McDonalds removes AI drive-throughs after order errors ( www.bbc.com )

McDonald's is removing artificial intelligence (AI) powered ordering technology from its drive-through restaurants in the US, after customers shared its comical mishaps online.

A trial of the system, which was developed by IBM and uses voice recognition software to process orders, was announced in 2019.

It has not proved entirely reliable, however, resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars' worth of chicken nuggets.

Lucidlethargy , (edited )
@Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works avatar

AI is going the same way as self-driving cars...

It has the power to bring such amazing change, but greed is poisoning the technology, and it's being weaponized against the lower and middle class in disguising ways.

Shoutout to Elon for fucking up self driving cars by releasing cheap, imitation technology after his competitors spent literal decades carefully testing and perfecting genuine solutions.

Greed is why we can't have nice things... Everyone should be angrier about this stuff.

BananaTrifleViolin ,

AI is and always has been a bullshit technology. Its no where near as capable as its proponents in tech industry have been claiming. Its all driven by greed to feed into a stock price frenzy but its the emperor's new clothes. In the future it may be something useful but at present even the tools that exist are unreliable and broken.

Self Drive Cars is different, very much a Tesla issue rather than generalised. Tesla has a first move advantage but then Elon Musk blew it by forcing his engineers to cut back on sensors and tech to save money because he knows best. Other self drive manufacturers are doing well and even have licenses to test their fully featured systems in multiple locations.

AI is a generally crap technology (maybe in the future it will be something useful). Self Drive is a generally myself up technology, except at Tesla where they went for the crap unworkable version.

afraid_of_zombies ,

has the power to bring such amazing change

Everyone where told me it was fake marketing hype.

I love how the enemy is all powerful and easily defeatable at the same time. LLMs are singularity creating AIs, useless, hallucinating, job destroyers, potentially do everything, all at once.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Maybe different people are saying those different things.

afraid_of_zombies ,

Sure. It's all an opinion. That makes sense. Thank you for explaining how it isn't based on logic, data, or really any methodology at all. Just people arguing chocolate or vanilla or strawberry ice cream.

conciselyverbose ,

Everything is an opinion. You're making bets on future outcomes.

That doesn't mean that no one knows what they're talking about.

afraid_of_zombies ,

No. Everything is not an opinion. There is the real universe.

conciselyverbose ,

You're projecting the future. It fundamentally cannot be factual. It's a guess. Some guesses (that LLMs are a deeply flawed technology) come from a place of understanding how shit works that other guesses (LLMs are magic) don't, but the actual future impact of the tech inherently must be an opinion, regardless of how well informed it is. There is no objective truth.

(All of this is without the fact that very little of the past is super concrete either. We know specific things happened with relatively high certainty, but why is, again, always a guess.)

afraid_of_zombies ,

There is no objective truth.

Hmm is this a true statement no matter what people think of it?

conciselyverbose ,

It has not happened yet. By definition there is no "reality".

There are merely informed opinions, uninformed opinions, and fraudulent opinions.

afraid_of_zombies ,

Hmm is this a true statement no matter what people think of it?

conciselyverbose ,

It's a true statement for any future event.

It doesn't soften the fact that opinions can be stupid and uninformed.

afraid_of_zombies ,

I see. So you say that any prediction about the future is subjective, except of course this prediction that you are making now? Every rule has en exception, except this rule, but if it doesn't it does and if it does than it doesnt.

Not to date you too badly but 2500 years ago is when we figured out that everythinf is subjective leads to contradictions.

conciselyverbose ,

No, that's not even sort of what I said. The fact that there is no inherent source of truth to compare to does not give license to idiotic takes. It doesn't invalidate people pointing out that an opinion is idiotic. It's simply an acknowledgement that multiple intelligent opinions are possible.

There's inherent uncertainty to everything, down to such an extreme level that predicting individual particles' behavior has to be probabilistic. The existence of that uncertainty doesn't prevent some statements from being stupid and wrong.

afraid_of_zombies ,

So you are saying I was wrong before?

ours ,

Self-driving cars are AI. And they are butting against the Pareto Principle.

shotgun_crab ,

Ah yes, give me more companies using AI, trying to replace their employees and then realizing it doesn't work

SendMePhotos ,

How come Walmart gets shit for self checkout but McDonald's doesn't get absolutely fucking roasted for Ai

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I honestly prefer self-checkout. I may not be as fast as the cashier, but I am reasonably fast and I don't have to talk to anyone.

I'd probably feel the same about fast food orders. I don't think the same self-checkout system would work, but I'd probably use my phone if it was easy and I didn't need a special app. Just let me scan a code and enter my order from a parking lot space. That way I still don't need to talk to anyone, no issues with crappy mics or AI, etc. I'm guessing everyone would be happier (workers don't need to intuit crackly mics, I can check if it comes with pickles, etc).

KingThrillgore ,
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

Wouldn't it make more sense to just drop the speakers and make them use mobile apps only?

afraid_of_zombies ,

No, that would involve telling people to use a cellphone in a running car. Massive liability

KingThrillgore , (edited )
@KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml avatar

...which is why I park first at the chain before I order. You right its a liability, but they're gonna run out of options if they can't afford someone to run the speaker, be it AI, someone in a call center, or the restaurant.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

Why would they not be able to afford someone...? And run out of "options"...?

sugar_in_your_tea ,

Not if the car is stopped. Here's how it should work:

  1. park in a "drive-thru" stall
  2. scan QR code specific to that stall (optional - connect to wifi at the stall)
  3. enter order through a simple webapp
  4. worker brings order out

If you want to talk to someone, walk inside, no need for a drive-thru window at all. That's basically how the old drive-ins worked, adjusted for modern tools.

afraid_of_zombies ,

You know I am good with just getting my ass out of the car and walking a short distance to get my 4000 calorie meal. I am fine without implementing an entire protocol

sugar_in_your_tea ,

It's the same as the order pickup they have, just with info about what stall you're in. That's really it, and it would allow eliminating the entire drive-thru experience, along with all the car idling and whatnot.

JJROKCZ ,

Are they also going to remove the human order takers due to number of errors or…. Because they never get shit right, then I correct them, then the kitchen kids get it wrong, occasionally i go back around to ask for it as I ordered, and sometimes the second time around it’s correct

gentooer ,

These large companies really need to learn that AI isn't a good tool for black and white decisions.

Right now I'm working on a system with drones and image recognition for farmers to prioritise where to use pesticides, in order to decrease the use of pesticides in the EU. For these things AI systems work really well, since it's just prioritising regions.

It's a bad idea to use it to make discrete decisions.

Linus_Torvalds ,

I disagree. Classification in combintion wo
ith a confidence score is a viable use case for AI.

vrighter ,

you know that the confidence value is generated by the ai itself right? So it could still spew out bullshit with high confidence. The confidence score doesn't really help much

darth_tiktaalik ,
@darth_tiktaalik@lemmy.ml avatar

Turns out customers weren't ordering the McDeadly neurotoxin

randon31415 ,

Voice recognition vs. Download an app where you can't make mistakes (and a giant corporation can harvest your data). Hmm, I wonder which mcway mcdonalds will go?

"Will you be using our app today?"

Landsharkgun ,

Hey, McDonalds, I got a general AI that can understand human speech.

It's located between my neck and the top of my head, and it costs $25/hr for fuel consumption.

Regrettable_incident ,
@Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world avatar

Isn't this just voice recognition software?

AllYourSmurf , (edited )

and a large orange drink

werefreeatlast ,

I got my fried shoes but no ketchup!

someacnt_ ,

Bubble burst?

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