Local coffee scene disrupted as chatbot refuses to serve oat flat whites to people wearing ironic hats
By Cyndi Himmelstiere | Shoreditch correspondent. Has opinions about coffee and is not afraid to use them.
Sources: Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
The Robot Has Come for Our Flat Whites
When OpenAI opened its London office this week, the reaction in Shoreditch was immediate and predictable: three coffee shops announced they were “exploring AI integration” and one gallery put on an exhibition about it. The exhibition costs twelve pounds. The coffee now costs seven. Everything is fine.
The AI barista at the pop-up on Curtain Road — I will not name it because they did not pay me and I have principles — takes your order, analyses your request, and then, according to witnesses, “sort of judges you.” It does not say anything judgmental. But it pauses. It pauses in a way that makes you reconsider your choices. This is, arguably, better customer service than most actual baristas, who simply look at you.
Shoreditch and the Technology Paradox
Shoreditch has always had a complicated relationship with the technology it loves to say it invented. This is the neighbourhood that put “tech city” on a map and then watched the tech money price out everyone who made it interesting. Now AI is here and we are doing it again, except faster and with better branding.
The Guardian’s East London coverage has documented this cycle admirably. Creative scene arrives. Money follows. Creatives leave. Money gets a mural. The mural costs forty thousand pounds. A podcast is made about the mural. The podcast is sponsored by a bank.
A Personal Note
I have lived in this postcode for six years. I have watched a fishmonger become a gin distillery become a private members club become a “creative studio space” that I genuinely cannot afford to enter. And now AI chaos has been explained and the explanation is: it is going to do to jobs what gentrification did to affordable rents. Quickly. Comprehensively. And with a very nice logo.
Still. The coffee is excellent. While we still have it.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/openai-opens-london-office/
More East London dispatches at The Daily Mash
