Customers would feel right at home as Chili recently applied Rita the robot to 51 restaurants, in addition to the 10 in which the technology was already being tested. Rita, created by Bear Robotics, can act as a sort of server, guiding guests to their tables, carrying food, even singing “Happy Birthday”.

While this type of automation is quickly expanding (扩展) throughout the restaurant industry due to historic labor shortages (劳动力短缺), Wade Allen, Senior Vice President of Innovation, said Rita’s pilot wasn’t performed because of the “economic situation”.

Chili’s growth shows the restaurant industry is confident in Rita’s early performance, particularly in utilization (使用) and error rates. Allen said Rita produced “great utilization rates”, based on whether employees (员工) were using and communicating with the technology. Even seemingly unuseful functions such as “singing” provide more opportunities and higher utilization rates that are above 30%. On the error side, Allen said Rita functions without a problem over 99% of the time.

However, such technology could be seen as bells and whistles to customers. And, indeed, there is a risk here as most customers have said they prefer to communicate with human workers even as this type of guest-facing technology increases.

Allen said the company hasn’t looked deep to see if Rita translates to labor savings. They also don’t know whether Rita’s presence has affected servers’ tips, stating, “We hope to learn more as Rita expands.”

“My goal is not to take people out of the service industry; people are what make this industry. My goal is to make our employees’jobs easier, and I absolutely think robotics is a service progress. The future is a world where we still have amazing service, but we can simplify and automate some of the difficult and unnecessary tasks,” Allen said, “We know Rita adds value. We’re not toying with this. Our intention is to go broader.”

Researchers at the University of Chicago have trained an artificial intelligence system, to write fake reviews on Yelp, a website showing customers reviews on shopping or something else, and it's pretty hard to tell them apart from a human review.

Their study, which will be presented at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in October, aimed to throw attention onto how easily these systems can write reviews like humans and how damaging they can become if they’re not monitored properly.

Since many small businesses rely on online reviews to help grow and keep their reputation, a future where someone—like a rival or angry customer—could crazily fill their page with negative reviews written by a machine is pretty worrying.

And, according to the research team, the threat goes far beyond a bunch of fake reviews on Yelp. “In general the threat is bigger,” Ben Y. Zhao. one of the authors of the study, said. “I think the threat towards society is large and it really misleads users and shakes our belief in what is real and what is not. I think that' s going to be even unimaginable.”

To test how believable these reviews came across, the researchers invited 40 volunteers and had AI generate five fake reviews for 40 actual restaurants. The volunteers were asked how useful they thought the review was and whether or not they thought it was fake. The AI reviews ranked as “effectively indistinguishable” from real reviews，according to the study. Further, the fake reviews were given a 3.15 "usefulness" rating, compared to a 3.28 rating for human reviews.

Yu Chenrui, 29, is a maker of automata (机关人偶) in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Automata are built to look like humans or animals and give the illusion (错觉) of being able to move on their own, “The art form amazes me, because it combines various skills, from storytelling to mechanics, and the pieces are built with a sense of humor,” Yu says. His creations have caught the attention of well-known artists and his fancy pieces of art have attracted collectors worldwide.

Interested in handcrafts as a boy, Yu first encountered automata designed by Japanese artist Kazuaki at an exhibition in 2015 when he studied at the Communication University of China in Beijing. “It was like meeting a like-minded friend, ” Yu says, recalling the moment. As an art and design major, he began to learn the craft by himself and, with the support of his tutor, he kept studying and examining automata in school.

When he graduated in 2016, Yu landed a job at an advertising agency in Beijing. He stayed on at the company for three years because, at that time, he was not sure that he could make a living out of his hobby. While working as a designer Yu kept exploring and advancing his skills in wood carving and mechanics. Eventually, despite the job’s good salary, it was not enough to make up for not following his true passion. Finally, in 2018, Yu quit his job and returned to Chengdu to open his automata workshop.

To keep himself occupied while running his workshop, he planted blueberries, raspberries and cherries. He watered, weeded and added fertilizer (肥料) every day. “Daily routines helped me calm down and inspire my creativity, which resulted in an automaton called To Observe the Autumn,” Yu says.

Over time, Yu’s reputation grew and his business flourished (兴旺). Many of Yu’s creations are built with a dash of wisdom, a sprinkle of humor and are inspired by observations of real life. Yu knows that there are many more creative ideas waiting to be expressed. “It feels quite good to be fully devoted to automata creation and I am still searching for myself.”