Two stories like this–as in, “oops AI sucks actually”, in about as many weeks. (The other one was about Amazon shutting down their Just Walk Out mechanical turk nonsense.)
I think we’re starting to see the tide turn against Altman’s big con.
I liked this quote BTW:
the test left it confident “that a voice-ordering solution for drive-thru will be part of our restaurants’ future.”
lmao you… already have one of those? So the subtext of this message is “we can’t just say AI was a terrible idea but yeah, we’re going back to the shit that worked before”
At least the “just walk out” was a genuine attempt at the tech, created long before the AI craze. Still failed, but they weren’t following a fad.
Edit: Sorry, I misread your comment, I understand what you mean now! Original comment maintained as a lesson for me to improve my reading comprehension.
Oh, didn’t you hear? Just Walk Out was pretty much vaporware, the system was powered by thousands of people in third world nations watching customers through cameras and remotely managing their virtual basket. Basically it was just offshoring of the cashier.
I wonder if the concept could still be useful. It fails if the goal is removing human workers, but the tech basically enables “cashiers” to work from home, and that’s a win for the cashiers who’d like that.
But no one is going to invest in a win for the cashiers, and if they did, then like we saw, it would be outsourcing the work to third world nations, rather than local people having the ability to work from home…
Considering the costs of implementing it (installing a billion cameras), it doesn’t really make a lot of sense - self checkout makes much more sense, but of course until we deal with the elephant in the room (capitalism), automation is more of a bad thing than a good thing.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
If your local McDonald’s has been getting your order confidently wrong with an AI chatbot at the drive-thru, I have good news for you: The company is ending the program for now.
The company told franchisees that it’s winding down an AI drive-thru ordering partnership with IBM “no later than July 26th, 2024,” according to trade publication Restaurant Business.
Bloomberg reported that the deal was partly for a chatbot named “Ask Pickles” that employees could use for guidance on things like cleaning ice cream machines.
Even so, Google partnered with Wendy’s, which started testing drive-thru AI based on its tech last year and has since expanded that trial.
And Carl’s Jr., Hardee’s, and others use an AI drive-through chatbot that an SEC filing revealed was underpinned by remote human workers in the Philippines most of the time.
The company also offers things like mobile ordering and in-store kiosks and has tested drone deliveries, kitchen robots, and weird AI hiring tools.
The original article contains 291 words, the summary contains 160 words. Saved 45%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
AI so bad it can’t get your burger order right.
No wonder people are sinking hundreds of billions into it. As opposed to, say, education.
I stopped going to BK because they ALWAYS messed up my order. I finally had it and never went back. I bet the ai is more competent than my local BK. What makes this story more sad is I rarely get fast food, mainly as a treat, and fucking BK always messed it up.
It’s McDonald’s, no amount of humans or technology will get your order right.
Why would we need education if there aren’t going to be any jobs to do?
It’s one of those mysteries. Maybe we should ask an educated person.
They’ve redirected your call to an untrained AI that just keeps saying “Hello??? Hello??? Hello???”
Because thats all it ever hears before people hang up on it. So thats sll the language they know.
Eh…AI messes my order. Some dumbass teenager messes up my order. Whats the difference?
I wouldn’t call it the MAIN reason I no longer go get fast food…but maybe like the lower end of the top 10 reasons I gave up fast food years ago.
At least the dumbass teenager isn’t putting glue on a pizza. Although in my area they will use the pepperoni placement to make a swastica on your pizza…or put their bare feet into the lettice of the burger king lettice bins. I mean sure, THOSE guys got fired, but how many other stories DON’T make the news???
Eh…AI messes my order. Some dumbass teenager messes up my order. Whats the difference?
I mean, I can think of a couple.
Supposedly AI is going to take all the jobs and yet it still can’t do this task which it seems perfect for. Sure, eventually AI will get good enough to do it in the future, but there is just way too much hype given the reality of the current situation. This is a job that fast food workers are already required to do in addition to other duties, so it’s not like it’s labor saving from the company’s perspective either.
I think those kiosks with the big touch screen and the mobile apps work pretty well already, I always rather use them and see a picture what I can order instead of talking to the person.
tbh I’d rather not see the picture when it comes to mcdonald’s, as it can only lead to a disappointment
Those kiosks aren’t in the drive-throughs.
I’ve stopped waiting in drive thrus because it’s faster and more convenient to order it ahead of time and pick it up inside.
I used the Mcdonalds app a few times and the drivethru was always faster, lmao.
They require location services and don’t start cooking until you’re inside their geofence, but IME they seem to still prioritize drivethru customers.
I don’t eat at McDonald’s, so I haven’t had that experience. But I love being able to order Sheetz food for the next morning when I’m going on a trip, or schedule it for when I’m going to need a pit stop and just have it ready. Wendy’s is also pretty good about this, too.
I have disabled location settings because it tracks the drive from my home. I enable it to use any deals and close the app after ordering and taking a photo of the order number. They start cooking after you let them know the code in the drive-thru. No need to open the app. They do prioritize drive-thru’s because their performance is tracked based off that. That’s why they sometimes ask you to pull ahead from the window. I never worked there, I just noticed the timing screen in the kitchen when I used to do DoorDash, which tracked when a car got in and out of the line. They used to act as though I was invisible and only served drive-thru.
I fucking hate them.
They’re designed for people who are about 5’0". They take so much longer than speaking the order to a person, especially if you have any customizations to add/remove.
0/10, avoid at all costs.
For me it’s the exact opposite, most of them have the possibility to change the language to English, even though it’s only partially translated I still can see the pictures of what I’m trying to order. If I need to look at the Korean menu and then speak Korean to the person to order, then I would just go away, especially if they don’t have pictures on the menu.
