(WASHINGTON) — Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley has announced her presidential bid in a new video released on Tuesday, a day ahead of her formal campaign kick-off in Charleston, South Carolina.
“I was the proud daughter of Indian immigrants — not Black, not white. I was different,” she says as the video she tweeted, titled “Strong & Proud” opens featuring photos of her family.
She becomes the first Republican to challenge former President Donald Trump. He launched his campaign for the GOP nomination in November.
The video skews optimistic, as she embraces her heritage as a South Asian woman while casting aside the notion that divisive racism is fracturing the country.
“My mom would always say your job is not to focus on the differences but the similarities. My parents reminded me and my siblings every day how blessed we were to live in America,” Haley, 51, says.
Over a montage of photos, including one of the 1619 project and a sign “RACISM IS A PANDEMIC,” Haley urges Americans to set aside their critical appraisals: “Some look at our past as evidence that America’s founding principles are bad. They say the promise of freedom is just made up. Some think our ideas are not just wrong, but racist and evil. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
She underscores her credentials as a former governor of the Palmetto state, stressing the state’s resilience, but most of all, saying the need for change in the Republican party is paramount: “Republicans have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, that has to change … It’s time for a new generation of leadership.”
And she’s posturing herself as a new voice unafraid to fight back: “You should know this about me — I don’t put up with bullies. And when you kick back, it hurts them more if you are wearing heels.”
(NEW YORK) — A U-Haul driver is in custody after allegedly striking eight people in a “violent rampage” in multiple locations in Brooklyn, New York, on Monday, according to NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell.
Four people have been hospitalized, two in critical condition and two in serious condition, the commissioner said at a news conference.
One victim, a 44-year-old, has died, police sources later told ABC News.
The victims range in age from 30 to 66 years old, the NYPD said.
Four others suffered minor injuries, Sewell said.
One of the eight injured was a police officer who tried to stop the driver, she said.
“We have seven different locations to process,” the commissioner said.
The driver was identified by police sources as 62-year-old Weng Sor. He allegedly screamed that he wanted to die as he sped off and led police on a brief chase, according to a law enforcement official and a local councilman.
He allegedly fled from Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge neighborhood through Sunset Park before being apprehended a few miles away in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook, ending the 40-minute ordeal.
Police searched the truck and found nothing suspicious, sources said.
U-Haul said in a statement that the truck was rented for 30 days with a return date of March 3, and that the daily cost of the rental was paid in advance and on a valid contract.
“It was an in-town rental, meaning the equipment was supposed to be returned to the location from which it was dispatched,” U-Haul said. “Our customers provide valid identification/driver’s license, valid form of payment, and any additional forms of meaningful assurance our rental agents deem necessary to try to make certain our equipment will be returned in proper condition, and at the stipulated time and place. These criteria must be met before a transaction occurs.”
The company said it has no record of the suspect previously renting with U-Haul prior to this rental.
“U-Haul is working closely with law enforcement officials to meet their needs in this case. Any further details should come from law enforcement,” the company added.
There are no additional credible threats, according to the New York City mayor’s office.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she’s been briefed on the incident and that New York State Police are on the scene.
“I am praying for everyone who was injured today in Brooklyn,” Hochul tweeted. “Grateful for the swift response of @NYPDnews to apprehend the suspect and of our first responders to tend to those injured.”
(BURLINGTON, Vt.) — Authorities in Vermont are warning ice fishers to stay off the ice of a lake after three people died after falling into the lake last week.
The Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department told people on Tuesday not to go on the ice at Lake Champlain while the area experiences warm weather.
According to the U.S. National Weather Service Burlington, the area has experienced temperatures between 7 degrees to 15 degrees above normal in the past week, saying Tuesday that it’s been an “abnormally warm” February so far.
According to Vermont State Police, 62-year-old Wayne Alexander died on Thursday after falling through Lake Champlain’s ice.
