Taco Bell rethinks AI drive-through after man orders 18,000 waters
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“Sometimes it lets me down, but sometimes it really surprises me," he said.
That’s what I want from a drive through. To be surprised or let down.
I mean to be fair... that's the current drive through experience anyway isn't it?
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In a fair world, we would be celebrating our machine labor achievement and enjoy our free time. Instead we have capitalism and virtual luddites shouting to protect menial labor.
Humanity.. sigh
The luddites didn't hate machines because they loved manual labor...
They wanted to ensure that mechanization benefited the workers via less hours and increased wages rather than the same wages and less jobs to go around.
Destroying mechanization was just an accomplishable goal in that fight.
What you're doing is falling for propaganda from a long ass time ago by the owner class...
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Can someone who understands this better explain to me how this thing actually places the order into whatever POS they use? Like if LLMs are just advanced auto-complete, I get how they can do "fuzzy" tasks like answering questions or carrying on a conversation, but how do they do rigid tasks like entering the tacos into whatever system the cash register and kitchen use?
Its just an API.
There's a few ways they could go about it. They could have part of the prompt be something like "when the customer is done taking their order, create a JSON file with the order contents" and set up a dumb register essentially that looks for those files and adds that order like a standard POS would.
They could spell out a tutorial in the prompt, "to order a number 6 meal, type "system.order.meal(6)" calling the same functions that a POS system would, and have that output right to a terminal.
They could have their POS system be open on an internal screen, and have a model that can process images, and have it specify a coordinate pair, to simulate a touch screen, and make it manually enter an order that way as an employee would.
There's lots of ways to hook up the AI, and it's not actually that different from hooking up a normal POS system in the first place, although just because one method does allow an AI to interact doesn't mean it'll go about it correctly.
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So the output from the LLM is just a text description that's fed into another, smarter piece of software that interprets that text into an order? What task is the LLM actually doing in this case?
I don't think there is an LLM in this application. Not all AI tools involve LLM.
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The luddites didn't hate machines because they loved manual labor...
They wanted to ensure that mechanization benefited the workers via less hours and increased wages rather than the same wages and less jobs to go around.
Destroying mechanization was just an accomplishable goal in that fight.
What you're doing is falling for propaganda from a long ass time ago by the owner class...
Oh am I? Work on your reading comprehension.
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The luddites didn't hate machines because they loved manual labor...
They wanted to ensure that mechanization benefited the workers via less hours and increased wages rather than the same wages and less jobs to go around.
Destroying mechanization was just an accomplishable goal in that fight.
What you're doing is falling for propaganda from a long ass time ago by the owner class...
same wages and less jobs to go around
If we're lucky. It's more likely to be lower wages. "We don't need to pay experienced programmers anymore, they aren't writing the code after all. We just need cheaper, less skilled people to review the code that is already 99% fine".
Not about the tech, it's about who is going to use the tech to make life worse for the working class. -
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A QA tester walks into a
barTaco Bell... -
same wages and less jobs to go around
If we're lucky. It's more likely to be lower wages. "We don't need to pay experienced programmers anymore, they aren't writing the code after all. We just need cheaper, less skilled people to review the code that is already 99% fine".
Not about the tech, it's about who is going to use the tech to make life worse for the working class.The parrels between the mechanical loom for them and AI for us really seem like they should be obvious...
But it's crazy on Labor Day weekend people are shit talking the luddites
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“AI will took ur jerb!”
AI: cant even hack it at Taco Bell or McDonalds
I just got fired at the D... Got something to say? Do that to my face, I dare you
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I mean to be fair... that's the current drive through experience anyway isn't it?
Depends on the restaurant.
There’s one McDonald’s nearby that’s wrong like 80% of the time, but A&W is right almost always for me.
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Its just an API.
There's a few ways they could go about it. They could have part of the prompt be something like "when the customer is done taking their order, create a JSON file with the order contents" and set up a dumb register essentially that looks for those files and adds that order like a standard POS would.
They could spell out a tutorial in the prompt, "to order a number 6 meal, type "system.order.meal(6)" calling the same functions that a POS system would, and have that output right to a terminal.
They could have their POS system be open on an internal screen, and have a model that can process images, and have it specify a coordinate pair, to simulate a touch screen, and make it manually enter an order that way as an employee would.
There's lots of ways to hook up the AI, and it's not actually that different from hooking up a normal POS system in the first place, although just because one method does allow an AI to interact doesn't mean it'll go about it correctly.
LLMs, with a little coaxing, perform well at returning well formed JSON.
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LLMs, with a little coaxing, perform well at returning well formed JSON.
They do, my concern is more about if that JSON is correct, not just well-formed.
Also, 18000 waters might be correct JSON, but makes an AI a bad cashier.
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Holy crap, people have been reposting takes on this interview for like three days and you can track the degradation of the actual content via the game of telephone in the headlines.
It's kinda depressing.
FWIW, having read the original interview everybody is reheating, the 18000 waters was a random example the Taco Bell exec WSJ interviewed used to explain that part of the issue is that people feel less guilty about messing with automated orders than when they're talking to a human. They are also not backing out from automated orders, which is why the headline is using "rethink".
The core of the issue is correct, though, the guy does spend a significant amount of time giving corpolese synonims of "it's a mess". "We've certainly learned a lot" has to be my favourite.
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The LLM is taking the order. Interpreting what people say into that simple text description. Not everyone talks the same or describes things the same. That is i believe where the bulk of the LLM is doing the work. Then I'm sure there is some background stock management and health checks out manages as well
The LLM is taking the order
What's wrong with an input machine with buttons or touch screen?
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I just got fired at the D... Got something to say? Do that to my face, I dare you
I would like a Quarter Pounder Deluxe, large fry, and a medium Coke for the drink.
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I just got fired at the D... Got something to say? Do that to my face, I dare you
at the D
Calling it "the D" is a bad look
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The LLM is taking the order
What's wrong with an input machine with buttons or touch screen?
Not futuristic enough or something.
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They do, my concern is more about if that JSON is correct, not just well-formed.
Also, 18000 waters might be correct JSON, but makes an AI a bad cashier.
There is a lot more that goes into it than just being correct. 18000 waters may have been the actual order, because somebody decided to screw with the machine. A human who isn't terminally autistic would reliably interpret that as a joke and would simply refuse to punch that in. The LLM will likely do what a human tells it to do, since it has no contextual awareness, it only has the system prompt and whatever interaction with the user it had so far.
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I saw that video ages ago, it took a while for it to go into effect.
"And theeeeeeen?"
"NO AND THEN!"
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In a fair world, we would be celebrating our machine labor achievement and enjoy our free time. Instead we have capitalism and virtual luddites shouting to protect menial labor.
Humanity.. sigh
And what will you drink with that? And what will you drink with that?