For me it’s use 10/10 (even the crappy ones)
I can understand the language barrier win there.
Can I get a McCrapwich? That’s it, no drink. <tap>. It’s like 10 seconds.
Oh, did you want to remove the tomato?
That’ll be an extra 3 minutes.
What parent item are the salads under again?
They blow.
I can’t use the mobile app because my kid wants a cheeseburger happy meal and it’s impossible to order on the app. Try it! It won’t let you at all.
Technically, cheeseburger happy meals are no longer on the menu because they’ve decided it has too many calories. If you go there and ask for one, of course, they will add a slice of cheese to a hamburger happy meal. But using the app to order one is a bridge too far, I guess.
When it comes down to it, though, we shouldn’t eat that crap anyway.
I checked, just for you. You can pick the hamburger happy meal and add cheese.
Where are you located? I am in the US. I downloaded and logged into the App again (just in case something changed) and I see no option to add cheese to a hamburger happy meal. I can pick a hamburger meal and “customize”, and add everything else – even a second hamburger patty if I wanted – but no cheese.
Maybe it’s just with my local McD?
Massachusetts. Adding cheese is there for the two McD’s near me.
https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/c7323c38-f5d0-47e0-b96d-9264755fb952.png
https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/81a3ab83-85cd-4f5f-8332-3c997c43a5a2.png
Weird. I don’t see that “American Cheese” line at all. Maybe it’s a NY thing.
Checking in from Iowa and I have the option here too when I hit the customize button. I do have to scroll down a bit?
You might try uninstalling and reinstalling. If on android, clear your settings before the uninstall. The mcdee app does tend to be kind of unpredictable.
If that doesn’t work, send an email to them. I actually did email on some problem I had and they responded pretty quick with a temp workaround and fixed it later.
I see cheese in Buffalo and Rochester, but not in Albany. It’s more localized than NY.
Interesting. I will have to do some more experiments later to see where they will let me order that. Thanks for confirming it’s not just me, though. I wa suspicious that there was some sort of cheesy conspiracy going on.
I use them but they are definitely made to be annoying.
- Start
- No I don’t use a mobile app
- Takeaway
- Burgers
- Big Mac menu
- Fries
- Cola
- Add to basket
- No I don’t want extra
- Pay
- No I don’t want extra
- Pay here
- Pay with credit card
- Finally pay
- Printer is not working
- Oh what was my number?
I prefer just saying “can I get a medium #2 combo, please.” And being done with it.
Translation: the AI was worse at it than even Drunk Steve after a 3-day bender.
Hey, leave Drunk Steve out of this. He did nothing wrong.
Ai, pretty good. Speach recognition software. Still trash
I feel like the Ai hype bubble is about to pop. It’s semi decent at some things but that’s about it.
Whenever I need a new profile picture for my TTRPG character, absolutely. Anything else? No thanks.
speaking as someone who worked a drive thru window during morning rush: LET THE FUCKING AI WORK THE DRIVE THRU
It wasn’t working.
Using AI seems extremely excessive compared to a regular interface or human.
It’s excessive now, but once it works, I’d much rather subscribe to drivethru AI than pay an acceptable living wage to some human. /s
I wonder if they could actually get worse than the drive-thru order stations I’ve experienced. I work in audio, so I know what is technically possible. To talk to and trying to convey an order through a system that sounds worse than my grandmas’ rotary dial telephone during a thunderstorm is a real pain for me.
I actually went to a mcdonalds that did this. It was overall way more slow and annoying. I would be willing to make that concession if knew that it was something to worked towards a better future for humans, but all its means is that someone is getting fired under capitalism. Also it failed to understand if I wanted sauce and just referred me to someone actually working.
I don’t think that replacing order taking positions is stealing anyone’s job, in fast food at least. I worked at a fast food joint one time. We were always shorthanded and we always had to do order taking while doing a bunch of other things. It was such bullshit. From an overworked employee perspective, if there was any way to get out of doing drive through orders while doing all my other tasks, I would be happy to use it.
They will still be short staffed and overworked. The company isn’t outsourcing the drive through out of the kindness of their hearts in order to lighten the workload on the employees.
I’ve heard a few instances in which “AI” is just a bunch people responding to a voice to text feed in the Philippines.
So much of this isn’t really technology. It’s just a new kind of service sector outsourcing.
This reminds me of a post I saw once were someone said AI stood for Actually Indian
Maybe I’m just really good with talking to robots, but the AI drivethru voice at my local McDonald’s is way, way, way more accurate than basically all of the employees they used to have running it before. A few times it’s been down for whatever reason and an actual human takes my order and I remember how shit they are at their jobs when they get my order wrong yet again, or can’t hear me, or talk with gum in their mouths or whatever.
Ohh damn are they going back to filthy organics?
Why would they in the first place? What’s wrong with a touchscreen menu to take an order?
Then, of course, I’m not sure such places fundamentally even need human personnel other than maintenance techs. Standard ingredients, prepackaged I think, standard hardware to cook, standard everything. It can just be a huge burger-selling machine with no human in sight.
Touchscreen? That’s old, we can’t use that in our marketing, even BK has those. We need something new, fuckin do I care if it works???
They could advertise actually usable physical buttons …
Those would stop working because local scoundrels would stick their chewing gums in them
With hercons without place to stick anything. Like a blister. You’ve seen such buttons.
Those could work if it wasn’t for the local perverts blocking them 24/7 because twiddling them feels a bit like twiddling a robot’s nipples
Never seen that. One can make them less like nipples and more like a depressable square area on a wall.
