We have apps for that, and they're typically a pita. They certainly take longer than just talking through your order.

But are the AI issues cheaper than the corporate infrastructure around hiring and paying employees and losing the occasional customer? If AI is more profitable, they don’t care. The only thing that’s mattered for decades now is what the bottom line says, no matter the cost.

can't believe they saw how shitty mcdonalds became with all their kiosks and automation and thought yeah i want that for me

That's not true. It's developers incapable of using AI responsibly. If my manager told me to use AI, I would be sure to inform them of the limitations professionally.

As for the water order? I would 1000% start making that order.

What a self-own

At which point most managers would say do it anyway or you're fired.

This is an American company, their customers would probably react poorly to hearing a foreign accent come through the speakers

Thanks for posting this take. The topic of AI taking jobs seems to garner a lot of emotional response but not much of a technology discussion.

There were people who were negative about using websites to place orders in the 90s in part because e-commerce killed order processing jobs and the need for phone reps at mail order catalogs.

In this case AI is being used as just another e-commerce UX, so it's really just a continuation of what's happening already.

People used to do things like put 18,000, or -1 and all kinds of other garbage in the fields on website order forms as well. That's just a programmers job to fix with reasonable input validation.

It wouldn't surprise me if drive-thru like Taco Bell started doing license plate recognition and reputation checking. So if you order and dash more than a couple times they might not take your order from outside in that car anymore.

On the upside they might be able to greet you by name and recall your last order:

Hello Mr Smith... Nice to see you today, would you like 10 cheesy gordita crunch tacos and 1 large diet Pepsi again?

Drive through might be a bit more difficult for touch screens. It'd be like trying to reach your parking ticket but for how many clicks it takes to make the order.

Phone app might be easier but not sure it really replaces what drive throughs are for.

Yeah, im not installing a phone app either. Sounds like the best option is to just hire a human being.

I mean there's no point to it, it doesn't speed anything up.

For example this morning I had a client meeting (saturdays, ugh) so I went to the train station cause it has a mcdonalds and it opens at 630am. They have 5 kiosks there and one person manning the til. People who were ordering from the til were getting their orders faster than people who used the kiosks. I had to wait 10 minutes just to get a coffee and muffin simply because I used the kiosk.

And it doesn't even make sense. I would have assumed all the orders go through the same system regardless of where it was placed but apparently not. apparently people who don't use the kiosk get priority?

can't believe they saw how shitty mcdonalds became with all their kiosks and automation and thought yeah i want that for me

Eat their refried beans once and that is all you need, ever. Then the whole AI thing is moot. - just my gut feeling

can't believe they saw how shitty mcdonalds became with all their kiosks and automation and thought yeah i want that for me

I might be fine with a phone app for very simple orders. I already use an app for fueling my car and for that it's handy. But if you have to stop, think about what you're getting, make up your order and then punch it into the app then it might not suite a drive through that well since it just ruins the "flow".

It's not about how simple it is. I'm not installing separate shit on my phone along with who knows what spyware for every little transaction I need to make.

No, but AI kiosks are a resource and employees are a cost. So spending more on AI looks better on paper.