Google’s layoffs affect 100 robots

Google’s latest round of layoffs, which affected 12,000 employees at the company, didn’t stop with human workers. The belt tightening also resulted in over 100 robot workers being shut down. Wired reports.

The Everyday Robots division, which was one of the divisions shut down by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, had trained 100 one-armed, wheeled robots to clean the company’s cafeterias and squeegee tables, as well as to separate and recycle garbage. The robots also helped keep conference rooms clean during the pandemic.

While Alphabet’s Everyday Robotics team will no longer be a standalone project, some of its technology could be integrated into other departments, the company said.

Google has made several robot acquisitions in its history to create a consumer-friendly robot. While a table-cleaning butler bot sounds encouraging, the group was about to take it a step further and integrate generative AI into a helper. For example, you could tell the robot that you are hungry and it could get food for you. (Wired notes, however, that the prototype was far from ready for consumer use.)

Moonshot projects like Everyday Robots have proven their worth for Alphabet in the past, with Google Fiber and Nest thermostats being the most prominent examples. But not all of them succeed and they suffer significant losses.

Google’s cost cuts, meanwhile, appear to be more severe than previous layoffs. The company has asked returning employees to share a desk with a “partner” to maximize office space.