‘Ghost kitchens’ and AI slop: When efficiency is the ultimate goal, who is actually winning?While there are clearly benefits coming from the new billionaire obsession, there is an undeniable sense that something has gone terribly wrong.Alex Blair@alexblair_16 min readJune 12, 2026 - 7:20AMCOMMENTWhile there are clearly tangible benefits stemming from everyone’s new obsession, there is an undeniable sense that something is off about the AI “revolution”. It definitely depends on who you talk to, but there appears to be a growing sense of dread emerging amid the vast backdrop of stunning AI developments. In a few short years, we’ve been able to cut down the time it takes for a wide range of previously menial tasks. It doesn’t matter if you want to understand quantum physics or see what Donald Trump would look like as a punk-rocker wearing a tutu, if you can dream it up, AI can generally spit something back at you. The potential is clearly endless as the technology spirals upwards at an alarming rate. Others you may likenewsnewsEvery week we see new examples of stunningly lifelike video creation and self-assigning “agents” that many say will be able to replace millions of white collars once the kinks are ironed out. In the same timespan, we’ve seen countless anti-AI content creators spring up across social media, many of which posting daily about the latest absurdity to emerge from Silicon Valley to very hungry — and pissed off — audiences.Optimists, particularly those with skin in the game, say the feverish advancement of AI is a no-brainer. They might be right, at least on a few metrics. Throughout the next few decades, we will very likely see revolutions in healthcare and other humanitarian fields that lead to overall benefits.This is the optimism that drives the ship forward, and is also used in an attempt to sway rusted-on Luddites who would rather tap out of technology completely.But just like the internet that came before, AI has the potential to simultaneously improve and blow apart many of our preconceptions about human civilisation.Sitting underneath all of that remains an issue baked deep into our genes: the concentration of power and good old-fashioned greed.Enter the billionaires. ‘Ghost kitchens’ are comingThere are hundreds of extremely powerful individuals out there who are very busy at the moment. Ushering-in and capitalising on the rapid displacement of human-led industries clearly takes a lot of work.Investment banker turned entrepreneur Marc Lore’s newest offering is something quite bizarre indeed.Through his business, Wonder, Mr Lore has claimed to aggregate 26 “restaurants” into one 2,500 square foot kitchen that can stay open all day with just three human workers at the wheel.The kicker is that any budding entrepreneur will be able to make their own e-restaurant and pay a fee to have their “food” listed on an app for others to order. So essentially, e-commerce but for poke bowls. The future of food, it seems, is a field of warehouses full of machines pumping out bowls of sustenance to be delivered directly to our lips. I think there may have been an Oscar-winning film about this exact concept.Creating a digitally-augmented kitchen where the public can start their own shadow restaurants sounds like an ingenious idea, but the philosophy runs into some problems if expanded outwards. While some might say the automation of entry-level fast food gigs is a good thing, who can really tell where it ends. I’ve watched enough Anthony Bourdain to know there’s a little bit more to food than just mashing homogenised robot slop into your jaw.What is especially amusing is that the overpriced “corporate slop bowl” was already a popular meme online amongst jaded workers fed up with generic food long before this idea came about. Wonder has just owned it and leaned in. Investment banker turned entrepreneur Marc Lore’s newest offering is something quite bizarre indeed. (Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for Fast Company)Expand the idea even further, and we arrive at another charming little problem everyone likes to ignore.If most jobs are automated by a small number of powerbrokers who own the machinery, who exactly are they selling to? 500 bowls an hour sounds great … are there 500 buyers an hour?The concept of a universal basic income to replace the billions in wages lost to AI has been touched upon before, but the concern is that it’s not being discussed nearly enough by those who giddily boast to the public about their ability to automate.Still, there are those who fawn over this type of stuff.“If you think robotics hasn’t arrived, Marc Lore has a delicious meal of automation to sell you,” self-described futurist Matt Maher wrote on X upon hearing the news about what he described as a “ghost kitchen”.But the very people they’re beating their chest to, the millions of viewers on social media, are the ones who will likely be swept up in the wave.Through his business, Wonder, Mr Lore has claimed to aggregate 26 ‘restaurants’ into one 2,500 square foot kitchen that can stay open all day with just three human workers at the wheel. Source: Wonder/XI think there may have been a film about this.Are we aiming at the wrong thing?It might be unfair to pin Mr Lore up as the poster boy of AI short-sightedness, but this brand of thinking is exactly why groups like PauseAI are taking to the streets.It’s no wonder people who have worked for years to build meaningful careers, skills and reputations are pissed off.The read is that just about anyone who works in a field that requires some level of craftsmanship and skill is feeling very let down by the planet’s abruptly-assigned trajectory.One reductive sentence from Suno CEO Mikey Shulman tells you all you need to know.