McDonald's Pauses AI-Powered Drive-Thru Voice Orders 53
After two years of testing, McDonald's has ended its use of AI-powered drive-thru ordering. "The company was trialing IBM tech at more than 100 of its restaurants but it will remove those systems from all locations by the end of July, meaning that customers will once again be placing orders with a human instead of a computer," reports Engadget. From the report: As part of that decision, McDonald's is ending its automated order taking (AOT) partnership with IBM. However, McDonald's may be considering other potential partners to work with on future AOT efforts. "While there have been successes to date, we feel there is an opportunity to explore voice ordering solutions more broadly," Mason Smoot, chief restaurant officer for McDonald's USA, said in an email to franchisees that was obtained by trade publication Restaurant Business (as noted by PC Mag). Smoot added that the company would look into other options and make "an informed decision on a future voice ordering solution by the end of the year," noting that "IBM has given us confidence that a voice ordering solution for drive-thru will be part of our restaurant's future."
McDonald's told Restaurant Business that the goal of the test was to determine whether AOT could speed up service and streamline operations. By automating drive-thru orders, companies are hoping to negate the need for a staff member to take them and either reduce the number of workers needed to operate a restaurant or redeploy resources to other areas of the business. IBM will continue to power other McDonald's systems and it's in talks with other fast-food chains over the use of its AOT tech. The likes of Hardee's, Carl's Jr., Krystal, Wendy's, Dunkin and Taco Johns are already testing or using such technology at their drive-thru locations.
McDonald's told Restaurant Business that the goal of the test was to determine whether AOT could speed up service and streamline operations. By automating drive-thru orders, companies are hoping to negate the need for a staff member to take them and either reduce the number of workers needed to operate a restaurant or redeploy resources to other areas of the business. IBM will continue to power other McDonald's systems and it's in talks with other fast-food chains over the use of its AOT tech. The likes of Hardee's, Carl's Jr., Krystal, Wendy's, Dunkin and Taco Johns are already testing or using such technology at their drive-thru locations.
Good (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it was making their burgers taste like cardboard.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it was making their burgers taste like cardboard.
That's just how a McDonald's burger is supposed to taste. You don't go to McDonald's for a good burger, you go to McDonald's because you're fucking starving to the point a cardboard flavored burger doesn't seem so bad and no other restaurant is convenient or still open.
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He's joking about you having no sense of humor, but his joke wasn't funny because he has no sense of humor.
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They are selling billions of burgers a year because they are everywhere now, they are less expensive than a sitdown meal (but not by much anymore!), and very convenient.
It has nothing to do with the taste or quality of their product (which I hesitate to call "food").
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I am going to get modded to hell for this but I actually really like McDonalds cheeseburgers.
I think of them as a very district food item from the burger I would make at home or what I would expect ordering at a say a casual place like Fridays or RedRobin.
I don't know what MCD does exactly to their beef to make it taste the way it does (I probably don't want to know either) but evaluated purely from a perspective of do I sometimes crave one, do I enjoy eating this, and do I think it tastes good - well I its
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Studies have demonstrated the pivotal role of gut microbes contributing to cardiovascular disease in a diet-dependent manner. Given the central contributions of diet and gut microbiota to cardiometabolic disease, we hypothesized that microbial metabolites originating after fast food consumption can elicit acute metabolic responses in the liver.
Collectively, these data suggest a single fast food meal is sufficient to reshape the gut microbial community in mice, yielding a unique signature of food-derived microbial metabolites. Future studies are in progress to determine the contribution of select metabolites to cardiometabolic disease progression and the translational relevance of these animal studies. 10.20900/immunometab20210029
Another study:
Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is multifactorial in nature, affecting over a billion people worldwide. The gut microbiome has emerged as an associative factor in NAFLD, yet mechanistic contributions are unclear. Here, we show fast food (FF) diets containing high fat, added cholesterol, and fructose/glucose drinking water differentially impact short- vs. long-term NAFLD severity and progression in conventionally-raised, but not germ-free mice. Correlation and machine learning analyses independently demonstrate FF diets induce early and specific gut microbiota changes that are predictive of NAFLD indicators, with corresponding microbial community instability relative to control-fed mice. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p... [nih.gov]
One more (there's probably more on Google Scholar, I got lazy)
Regular consumption of fast-food (FF) as a form of typical Western style diet is associated with obesity and the metabolic syndrome, including its hepatic manifestation nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Currently, it remains unclear how intermittent excess FF consumption may influence liver metabolism. The study aimed to characterize the effects of a single FF binge on hepatic steatosis, inflammation, bile acid (BA), glucose and lipid metabolism.
A single binge FF meal leads to a robust increase in serum BA levels and alterations in parameters of liver injury and metabolism, indicating a novel metabolic aspect of the gut–liver axis. https://www.clinicalnutritionj... [clinicalnu...ournal.com]
One possible solution is akkermancia mucina, increased by consumption of navy beans.
Specifically, fecal abundance of Akkermansia muciniphila, whose abundance is inversely related to the severity of the obese phenotype, was increased in the HF+B group versus HF by 20-fold, which was associated with a reduction in visceral adipose mRNA expression of the inflammatory mediators MCP-1 and IL-6 and increased expression of adiponectin. Colon epithelial barrier integrity was improved in the HF+B group versus HF https://faseb.onlinelibrary.wi... [wiley.com]
Akkermansia muciniphila alleviates high-fat-diet-related metabolic-associated fatty liver disease by modulating gut microbiota and bile acids. he gut microbiota changes correlated significantly with bile acids. Meanwhile, A. muciniphila also improved glucose tolerance, gut barriers and adipokines dysbiosis. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
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Usually for me it's because I've gotten stuck somewhere late, it's 9:45PM, I'm starving, and all I want to do is get home. All the mom-and-pop places are long closed, the slightly better chain places might still be open but would take a lot longer to get food and would probably be more expensive, and I don't really want to go home and cook something.
