Casino dealer Kanie Kastroll first saw it on the news — a robotic arm clumsily attempting to deal blackjack at a Las Vegas trade show, slow and fumbling its way through a hand.
“It was so primitive. It was painfully slow. And I thought oh man, they’re coming, you know?” Kastroll said.
Her fear of technological displacement drew her Wednesday evening to a town hall at Teamsters Local 631 in Las Vegas, where Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., gathered with workers from the Culinary Workers Union Local 226, Voto Latino, Teamsters and other organizations to discuss the future of artificial intelligence and automation in Nevada’s economy — and to warn that workers, not corporations, should be the primary beneficiaries of the coming technological wave.