“The majority of people don’t enjoy the majority of the time they spend making music,” he said on the 20VC podcast while promoting an app that learns from countless human-made songs to spit out MP3s to be filtered into the streaming market. Under the efficiency-first philosophy, it doesn’t matter if there’s real human sweat behind the song. If it takes less time to make, it’s simply “better”.It’s quite clear that skills across all fields are increasingly being whittled down to numbers on a spreadsheet. This is a well-documented concept, but not well documented enough it seems. It’s called Goodhart’s Law.Sounds like Mikey needs to brush up on Goodhart’s Law.It is a concept advertising executive and behavioural economist Rory Sutherland frequently returns to when discussing modern business.The principle basically boils down to an issue of poor analytics, where the most easily measurable factor of a business becomes its biggest target.Imagine a school decides its sole purpose is to improve test scores. Students might get better at passing their exams, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re becoming smarter. The original goal of overall education gets replaced by the metric used to measure it. The same thing can happen just about anywhere, especially in big business where cost-cutting is king. A restaurant’s purpose is to serve enjoyable food. The metric then slowly becomes bowls per hour as the business expands. A musician’s purpose is expression and a genuine connection to their audience. The metric then becomes streams, likes and content output.Slowly but surely, the proxy replaces the thing itself.Sutherland’s “doorman example” sums it up perfectly. In the mid 20th century, up-market hotels had a juicy opportunity to cut costs by firing their doormen after learning of a brand new invention: the automatic sliding door.What the efficiency-first “spreadsheet model” fails to consider are the intangibles. A doorman can bring to the company and its customers — like providing directions and local knowledge, a general layer of security and creating a general sense of prestige for guests.The things each specific doorman brought to their hotel were much harder to place on a spreadsheet than merely their wage and contractual obligations. The human element remained essential to value.This is where all this AI stuff starts to become fascinating, and a little concerning.The technology is exceptionally good at optimising things that can be counted. Even the basic free-to-use models can spit out a robust personal finance plan or a company roster in seconds.But the things humans often care about most are notoriously difficult to measure.Sutherland’s ‘doorman example’ sums up the conundrum perfectly.Sutherland often points out that modern organisations have become obsessed with what can be measured because spreadsheets make those decisions appear rational. “Appear” being the key word here.This is the underlying tension at the heart of the AI debate and no matter how much well-educated people pontificate about the obvious risks, the tide continues to roll in.For people who stand to make serious money through AI assisted cost-cuts, it sounds fantastic. But the remaining eight billion humans are being told to just bunker down and figure it out. Take it on the chin, mate. That 30-year career didn’t mean much anyway. Neither did your creative side hobbies. Here, have a poke bowl assembled by ChatGPT.To be fair, every major technological revolution has inspired similar fears. Tractors displaced farm workers, computers replaced thousands of jobs and the internet wiped out entire industries on its own, but living standards generally improved as new opportunities emerged.The challenge is not necessarily the technology itself, but ensuring the benefits are shared broadly enough to offset the disruption it creates. Right now, we’re in the fun little grey zone.To some, it sounds like an opportunity to switch careers in a lucrative new market. Time to check if your local data centre is hiring. But for others, it sounds suspiciously like a civilisation optimising itself around the things that are easiest to count, while quietly discarding the things that gave those activities meaning in the first place. Thoughts? alexander.blair@news.com.auMore related storiesLeaders‘Murderous’: Musk’s comments spark outrageAmid shocking scenes of unrest in Belfast, there is also widespread anger at the world’s richest man after his latest comments.Read moreMoney$50k-a-minute: Aussie billionaires rake it inAustralia’s billionaires became $50,000 richer every single minute of 2025, analysis of the latest rich list shows.Read moreLeaders‘Bloodbath’: Huge Trump move sparks panicThe world is lurching towards a potential new war, with a huge new move by Donald Trump boosting the chance of a bloody conflict.Read more