Officials found Alexander in the lake around 9:30 p.m. that night, where he was wearing a flotation device.
He was pronounced dead at the University of Vermont Medical Center in Burlington, police said.
According to law enforcement officials, two brothers, John Fleury, 71, and Wayne Fleury, 88, were killed after their utility task vehicle (UTV) broke through the ice on Lake Champlain on Saturday.
John Fleury was retrieved from the ice by the South Hero Fire Department and was sent to the University of Vermont Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Wayne Fleury was found by a driver from Colchester Technical Rescue and was pronounced dead on the scene, according to Vermont State Police.
In a Facebook post, organizers of the 43rd annual Islands Ice Fishing Derby canceled the event “effective immediately” on Saturday at the urging of the local sheriff’s department because of the conditions of the ice at Lake Champlain.
Islands Ice Fishing Derby holds the competition on Lake Champlain and warned participants in a Facebook post on Friday that they shouldn’t fish alone or drive any type of motor vehicle on the ice.
The area near Lake Champlain, which is located between New York and Vermont, has experienced warmer temperatures in recent weeks, according to the NWS Burlington.
Montpelier and St. Johnsbury recently recorded their warmest January on record, according to NWS Burlington.
On Saturday, NWS said that ice thickness on the lakes and ponds in the area are varied because of the “well above normal temperatures” and that it wasn’t absolutely safe.
(HOUSTON) — A 4-year-old from eastern Louisiana is on the road to recovery at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston after receiving a bilateral lung transplant nearly three months ago. Now, her family and medical team are raising awareness of organ donation, especially since Feb. 14 is National Donor Day.
Ava has a genetic disorder called cystic fibrosis, a condition where an abnormal protein affects the body’s cells, tissues and glands that make mucus and sweat, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. With cystic fibrosis, often abbreviated as CF, the body’s mucus is stickier and thicker than normal, which can lead to blockages, inflammation and infections in various organs, especially lungs.
Ava’s mom Jennifer Thomas told ABC News’ Good Morning America that she and her husband John weren’t familiar with CF until their daughter was diagnosed. It wasn’t until last April when Ava became very sick and was rushed to a hospital and was later moved to a pediatric intensive care unit and placed on a ventilator.
“She was a typical 4-year-old: spunky, sassy, full of life, full of energy,” Thomas recalled. “We had a crawfish boil for her birthday on April 3 and she was doing fine. We had friends and family over and then she had a productive cough so I took her to the doctor and 20 days after her birthday, she was admitted to the hospital.”
The Thomases, who live in Covington, Louisiana, first brought Ava to a local hospital. She was then transferred to Children’s Hospital New Orleans before she arrived at Texas Children’s Hospital, more than five hours away from their home, later that month for higher-level care.
Ava’s cystic fibrosis led to “significant end-stage lung disease,” according to Dr. Maria Carolina Gazzaneo, one of Ava’s doctors and a pediatric critical care and lung transplant physician at Texas Children’s.
“She actually had CF but she was very healthy,” Gazzaneo told GMA. “She had never been admitted before. She was at home. She never was on oxygen. So she was a very special patient and then she became really sick because she got a bacterial infection, and … since then, she developed what we call ARDS [acute respiratory distress syndrome].”
Among the treatments Ava needed was extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, or ECMO — a treatment that involves “us[ing] a pump to circulate blood through an artificial lung back into the bloodstream” according to the National Library of Health, part of the National Institutes of Health — and while she was on ECMO, she was placed on the lung transplant waiting list.
Gazzaneo said after 207 days, Ava was able to get her transplant and a new set of lungs, becoming the longest surviving patient on ECMO while waiting for a transplant at the Houston children’s hospital.
“She’s just amazing and she’s actually recovering faster than what we thought,” Gazzaneo said of Ava, post-transplant. “She’s doing so many good things. So I know she will continue to recover and she will go home. We know that.”
