AI in everyday life: Why a humanoid robot will soon be in charge of 100 Spätis in Hong Kong

A 24-hour convenience store will soon open in the Asian economic metropolis of Hong Kong, serving as a feasibility study for extensive scaling. As Futurism reports, a single humanoid robot will take over all tasks in the kiosk, with 100 additional locations planned in the medium term.

Embodied AI is entering physical space

At the heart of the project is the concept of so-called embodied AI, in which systems physically interact with the environment and make decisions in real time. According to the South China Morning Post newspaper, Hong Kong Finance Minister Paul Chan Mo-po described the opening as a crucial step in making this technology tangibly integrated into everyday life for the population.

The company Galbot, based in Beijing, China, is responsible for the technical implementation. The robot used, called “Xiao Gai”, is around 1.67 meters tall and uses its arm span of over 1.80 meters to put away goods, select items for customers and carry out the payment process independently.

The mobile capsule store on Hung Hom’s waterfront offers a wide range of items ranging from regular snacks to over-the-counter medications. The company calculates that the novelty will increase foot traffic at the location by up to 40 percent, which will serve as the economic basis for the planned rollout in ten different cities.

Limits of autonomy

Beyond the promising theory, the use of generative AI in direct customer contact still entails unpredictable risks. For example, an AI agent who ran a café in Stockholm, Sweden, blew his budget within a month by making expensive wrong decisions, such as ordering 3,000 latex gloves.

It remains to be seen how reliably the system from Asia handles unforeseen situations or technical failures on the sales floor. In practice, the complete handover of business processes to autonomous machines usually requires significantly closer monitoring than the developers’ optimistic plans initially suggest.