A shiny new cohort yesterday joined the workforce in Taiwan — a troop of mini robots all going by the name “Pepper,” enlisted to entertain customers and give them the hard sell.
Mandarin-speaking Peppers were introduced into two banks and an insurance company in Taipei, dancing to music, playing with children in lobbies and leading staff aerobics sessions.
The pint-size white automatons are designed to flatter customers in line, declaring: “It’s my honor to serve you.”
Skilled in public relations, they guess clients’ ages at far lower than reality. Then they move in for the kill, providing information on financial products and encouraging customers to go to company Web sites and sales staff for information.
Cathay Life Insurance Co (國泰人壽), the nation’s biggest insurer, introduced its first Pepper to its Taipei branch yesterday.
The firm plans to have 10 robots nationwide, but said that Pepper is meant to supplement its human colleagues, not sideline them.
“Pepper’s job is to greet customers and introduce products to make the wait for services less boring,” Cathay Life executive vice president Rachel Wang (王麗秋) said.
“We hope it can do more in the future, but it definitely will not replace our staff,” she said.
The robot was first unveiled by Japanese mobile carrier SoftBank Corp in 2014.
CHIP WAR: Tariffs on Taiwanese chips would prompt companies to move their factories, but not necessarily to the US, unleashing a ‘global cross-sector tariff war’ US President Donald Trump would “shoot himself in the foot” if he follows through on his recent pledge to impose higher tariffs on Taiwanese and other foreign semiconductors entering the US, analysts said. Trump’s plans to raise tariffs on chips manufactured in Taiwan to as high as 100 percent would backfire, macroeconomist Henry Wu (吳嘉隆) said. He would “shoot himself in the foot,” Wu said on Saturday, as such economic measures would lead Taiwanese chip suppliers to pass on additional costs to their US clients and consumers, and ultimately cause another wave of inflation. Trump has claimed that Taiwan took up to
A start-up in Mexico is trying to help get a handle on one coastal city’s plastic waste problem by converting it into gasoline, diesel and other fuels. With less than 10 percent of the world’s plastics being recycled, Petgas’ idea is that rather than letting discarded plastic become waste, it can become productive again as fuel. Petgas developed a machine in the port city of Boca del Rio that uses pyrolysis, a thermodynamic process that heats plastics in the absence of oxygen, breaking it down to produce gasoline, diesel, kerosene, paraffin and coke. Petgas chief technology officer Carlos Parraguirre Diaz said that in
Japan intends to closely monitor the impact on its currency of US President Donald Trump’s new tariffs and is worried about the international fallout from the trade imposts, Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato said. “We need to carefully see how the exchange rate and other factors will be affected and what form US monetary policy will take in the future,” Kato said yesterday in an interview with Fuji Television. Japan is very concerned about how the tariffs might impact the global economy, he added. Kato spoke as nations and firms brace for potential repercussions after Trump unleashed the first salvo of
SUPPORT: The government said it would help firms deal with supply disruptions, after Trump signed orders imposing tariffs of 25 percent on imports from Canada and Mexico The government pledged to help companies with operations in Mexico, such as iPhone assembler Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密), also known as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), shift production lines and investment if needed to deal with higher US tariffs. The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday announced measures to help local firms cope with the US tariff increases on Canada, Mexico, China and other potential areas. The ministry said that it would establish an investment and trade service center in the US to help Taiwanese firms assess the investment environment in different US states, plan supply chain relocation strategies and
RSS