Since she received her transplant, Thomas said her daughter is receiving physical therapy, slowly weaning off some medications and was also able to get her tracheostomy, or breathing tube, removed last month.
“She still has an NG (nasogastric) tube, which is through her nose. It goes into her stomach where we give her medicines and liquid and fluid to keep her hydrated but now she’s able to drink some which is a big difference,” Thomas said.
Overall, Thomas said Ava is in “very good spirits” and has been making significant progress. She was even able to go outside on Jan. 22, the first time she’d been able to do so since she arrived at Texas Children’s from Louisiana about 10 months ago.
“She rode her tricycle. It’s all the way on the other side of another building — this hospital is huge. She rode her bike all the way there,” Thomas said. “It was just meant to be that we were out there. … We just enjoyed some fresh air. It was rejuvenating.”
Ava’s doctor said she hopes the 4-year-old’s story can raise awareness for organ donation.
“Lung transplant in pediatric [patients] is completely different than adults,” Gazzaneo said. “Adults, they have more donors, they do a lot more lung transplants. But in the pediatric world, it’s very hard. And Ava had to wait a long time because of [the] scarcity of donors. So I really want to raise awareness … we really need people to donate because that really makes a difference in so many families.”
Ava’s mom added that their family will always be grateful for the lifesaving gift she received.
“We’re very thankful for the organ donation forever. It’s indescribable. It’s a wonderful feeling, but it’s also — we understand that someone else’s life was lost in order to save our child, so we’re thankful all the way around,” Thomas said.
(NEW YORK) — For a group of 18 Ukrainian boys, thoughts of being separated from family and their home country, which has now faced almost a year of brutal war combating Russia’s invasion, faded for a few brief moments at the Quebec City Videotron Centre on Saturday night.
The group, who had been traveling for weeks from different eastern European countries to play at the 63rd annual International Peewee Hockey Tournament in Quebec City, Canada, were focused on one thing: winning.
And win they did.
With 18,000 spectators packing the stadium, many wearing white to show support for peace in Ukraine, the pre-teen hockey players scored two goals in the final few minutes of the game, beating the Boston Junior Bruins with a 3-1 score.
But this game is only round one. The team advanced to round two on Monday, beating the Romanian Selects youth team 2-0. The Ukrainian team will play their next game Friday morning.
Ukrainian Selects, the peewee hockey team sponsored by Canadian hosts, is made up of Ukrainian refugees ages 11 to 13 who have been playing hockey since they were toddlers. More than half of the team’s players have fathers currently fighting against the Russian invasion in Ukraine.
The International Peewee Hockey Tournament, held in Quebec every year, is one of the largest in the world. Over 120 teams from more than 40 countries participate in the event.
Matviy Kulish, 13, who started playing hockey when he was about 4 or 5, has lived in the Czech Republic and France since the Ukraine-Russia war began last year. When he heard about the opportunity to play in the tournament in Canada, he couldn’t wait to go.
“It was my dream [to play] since I watched elder boys born in 2006 when they were participating in this tournament. I was waiting for this day to come,” Kulish told ABC News.
Kulish’s father is fighting against the Russian invasion in Ukraine while Kulish and his mother live in France. Kulish said he speaks to his father “once every three days.”
“Usually, I say to him, asking how is it going and he is answering — hi, everything is fine. I am alive,” Kulish said. “He also wants us to win this tournament. He worries about me.”
When Kulish’s father, Andriy Kulish, heard that his son and the team won the first game in the tournament, he told ABC News, “good job! I am so proud of them!”
The International Peewee Hockey Tournament is considered the world championship for this age group in hockey, volunteer manager and team sponsor Sean Bérubé told ABC News.
When war broke out in Ukraine last February, Bérubé contacted his host family he lived with in the country 28 years earlier and helped them escape. Bérubé contacted a friend in Romania to help coordinate getting the host family out of Ukraine through Romania.
