Kewpie goes out of its way to stress that it's supplementing human workers, not replacing them. The TensorFlow system handles the initial removal, but there are still people waiting to inspect the potatoes afterward. Think of this as a booster that helps Kewpie process food faster without compromising quality.

The tech is currently limited to Kewpie's baby food, but the company expects to spread it to other foodstuffs before long. Also, it's not hogging the technology to itself. It wants to offer the AI-assisted inspections to other companies, so the industry at large might see a benefit. There's no guarantee that other companies will keep all their human staff (we could see others using this as a chance to cut jobs), but it could set a higher quality baseline.