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A firm providing AI drive-thru tech to fast food chains actually relies on human workers to take orders 70% of the time
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 12 Dec 2023
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The McDonalds here had an AI prompt for like a week. I don't care because all I need to do is say the number for my mobile order and it was faster. But everyone over 30 would be screaming and yelling shit about "who are you", "what's happening", "am I supposed to talk now?". I still get stuck behind old people that struggle with actual humans at the drive thru.
General technological competence is so far behind what can be offered to consumers. People are the bottle neck, look at bear proof trash can designs. And I don't think it's getting better like it was. With the internet now packaged into 2 click apps, the majority of kids are just doing that instead of getting into FOSS and Linux like the majority of the early 2000s internet users.
You realize that Millennials are over 30, and spent their entire lives speed running through the most significant changes, year over year, of the digital age, right?
Millenials are actually somewhat the exception because we actually needed to use computers. Generally speaking it got worse because every fucking thing is abstracted away from consumers.
http://www.coding2learn.org/blog/2013/07/29/kids-cant-use-computers/
Yes, I'm aware of those trends, but I don't think it's as relevant in the context of "smart" or "AI" system user interactions. Younger generations have grown up with the touchscreen/voice interface - which is the primary driver of the specific problems you're alluding to.
So in this context, I think Gen Z, Gen Y, and Millennials are on equal footing when they each individually make the rational decision to either smash their head, or a baseball bat, into an AI run McDonald's Drive-Thru.
Im 24 and AI cant recognize my fucking accent, and I dont like suppressing it. I want to go full ooga booga caveman and chuck a spear through them.
I'm 28 and i can barely figure out how to order from the stupid kiosks at McDonald's. It took my brither and I ages to figure out how to order a breakfast meal with a mocha in a road trip, and after a lot of arguing and swearing i still didnt end up with the meal i wanted. I should have just used the bathroom and used the drive through because the attendant actually understands how to use the system.
Sure, youth and/or technical experience isn't going to magically overcome poor UI, bad software design, and shitty voice implementation.
Oh yeah I hate the way it works. If you want a meal, you actually have to choose the option for a meal. You can't just choose the individual items that make up a meal. If you do that, it doesn't work and you have to delete them all and start again.
On the Domino's website though, if you do that, it notices that's what you've done and just automatically changes it to a meal.
But it does work exactly the same way on the website. So most people are used to its crappy design by now.
Cha-ching!
But McDonald's are the ones who make the interface. So there's no reason for them to want the franchise to make more money. So I think it's just a matter of crappy design.
Maybe for the 5% of locations which are company owned? And to satisfy franchisees, who probably already like that people who order items separately at the registers pay more (provided employees don’t help out and combine them).
Their mobile app is hands down the most advanced in the US fast food space, so they def have the tech know how.
But definitely just speculating :)
I'm 100% never going to download an app for a restaurant. I atopped getting my free World Series Taco from Taco Bell the year they required the app.
I'm generally pro-automation if it can increase efficiency, but McDonalds' ordering AI is terrible. It had issues understanding their buy one get one for $1 deal and then one time I ordered a "bacon McCrispy" which was an item right there on the menu but what I got was a plain McCrispy and a side order of bacon in a breakfast container. They need to send their AI back to training. I'd really just prefer kiosks at the drive thru like they have inside. Voice is the worst way to interact with a computer IMO, but maybe that's just because most implementations suck. Voice is too open ended though, a kiosk can provide exactly what options are available and as long as it has full set of customization options I don't think that open endedness benefits anyone.
Also, over 30? Millenials grew up on the Internet for the most part. I'm 34 and grew up with computers and Internet. It was our parents' generation that fails to understand tech.
Well this kid also thinks that most people on the Internet in the early 2000s were using FOSS and Linux. He doesn't know what's going on.
People were mostly using email the way we use social media: sending pictures, dumb chain emails, chatting. Instead of Instagram, you would just go to the comment section of a magazine or newspaper and post your inane ramblings there.
Yeah, email was the social media before social media especially in the 90's and early 2000's. I got into Linux in 2005 and that's also around the time Digg and Reddit started growing. I was never into social media like Myspace and Facebook but I spent a ton of my high school days on Digg.
That said I realize most millenials didn't get into FOSS or Linux but we did use computers a ton regardless, and smartphones were available by high school/college for most of us.
it takes me about 3 times as long to use an AI bot because I have to ask it a bunch of silly questions first to try and fuck with it.
"Yeah, let me get uhhhh the McTrangle with a side of blubblub, and do you guys do the Krango geep still?"
I'm scared that if they start including all our shit posting in their model data, it will roast me back for saying dumb stuff.
If it doesn't meet the user's needs or expectations, then the system is wrong, not the user.
You’re not wrong, but damn I sure would love the user to be less of an idiot. My job would be so much easier
I'm the "kid who's good with technology" despite being almost 40. Most of the problems I deal with are people who don't know their passwords.
I should have listened when a younger coworker told me "never let them know that you can fix the printer."
I used to think like that, but recently i've begun to realize that companies need to take some responsibility for their dumb designs.
Have you ever had to deal with SBL (Sign in Before Logon) on Windows? All the uses have to do is enter their username and password into a box, assuming they know what their password is, and windows will automatically log them in and connect them to the corporate VPN.
But it's quite easy to do it wrong, now they are shown when they start how to do it but they still do it wrong all the time, and if you do it wrong you have to shut the computer down and start again. Uses can be idiots but Microsoft are bigger idiots. Why is it possible to do it wrong?
There's a fine line between your job being easier and your job being redundant, though
I expect your system to know what I mean when I click this button and tell it to delete everything, of course I don't want to delete it I just wrote it! It should save it before deleting it so that I still have it after.
I trust you'll fix this bug in the next version