After helping the couple escape, the Romanian friend and former hockey teammate, Yevgeniy Pysarenko, asked Bérubé to sponsor a Romanian hockey team. Bérubé said he would sponsor a team, but only if they were made up of Ukrainian refugees.
Pysarenko “took it seriously and got back to me a few months later with the same request,” Bérubé said. After that, Ukrainian Selects was born.
Bérubé has helped put the team together — covering the cost of the travel for the boys from Europe to Quebec City, finding host families for the boys to stay with while in Canada, organizing practices, finding coaches and even hosting a meeting between the boys and the U.S. Ambassador to Canada.
Co-captain of Ukrainian Selects, Olivier Hubert-Benoit, joined the effort when he heard what Bérubé was doing. Hubert-Benoit is also hosting one of the players while they are in Canada.
“When I heard the news that Sean was bringing a team, he was working hard to make it happen, I called Sean to let him know that I will give him full my time to make this project happen,” Hubert-Benoit told ABC News.
For most of the boys, competing in the tournament is also their first time visiting Canada.
Kulish finds Canada to be a “very nice country. Unusual but lovely,” he said. Kulish would like to train more and come back to Canada to possibly graduate from “the school in here and receive a sport scholarship at the local university,” he said.
While some of the players are interested in returning to Canada to pursue hockey, others would like to go back to Ukraine.
Mykyta Staskevych, 12, is currently living in Slovakia with his mom and playing hockey there while his father fights in the war. Staskevych said his year has been “full of good memories,” spending time in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Romania, but “I want to go home.”
“After this tournament, I would like to return home and play hockey in Ukraine,” Staskevych told ABC News. “But I will go to Slovakia instead and will play there at the moment.”
Staskevych’s father, Vyacheslav Staskevych, is currently fighting the Russian invasion in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.
Staskevych started playing hockey when he was 4 at his mother’s insistence because she thought it would teach him discipline, and he quickly fell in love with the sport. Staskevych and his parents lived in Dnipro before the war started, his father said.
“Now he cannot imagine himself without hockey.” Vyacheslav Staskevych told ABC News. “When I found out that my son was going to the tournament in Quebec, I was in the east of the country. I was filled with a sense of pride, joy, and excitement.”
Vyacheslav Staskevych and his fellow soldiers recorded a message of support for his son and the rest of the team before the first game, wishing them luck.
“We are proud of you that you will go to Canada to defend our Ukraine with hockey sticks,” the group of soldiers from the 231st battalion, which Vyacheslav is a part of, said in the video message in Ukrainian. “We wish you success, victories and incredible impressions!”
For the fathers on the frontlines and the boys thousands of miles away getting ready to play another hockey game, it’s hard to tune out the realities of war. Even though the boys’ days are filled with hockey practice and preparing for the tournament, the war goes on. And the boys’ fathers keep fighting.
Vyacheslav Staskevych said he’s grateful for the people who have supported the Ukrainian hockey players.
“I would like to thank the organizers of the tournament for supporting Ukrainian hockey players and the development of youth hockey,” Vyacheslav Staskevych said. “I also want to thank all the caring people who support and provide assistance to Ukraine, Ukrainians and the military. Victory will be ours! Glory to Ukraine!”
(ANAHEIM, Calif.) — Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes spoke with ABC News’ Good Morning America from the happiest place on Earth and described the final nail-biting minutes before a game-winning field goal that clinched Sunday night’s Super Bowl victory against the Philadelphia Eagles.
“Oh man, dude, that’s like the most nervous feeling of all time. I mean, we have a great kicker. But in those moments, you just never know,” Mahomes told GMA from Disneyland, a post-Super Bowl winner’s tradition, where he is celebrating with his family.
Mahomes led the Chiefs to their second Super Bowl win in four years, beating the Eagles 38-35 in a comeback victory Sunday night in Glendale, Arizona.
“You’re just holding on for those eight seconds until the game’s over and then after that, it’s just celebration,” Mahomes, who also won his second Super Bowl MVP on Sunday, said. “And you just run, hug your teammates, hug your family members because all your hard work paid off.”