Fast food ain't great but you know what you're getting and it's usually pretty fast. Maybe in some places there's better places open late but around here there
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You're right. I find it amazing how expensive their bad food is. Their draw isn't the food quality in my opinion. Its about the way they heavily market their product, especially to kids. Adults without kids still go there because of that marketing still getting to them from way back, I believe. Some go because its so convenient, but, I think they secretly know there are better convenient options.
No shame in letting yourself do what you've been told to do on tv a million times. I do it too. Its part of life.
Not average (Score:2)
âoe Think of how stupid the average person is and then realize that half the population is stupider than that.â
That would be the median, not the average.
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While technically correct, on a population the size of 'humanity' and given the bell curve distribution of intelligence, its a distinction without a difference.
Re: Not average (Score:3)
Re: Big Mac software analogy (Score:1)
Reasoning (Score:4, Funny)
"I'm sorry. I don't believe 'motherfucking communist pigfucker' is on our value menu, sir. May I interest you in an extra side of ranch?"
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That would be the McRib.
Iâ(TM)m calling it (Score:3)
Overseas call centre order takers
Re:Iâ(TM)m calling it (Score:4)
It's probably still cheaper than paying $20 a hour for fast food order takers in California. At $40K a year, they successfully made even lower wage jobs profitable to outsource.
What? (Score:5, Funny)
AI: I'm sorry, did you say 2,048 double cheeseburgers with no cheese?
Me: No you stupid piece of shit, I said two cheeseburgers plain!
AI: And a chocolate sundae. Your total is $4,100. I already charged your credit card using facial recognition. Pull forward.
Would you iike hallucinations with that? (Score:5, Funny)
Two Big Mac meals with Large Coke.
Hillary Clinton was the president in 2016.
Would you like extra glue?
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four fired chickens and a Coke.
Jake! Elwood!
Whew.. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a lot of words for "IBM's solution didn't work, but we hope a competitor will do it better"
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Re: Long way to say... (Score:1)
No, they hope a competitor will get suckered into using IBM's crap to drag them down, reducing competition.
Executive whisper: "This shit's horrible. If we can get IBM to shove it into Wendy's, we gain 30% more business!"
Re:Whew.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is a clue that, at the moment, AI implementations are not living up to the hype.
In theory it looks fine: bit of speech recognition, very limited menu options, not much variation, no need to interpret anything other than food and drink and humans are in the loop as a sanity check because they have to prepare and serve the items. Around the level of a Uni project, really.
The fact that it appears to be unsatisfactory in some respects (and joke about IBM but this is not the most demanding thing they have ever done) does make you wonder about practical applications of AI-with-everything...
Re: Whew.. (Score:2)
I wonder how much of the problem to make the ai voice system work is how insanely bad their audio systems are.
The mics are sitting outside in the humidity in the rain, in the sun. When the customers come they might be sitting too close, too far, the engine could be very noisy. It could be actively raining.
I never noticed the change (Score:4, Informative)
Not sure if it's different in other markets, but all the McDonald's near me charge a 20% surcharge for ordering without using their mobile app. Sure, it's disguised as a "coupon" in the app, but since the discount is perpetually available it amounts to paying 20% more if you prefer to place your order the old fashioned way.
Since there is no way in hell I'd pay an extra 20% for the barely-edible slop McDee's passes off as food, I don't think I've placed an order outside if their app since the "discount" was implemented.
Re:I never noticed the change (Score:4, Informative)
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I stopped going to Pizza Hut for the same reason. My family never has pizza delivered and we always eat out. Even before the pandemic, Pizza Hut suddenly decided to send their prices through the roof if you didn't order via an app. Screw that.
It's More (Score:2)
Sure, it's disguised as a "coupon" in the app, but since the discount is perpetually available it amounts to paying 20% more if you prefer to place your order the old fashioned way.
If others are paying 20% less and you see that as the "normal" price, then the surcharge is 25%.
Wrong Job (Score:2)
Our local McDonald's needs an AI store manager. This place is is unbelievably awful compared to nearby locations and just leaving bags of money on the table due to glacial service.
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note that i'm not saying this is an immediate "right now" situation, there will be musical chairs for decades yet imo
but we have clowns who think need for labor won't dwindle, despite corpos making large-figure plans that are entirely certain of the contrary
inb4 someone thinks the species will suddenly become capable of new collar ratios
B-b-but-- buggy whips and such!
Everyone knows that technology has not changed individual productivity and value-add whatsoever, just moved it around in different distributions. All humans need to do is redistribute themselves into all the different places according to their need, and they will be compensated according to their ability which has always kept pace with labor, which is why 19 year olds are all well-paid and have secure financial futures - in 6 months they can do a coding bootcamp or build VR re
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Corps can make whatever plans they like, ,but the technological realities have been against them so far. And then there will be Policy realities from governments that deal with them as well.
AI ruining the rap (Score:2)
Now image an AI trying to interpret this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Expensive solution for a simple problem (Score:2)
In most cases, you can substitute your complex AI voice ordering system by a big-ass QR code that links to the mobile ordering system of the store. Make it set store and drive thru option by default and your customer are seeing a menu that they already have seen before.
That is way easier than figuring out an AI voice ordering system.
No kidding (Score:2)
Just like 3D printers and VR and quantum computing, throwing AI at everything usually ends in disappointment.
IOW it sucked (Score:2)
Yeah right. It was sooo good we want another partner at some unspecified future time. In the mean time we are pulling the plug on this awesomely successful thing!
Y'all are snobs (Score:2)
I'll put the hurt on a big mac anyday!
ORLY? (Score:2)