oakes said.
Robot's money-making move
Since the start of the pandemic, people are being asked for tips more than ever, often proactively prompted by digital payment systems. Consumers complain it's a form of "emotional blackmail," and the suggested tip percentage continues to rise. While some deride America's "out of control" tipping culture, it's spreading around the world.
This shift in norms is particularly sensitive in the United States, where the tip system allows companies to pay workers lower base wages. The minimum wage in the US is $7.25 (£5.35) an hour, but this drops to just $2.13 (£1.57) for tipped employees.
In the United States, when you tip your employees, the law says that neither the company, nor the boss, nor the supervisor gets a piece of the tip. But if the person you're tipping is a machine, there may be a loophole in the law.
“The legal standard for who owns the robot tips has not yet been established,” Oakes said.
The Trump administration has made it more difficult for workers to complain about tips, and workers may be afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation. “So if the employer is taking away the tips given to the robot, we have almost no way of knowing,” she said—at least for now.
"A lot of times, you can see someone working in the kitchen or behind the bar, but that tip probably goes into the company's pocket. There are no rules about that."
This doesn’t mean automated machines are necessarily bad for service workers. At places like The Tipsy Robot and Artly Coffee, the novelty of the robots is the selling point, so the people working with the machines would not otherwise have those jobs.
Artly said the decision to turn off tip prompts and give employees raises was in part a response to customer complaints about tips. Some stores now have physical tip jars, but 100 percent of tips still go to human employees, said Abigail Smathers, director of content at Artly. "We don't believe in using automation to save costs at the expense of humans."
Smathers said the service industry is facing a labor shortage and robots can help without replacing humans. However, she acknowledged that AI is being deployed in situations where it does not belong.
"But ultimately, that's where the problem lies. The technology itself is not evil; its moral properties depend on the intent and the way it is implemented," she said. "But we are doing everything we can to develop it with clear intent and act with integrity to ensure that the future of this technology benefits the many, not the few."
Katerina Berezina, an associate professor at the University of Mississippi who studies hotel service industry technology, believes that this industry deserves more recognition. "I don't think it's fair to assume that this is just an assumption that companies are making money at all costs," she said.
"Tipping or service fees may only be used to pay for the necessary manpower or maintenance and updates required by the robot." She said that tipping is a common practice in this industry, and companies operate under market constraints.
On the other hand, advocacy groups such as "One Fair Wage" believe that robots are just a way for companies to continue low wages, and low wages are the real cause of labor shortages in the catering industry.
Regardless of how the various factors are at play, experts say the future depends on how you and other customers respond to the experiments we're seeing right now.
To give or not to give?
“Think about people’s primary motivations for tipping,” says Michael Lynn, professor emeritus at Cornell University and author of The Psychology of Tipping.
Lynn said that we often tip to reward good service or out of altruistic considerations to make up for employees' meager wages. Of course, there's also the issue of face and recognition - "If I don't tip, they'll hate me," he said. In other words, we feel obligated to do so.
"Almost none of these reasons apply to robots, so there's obviously no reason to tip," Lynn said.
However, people may still take it seriously. In one study, only about 11% of respondents reported tipping a robot bartender. "But people who actually experienced the robot bartender were more willing to tip than others," said Berezina, a co-author of the study.
And, while most people said they wouldn't tip a robot, about 42% changed their minds if the tip would go to a human employee.
