When he was a boy in Hong Kong, Kenny Poon loved to watch Japanese cartoons, and remembers being transfixed by a scene of a restaurant kitchen staffed by robots. “I said, ‘I’m going to open a kitchen ...

A dozen or so young men and women, eyes obscured by VR headsets, shuffle around a faux kitchen inside a tech company’s Silicon Valley headquarters. Their arms are bent at the elbows, palms facing down ...