In a factory run by Nakamatsu Meat, a small "meat shop in town" with a 42-year history in Uruma, Okinawa Prefecture, a part-time employee speaks into a small monitor: “Alexa, I made five cases of ham and cheese sandwiches.”
Alexa, an artificial-intelligence powered voice assistant from Amazon, then turns the report into data that is compiled in the firm’s computer.
"At first, workers were a little shy about talking to a machine,” said Kazumi Nakamoto, the company’s executive director. “But now they are used to it, and they even say 'Alexa, good morning.'”