A firm providing AI drive-thru tech to fast food chains actually relies on human workers to take orders 70% of the time::Presto Automations recently admitted that most of the orders taken by its AI drive-thru chatbot are actually assisted by off-site human workers.
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.
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.