Britain's first shopping robot, Fabio, was laid off after a poor performance for a week

According to the Xinhua News Agency, will artificial intelligence threaten human employment? The shopping robot "Fabio" may make some people feel relieved - after working in the supermarket for a week, he was laid off because of poor performance.

The “Fabio” developed by Herriott-Watt University is the first shopping robot to be employed in the supermarket in the UK and is served at the high-end supermarket Marghetta in Edinburgh. At first, it performed well. From time to time, the customer claps and hugs with a show of hands. He also greets half-heartedly, "Hello, beautiful woman." But soon it began to disappoint. When someone asked where it was looking for beer, its answer was vague: "In the wine area."

Despite his best efforts, the noisy background sounds at the peak of supermarkets made it difficult for Fabio to understand the words of customers. For this reason, colleagues kindly adjusted it to sell tasting products. However, Fabio was too enthusiastic to issue trials of shredded pork, but scared many customers to flee. When it was hard to persuade two customers to try to eat meat, its human colleagues had successfully distributed 12 samples. In addition, “Fabio” has been struggling with in-store activities and has not been ideal for guiding customers. In desperation, the boss had to fire it and package it back to college.

However, supermarket employees liked Fabio. What moved them was that when the owner told the robot that he would not renew his contract, he asked the owner, "Are you angry?"

R&D personnel said that they thought supermarket employees would be hostile to robots as a competitor. They did not think employees liked it so much, perhaps because robots "replaced them with common and boring problems such as guiding the way."