At this week's CES convention, Sharpa's card-dealing robot, North, evoked the amazement it wanted to. However, there was more than just the happy techies gathered around the blackjack table of the Singapore robotics company.

After the session's footage went viral on social media, the responses were primarily divided between derision of North's excruciatingly sluggish current pace and rage over the thousands of actual people that Sharpa is trying to replace at the casino tables.

According to Sharpa, North is a full-body humanoid robot with hands that can detect force changes as small as 0.005 newtons since each fingertip has thousands of touch sensors.

At CES, North showed off its human-like dexterity by creating a paper windmill and mastered ping-pong. However, the entire convention was stolen by its blackjack skills. At Sharpa's Autonomous Blackjack table, participants could engage with North and observe its decisions in real time while playing a fictitious hand.

Watch this video from DRM News: https://youtu.be/JquPWJdXk5M

"We're in Vegas, so we wanted something that resonates with the mood of CES," stated Alicia Veneziani, worldwide vice president of Sharpa, in the video, framing the blackjack demo as a tribute to the host city.

High Aces, Low Awareness

In a community where 5,000–6,000 people rely on the human-dealt version to pay their rent or mortgage, Sharpa seems to have overlooked the tone-deafness of showcasing computerized blackjack.

Given that North's mission is described on its own website as "freeing people from repetitive work and giving them back time for higher-value pursuits," the optics are particularly problematic.

So dealing at a casino is "lower-value"?

Instagram users did not hold back:

• @kaniekastroll: “Every casino dealer should UNIONIZE NOW… AI is a job‑killer in all industries!”
• @ericchine: “STOP trying to eliminate human interaction and taking people’s jobs just to save a dollar.”
• @skywalker7778: “Why would humans build machines that replace themselves? World gone mad.”

Others focused on North’s glacial pace:

• @joeystonks: “Casinos want speed. This robot needs a Red Bull.”
• @chillguygus: “Looks like my job is safe.”

And then came the bleakest — and probably most accurate — take:

• @heffa47: “By the time the robot is ready there won’t be any hand‑dealt games in the casino.”