The 27-year-old father of two was immediately joined on the field by his wife Brittany Mahomes and their soon-to-be 2-year-old daughter Sterling Skye.
The couple’s son, Patrick “Bronze” Lavon Mahomes III, who was born last November, did not join the family for the on-field party, but is in attendance for the Disneyland celebrations.
Mahomes is the 13th quarterback in NFL history to win more than one Super Bowl. His first Super Bowl win came in 2020 after beating the San Francisco 49ers 31-20 in Super Bowl LIV.
Disney is the parent company of ABC News and Good Morning America.
(NEW YORK) — Inflation data set for release on Tuesday will show whether the U.S. continued a months-long streak of easing price increases despite blockbuster job growth last month that revealed an economy running hotter than expected.
Forecasters predict that year-over-year inflation stood at 6.2% in January, which would mark the seventh consecutive month of cooling price hikes. In December, year-over-year inflation was 6.5%.
The data amounts to a significant slowdown from a summer peak but is more than triple the Federal Reserve’s target of 2%.
The Fed earlier this month imposed the latest in an aggressive string of borrowing cost increases as it tries to slash price hikes by slowing the economy and choking off demand. The approach, however, risks tipping the U.S. economy into a recession.
So far, the economy has largely defied an anticipated slowdown.
The economy added a staggering 517,000 jobs in January, more than double the employment growth a month prior and well above the breakneck pace of some 400,000 monthly jobs added on average last year, according to government data released earlier this month.
In turn, the unemployment rate fell to 3.4%, the lowest figure since 1969.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said last week that the central bank’s fight against inflation has “a long way to go,” citing the jobs data.
Speaking at The Economic Club of Washington, D.C., Powell said the “extraordinarily strong” job figures took the Fed by surprise.
“It kind of shows you why we think this will be a process that takes a significant period of time,” he added.
Still, the Fed has transitioned to a slower pace of rate hikes in recent months, suggesting confidence that the central bank has begun to tame inflation.
Over the next three years, consumers expect inflation to fall to 2.7%, hovering just above the central bank’s target, the New York Federal Reserve found in a survey released on Monday.
The combination of strong hiring and easing inflation has buoyed hopes among some economists that the U.S. could avert a recession.
A report released by the International Monetary Fund last month predicted that U.S. economic growth would cool to 1.4% this year from 2% last year, but it found the U.S. could avoid a downturn.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen rejected recession fears in an interview last Monday with ABC News’ Good Morning America, saying the economy remains “strong and resilient.”
Many consumers, however, remain pessimistic.
Four in 10 Americans say they’re worse off financially since Biden became president, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released earlier this month. The figure marks the highest share of discontented respondents since the outlets began conducting the poll 37 years ago.
Home sales fell for the 11th consecutive month in December, reaching their lowest rate since November 2010, according to the National Association of Realtors.
Meanwhile, U.S. retail sales fell in December, ending the typically busy holiday shopping season with a whimper.
(EAST LANSING, Mich.) — At least three people are dead and five others are injured after a gunman opened fire on the main campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing on Monday night, police said.
After an hours-long manhunt, police found the 43-year-old suspect dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound off campus.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Feb 14, 6:00 AM EST
City manager thanks ‘brave’ first responders after ‘horrific act of violence’
Interim East Lansing City Manager Randy Talifarro described Monday night’s mass shooting at Michigan State University as a “horrific act of violence.”
“The City of East Lansing is mourning the devastating shooting that occurred on the campus of Michigan State University tonight,” Talifarro said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to all of the victims of this horrific act of violence as well as their family and friends. East Lansing and MSU have always shared in each other’s victories and each other’s losses. Tonight, we hold space while we grapple with this devastating loss of life together.”
Talifarro also thanked the “brave first responders who quickly responded to MSU’s campus.”
