ROBOT BARISTAS AND AI CHEFS CAUSED A STIR AT CES 2024 AS CASINO UNION WORKERS FEAR FOR THEIR JOBS

The barista tipped the jug of smooth, foamy milk over the latte, pouring slowly at first, then lifting and tilting the jug like a choreographed dance to paint the petals of a tulip.

Latte art is a skill that can take months if not years of practice to master - but not for this barista powered by artificial intelligence.

Robots of all kinds caused a stir on the show floor last week at the annual CES technology trade show in Las Vegas.

It’s innovations like this that worry Roman Alejo, a 34-year-old barista at the Sahara hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip, who can’t help but wonder if the clock is ticking on hospitality jobs in the age of AI.

“It is very scary because tomorrow is never promised,” he said. “A lot of AI is coming into this world. It is very scary and very eye-opening to see how humans can think of replacing other humans.”

The world’s largest tech show put those fears back under the spotlight just a little over a month after the casino workers union in Las Vegas ratified new contracts for 40,000 members, ending a bitter, high-profile fight that called attention to AI’s threat to union jobs.

“Technology was a strike issue and one of the very last issues to be resolved,” said Ted Pappageorge, the Culinary Workers Union’s secretary-treasurer who led the teams that negotiated new five-year contracts, narrowly averting a historic strike at more than a dozen hotel-casinos on the Strip.

Hospitality workers told The Associated Press in interviews over eight months of bargaining that they were willing to take a cut in pay while on strike to win stronger job protection against inevitable advancements in technology. That includes technology already at play at some resorts: self check-in stations, automated valet ticket services and robot bartenders known as “tipsy robots.”