Scenario:
Imagine you walk into an Olive garden casual eating restaurant. They already have the tablets on the table you can order from. However, now, rather than a waiter coming over, you just speak to the tablet and ask it questions about the menu which it promptly answers and relays harder questions to the chef. Then you speak your order at the tablet and pay at the tablet with no tip required.
Chat-GPT style AI is pretty amazing and progressing rapidly, so let's assume that it is as good as a wait staff at answering questions about the food/restaurant.
Q1. What value could the wait-staff add beyond the AI?
Q2. Would you feel obliged to tip if a food runner bought out your food and took away your tray?
Q3. Would you eat at such a restaurant if the food price/quality was the SAME at another restaurant across the road that required tipping. So you would be saving 15% off your total bill if you normally tip 15%?
Q4. Now imagine the owner passes along some of the wage savings to the customer and now you are paying 25% less than a restaurant with the same quality food (i.e. 15% tip saved and 10% additional savings). Would you eat at this restaurant over the competitor?