“Against every natural instinct they ran towards the sound of danger, seeking not their own wellbeing, but instead to protect and serve those in need,” he said. “And we stand shoulder to shoulder with everyone impacted by tonight’s events. Please know that you’re not alone in your grief. We stand with you and will be here as we seek to heal as a community.”
City buildings and offices, including city hall, the public library and the district court, will be closed to the general public on Tuesday. Essential city employees will be reporting to work.
Drop-in counseling services will be available for members of the community at the East Lansing Hannah Community Center beginning at 9 a.m. ET.
(NEW YORK) — Robots holding platters of plantains and shrimp zoom between tables at Sergio’s, a Cuban restaurant in Miami, where the waist-high machines use artificial intelligence to evade strollers, toddlers and even each other.
The restaurant brought in the androids after the pandemic struck, said Carlos Gazuita, the CEO of the chain restaurant.
People had flocked to Florida, bringing a surge of customers. Waiters though quickly suffered burn out, he said. Sergio’s was struggling to retain staff while an infection could leave Gazuita short a server for as long as two weeks. He said he had to close off sections of some restaurants.
“It was out of desperation,” he said.
The extra help has allowed Gazuita to cut wait staff by as much as 20%, while lightening the load for waiters relieved of carrying food and dishes, he said. The move has also delivered savings, he added, since the robots cost about $2 per hour.
Gazuita said he hopes to add more robots, eventually supplementing dishwashers. He acknowledged, however, the anxiety among some staffers that AI could take away much-needed jobs.
“Could you lose jobs? Maybe,” he said. “But could you pay more to the employees? The balance might overall help people.”
Sergio’s is hardly alone. Coinciding with the tightest U.S. job market in more than a half century, business adoption of AI surged during the pandemic but did not cause job losses, experts told ABC News. While data on the scale of displacement remains limited, they said, anecdotes confirm that the technology cut some positions while creating others.
Still, AI is expected to displace more and more jobs going forward, they added, citing buzzy language bot ChatGPT as a breakthrough that could threaten even white-collar positions. AI will enhance productivity and increase compensation for some jobs but it risks leaving out workers who fail to keep up, they said.
“We’ve seen an increase in AI-related displacement and redefinition of work accelerated during COVID,” Anu Madgavkar, the head of labor market research at the McKinsey Global Institute, told ABC News. “We would expect this to rise going forward.”
“The shift in the demand for work into higher-paid, better-skilled jobs could result in inequality,” she added.
So far, however, AI has fallen short of the disruptive, job-killing force that some observers feared, David Autor, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who specializes in technological change and the labor force, told ABC News.
He pointed to the near-historic tightness of the job market. Jobs are plentiful despite high-profile layoffs at companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter and Goldman Sachs. Last month, the unemployment rate fell to 3.4%, the lowest figure since 1969.
As of December, the U.S. economy had 11 million unfilled job openings, government data showed.
“I don’t think there’s been a lot of job displacement yet,” Autor said. “There’s evidence firms are starting to do that. In aggregate, I haven’t seen any direct evidence that it comes to a lot or is even detectable at this point.”
The lack of significant job losses owes to a delay between the discovery of a technology and its effect on the way businesses operate and employees work, he said. The technology needs to advance far enough to reliably improve production, he added, noting that the sector where its impact has been most pronounced — tech — employs relatively few workers.
“There’s usually quite a lag between when a technology exists in the lab and when it has a very big effect on the way that we work,” he said.
But the pandemic turbocharged the adoption of AI, said Madgavkar of the Mckinsey Global Institute.
Companies were forced to adapt to the disruption brought about by health fears, social distancing and supply chain bottlenecks.
“Because of COVID, where you had all sorts of constraints around delivering work in the traditional way, companies and employers got focused on how you automate,” she said.
Artificial intelligence could displace roughly 15% of workers, or 400 million people, worldwide between 2016 and 2030, according to a McKinsey study. In a scenario of wide AI adoption, the share of jobs displaced could rise to as much as 30%, the firm found.
