Humanity Loses to Robot Overlords in Coffee Smackdown

Alex Van Buren
·Food Features Editor
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Image credit: Universum Film. Illustration credit: Jennifer Fox

Bad news, humanity: The robots are making your coffee better than you do.

Chalk it up to one more weird thing going down in Los Angeles these days: A human, Nicholas Cho, went head-to-head with a coffee-making machine, the Alpha Dominiche Steampunk, in a pour-over versus single-cup smackdown yesterday. The machine, it should be noted, got some help from an actual human barista affiliated with La Colombe, which is no slouch in the coffee department.

And who won? The future, by a sip: 374.35 to 373.35 were the final results, doled out by a highly caffeinated panel of experts.

For more on the battle, watch the video below; it’s about as riveting as a single-cup coffee competition can be. (Spoiler: There is no storming of the premises by our robot overlords at the event’s end.)