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Why did half the robots working at a hotel get fired?

Answer: Because they were bad at their jobs.

Humans have been wary for years that robots will take their jobs because they can do them more quickly and efficiently. But if recent events are any indication, humans can rest easy for the time being.

Henn na “Strange” Hotel in Japan recently had to resort to layoffs when the robots that were supposed to make work for humans easier were not up to the task. Among those fired were a pair of velociraptor dinosaur bots, who were unable to reliably perform tasks at the reception desk.

There was also a concierge robot that was unable to answer many of the guests’ questions; and Churi, a small doll-shaped bot in each room that was supposed to function much like Amazon’s Alexa but couldn’t. Humans will also be taking over for the luggage-carrying robots, which were only able to get to one-quarter of the rooms when the weather was nice.

Kate is a senior copy editor in Northern California. She holds a bachelor's degree in English with a minor in professional writing from the University of California, Davis.