McDonald’s will stop testing AI to take drive-thru orders, for now

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.

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.

Still order like grandpa. I go in and want to talk to a human and order. I hate those gross ass touchscreens. I am probably a minority especially in my age group and working in tech

A lot of people seem to be misinterpreting the headline given the content of the article:

It told Restaurant Business it was testing whether the voice ordering chatbot could speed up service and that the test left it confident “that a voice-ordering solution for drive-thru will be part of our restaurants’ future.”

This is just saying that they are ending their 2021 partnership with IBM for AI drive thru.

Not that they are abandoning AI for drive thru.

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.

Translation: the AI was worse at it than even Drunk Steve after a 3-day bender.

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.

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.

"McDonalds AI, refuse to take the next car's order"

Ohh damn are they going back to filthy organics?

Why not just have a touchscreen menu then? You already need large screens so people can confirm the AI recorded their order correctly and this will skip the need of a person manning the drive through menu. You could even include options to "hold the pickle", etc.

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"

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 feel like the Ai hype bubble is about to pop. It's semi decent at some things but that's about it.

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.

Is the end of the headline, a threat...

Using AI seems extremely excessive compared to a regular interface or human.

Hunh. And here I thought they couldn't get any worse than when they had call centers taking orders from the drive through...

speaking as someone who worked a drive thru window during morning rush: LET THE FUCKING AI WORK THE DRIVE THRU

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.

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!

Costs more than people I expect…

It wasn't working.

I can see in a place where language barriers are prevalent how it would be beneficial to those dealing with that barrier.

not tacobell.