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McDonald’s will stop testing AI to take drive-thru orders, for now
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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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.
That applies to "AI" just as well.
"I'm sorry, can you repeat that?"
"I'm sorry, can you repeat that?"
"I'm sorry, can you repeat that?"
Exactly