Humans 1, robots 0. McDonald’s kills AI drive-thru ordering. Billions and Billions NOT served.

Photo above - Can you wait a moment sir? I'll be ready to take your order shortly. Did you pre-order online, or am I going to have to start this from the beginning?

Despite what readers think, I actually WANT artificial intelligence to succeed. So I take no joy in McDonald’s decision to ditch AI drive-thru ordering (see link at bottom)

This of course will cost McDonalds billion$. There are 41,000 McDonalds restaurants. If you need 2 shifts of drive thru humans to take orders, at each restaurant, every day, that’s 574,000 hours – A WEEK. For a full year, it’s 30 million hours. At $20 an hour, that’s, $600 million. Not including social security, human resources expense (hiring, firing, payroll management) uniforms, and the continual theft of 40 pound bacon packages from the walk-in cooler. So this is a very big deal. Don’t keep asking why a Big Mac, fries and a diet Coke costs $10.

So why hit the kill switch? In the link below, corporate headquarters refuses to criticize the technology, and instead praises it as having “some of the most comprehensive capabilities in the industry, fast and accurate in demanding conditions”. Sorry, but you’re still fired. If you tried to pull this ~you're fired~ $hit with a human employee, there'd be a lawsuit. (But look at my quarterly performance reviews, yer honor!!)

I pulled out of the drive thru line at a McDonalds on Sunday. The human on the voicebox was obviously drunk or high, and kept mumbling unintelligibly and getting my order wrong. I gave up. Clearly AI had to be doing WORSE, if it got canned.

Why can’t AI do simple things? In related news this week, at least 2 news outlets reminded us that ChatGPT and other chatbots still CANNOT answer the simple question “who won the 2020 election?” This is absolutely true – stop laughing. This isn’t AI’s fault, certainly. It’s the programmers’ fault. They could EASILY tell it who won the election. Evidently, they refuse to do so because some of them are MAGA.

This is not the technology I trust to drive my Mom’s car when she loses her license at renewal. AI can’t even paint a human being with the correct number of fingers. Try watching the evening news live, and see if the AI system producing closed captioning can get the words right, or even keep up. Maybe that’s what went wrong at McDonalds. The computer thought it kept hearing “bugger” and “flies”?

More people than ever are going through the McDonald’s drive thru these days. Because they hate the ordering kiosks inside, which take 5 minutes to agree that the meal you're requesting IS, in fact, a Big Mac, fries, and diet coke. God help you if you want one of the frosty drinks. They’re buried so deep in the kiosk menu, it will take another 5 minutes to find them. And then when you go the register, they tell you the Frosty machine is still broken, and you’ll HAVE to settle for a diet coke. Maybe they should fire the ordering kiosks, too?

I’m just sayin’ . . .

~McDonald’s pulls AI ordering from drive-thrus — for now (msn.com)~