Right now, the collective hospitality industry has many concerns around the future of technology, especially artificial intelligence, and robotics. The major concern is that jobs will be replaced by technology, a conversation that has been going on for years.

Host Rob Grimes begins the conversation by flashing back to a time when fast food restaurants were testing remote call centers taking orders at the drive through. Immediately, there were concerns about jobs being taken in the hospitality space. Eventually, this idea went away. He also jokes about a time when school officials debated letting students use calculators in tests; this technology was adopted and helped the acceleration of math skills.

Rob talks about similar fears behind the future of robotics. At the end of the day, Rob argues, there’s going to be a service involved in hospitality. The science behind hospitality is the information that we can learn. However, the art behind hospitality is the human touch or the ability to have empathy - something a computer or robot can never have (“Never” is a long time).

Rob then talks about what he predicts will go obsolete in the future. Language, for example, or rather the need to learn another language could be replaced by translation technologies. Face-to-face interactions as well may be replaced by virtual communication. In both these cases, communication is still occurring just with the assistance of technology.

If you want to hear about Rob’s argument on jobs being replaced by technology in the hospitality industry and what he believes may actually go obsolete - listen to this episode of Accelerate.