While such dire predictions haven’t materialized yet, the technology poses an imminent threat to the prevalence of accessible, high-quality jobs, said Autor. As AI heightens the demand for workers with advanced training and skills, he added, the technology risks creating a bottleneck with more high-paying jobs at the top but fewer good positions for everyone else.
“The thing we shouldn’t be worried about at present or for quite a while is the quantity of jobs,” he said. “We should be worried about the quality of jobs.”
Rockwell Automation, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based $32 billion company that offers AI products for manufacturers, saw demand spike during the pandemic since supply chain disruptions prompted countries like the U.S. to expand manufacturing within their borders, Dave Vasko, the company’s senior director of advanced technology at Rockwell Automation, told ABC News.
“No doubt, demand has gone up,” he said, noting a shortage of available workers in the manufacturing sector. “Companies are trying to make existing workers more productive.”
Vasko called fears of AI-induced job losses “overblown,” rejecting concerns that the technology could, for instance, make blue-collar jobs in manufacturing unavailable to workers who lack a college degree.
“These are really incremental skills,” he said.
Another company that saw a spike in demand in recent years is Bear Robot, the Silicon Valley-based maker of the robots carrying plates of food at Sergio’s.
Founded in 2017, the company has raised $120 million and employs 250 people, with robots active in roughly 3,000 restaurants, hotels and casinos, said Juan Higueros, a co-founder and chief operating officer.
At the outset of the pandemic, millions of hospitality workers were sent home amid widespread shutdowns. As the industry reopened, many didn’t return. The industry has about two million unfilled positions, government data showed.
Worker shortages have bedeviled the hospitality industry for years, Higueros said.
“When COVID hit, it got tremendously worse,” he added. “It’s a very tiresome and very hard job.”
He said the robots function primarily as a “sidekick” for waiters but acknowledged that they allow managers to staff fewer employees on a given shift, such as overnight, when slow customer traffic may not warrant a large workforce.
Rather than hurt waiters, the robots help make their job easier, Higueros said. No longer required to lift heavy trays of plates and lug the empty dishes back to the kitchen, the servers can focus on providing affable service to a larger number of tables, ensuring the workers more tips, he added.
The robots will make restaurants more profitable and careers in hospitality more sustainable, leading to job creation, Higueros said.
“People will look back and say, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe how we used to do things,'” he said.
In a sense, the purported effect of AI robots on wait staff aligns with a best-case scenario described by Autor: artificial intelligence makes jobs more productive, and in turn more lucrative.
But the adoption of AI throughout the economy — and the adjoining need for skilled jobs — may push a flood of workers without those skills to professions like hospitality, where a glut of applicants could drive down pay, Autor said. At the same time, the tech sector could drive growth in highly paid jobs.
“It becomes very polarized,” he said.
Still, education and skills programs could help workers make the transition, spreading the fruit borne by greater productivity to a larger number of workers. Society will determine how AI gets implemented, Autor said, and, in turn, what it does to the workforce.
“It’s not up to the technology to choose this,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Monday’s sports events:
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Philadelphia 123, Houston 104
Cleveland 117, San Antonio 109
Charlotte 144, Atlanta 138
Utah 123, Indiana 117
Denver 112, Miami 108
New York 124, Brooklyn 106
Orlando 100, Chicago 91
New Orleans 103, Oklahoma City 100
Minnesota 124, Dallas 121
Portland 127, LA Lakers 115
Golden State 135, Washington 126
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE
Ottawa 4, Calgary 3 (OT)
Arizona 4, Nashville 2
Florida 2, Minnesota 1 (SO)
Detroit 6, Vancouver 1
Los Angeles 5, Buffalo 2
TOP-25 COLLEGE BASKETBALL
Miami 80, North Carolina 72
Texas Tech 74, Texas 67
Baylor 79, West Virginia 67
