Ohh damn are they going back to filthy organics?
this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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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.
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.
I personally HATE those places where you walk inside and you need to use the stupid touchscreen. I've asked someone to take my order, they say no. So I get in the car and go to the drive through where you still get a person taking your order.
Can I ask why you hate it? I am genuinely curious. Thanks!
Not the OP but for me it takes like 4 times longer to use the tuch screen. Find the button for what i want. Do you want to super-sized? Do you want fries with that? How are you paying today? Blah blah blah whereas with the counter its me saying one sentence and them pushing 2 buttons.
That makes sense to me - if you had the choice between using a touch screen to place an order immediately or waiting in line behind 4 other people though, would you use the touchscreen then? Again, just curious, I'm not trying to make out that you're ordering McDonalds wrong ;P
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Maybe stand a foot further apart from the screen? That way you'll be able to see the button better.
What you hate about it are the constant upsell shenanigans, not the touchscreen per se. I dislike those, too, but I reckon the human staff are also trying to sell more than you want?
He's looking to chat up some young ladies before he has to go back home to the old ball'n'chain...
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Lots of their drive thrus use a person to take the order, and at a busy drive thru this becomes a dedicated person or persons just to take orders. If they can flip it to AI then they could open more lanes and reduce staff. Problem is that a skilled person is going to be better than AI over a shitty audio system, look at how Alexa and Siri struggle even when they have an optimized reception setup than the crappy setup you have at a drive thru with the person sitting inside their car, with music on and so on.
Maybe voice interfaces are simply a fundamentally flawed idea. If one can extend a hand to take the package with the food, they can also push a few buttons. If those buttons are with hercons or such, they'll even last longer than consumer-grade touchscreens.
Of course it's easier when a human takes the order. But then if the cost of N screens with physical buttons is equal to that, one can make their order, say, N/2 times slower without any hurry and, well, the throughput should be higher still.
For drive thrus - that'd be M lanes with such terminals and a bit slower than M lanes with people. So - depends on how the cost of asphalt and space and people and terminals work economically.
What's definitely idiotic is to think one can replace a human with an "AI" without losing in efficiency. But then again, maybe it's worth it.
While I like the ideas with screens, and fixed buttons even more so, they haven't gone with them despite the tech being available for a considerable time. I do wonder if its mostly down to how people use them rather than a limitation of the tech itself. Watch how many people nearly swipe or even do scrape exit parking machines, even simple parking meters stop working, people struggle to use the ones inside, then add in weather damage/proofing and vandalism and I would guess thats a big part of it. As its often a closed queue system any problem becomes a major issue almost instantly.
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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
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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...
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"McDonalds AI, refuse to take the next car's order"
At your command, Mr Falcon!
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.
Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm getting old. But I want to order through a person. Not a touchscreen and not AI.
I feel like society is slowly removing humans from our everyday interactions and I don't like it.
not society, capital owners.
I prefer a touchscreen in general. Although I realize that different companies have better or worse systems. I read complaints about self checkout in the USA and scratch my head since in Holland self checkout is lovely.
Trying to use AI is a dumpster fire though.
Media has hyped up hatred for progress. Makes a good john henry story
Got stopped a few times after leaving the self checkout. Very rudely. Extremely rudely. The excuse every time was that I did it too fast and they suspected theft. Refuse to use self checkout. They can shove it.
Touch screens for ordering are ok. Except when you have tech illiterate people in front of you.
I love ordering through touch screens. No mis hearing and everything goes much quicker.
The added value of that human interaction for me personally is 0.
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I like the touch screen ordering systems, but thats probably just because im autistic and find human interaction tough :p Im glad its an option, but it shouldnt be the only one for accessibility reasons.
It's fine when what you want is on the menu. But as soon as you have a question or need something a little bit off menu (hold the tomatoes, does that have nuts in it? I'm allergic, this food came out cold can I get another?) the glorified vending machine doesn't work.
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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'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.
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Hunh. And here I thought they couldn't get any worse than when they had call centers taking orders from the drive through...