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?

I mean to be fair... that's the current drive through experience anyway isn't it?

Wait people eat at A&W? Is it any good?

There are multiple around me and I feel like I never see anyone in them and I myself have never been in 40+ years.

I have been to most every other fast food place more times than I can remember.

Why would this cause them to rethink anything?

If someone trolls an order of thousands of something, a worker isn't going to just make that thing. I get that retail workers are treated like shit and are paid shit so have zero shits to give. If someone rolls up to the drive through window asking for their thousands of waters or whatever, the people working there are gonna escalate it to a manager or just tell the guy to go pound sand.

Anybody today can go to any drivethrough and ask for whatever and then simply drive away. I'm certain it happens from time to time, even from legitimate orders when someone discovers they leave their wallet at home. If it was a great problem though these businesses simply wouldn't order drive through service, or would require payment before cooking anything.

I don't understand how taco bell survives in my city when I'm surrounded by dozens of real mexican restaurants and food trucks.

I live near an AI Taco Bell. It works pretty damn well and is a lot easier to understand. There is still a cashier, they just don’t have to be on the mic the whole time. Although, the t-bell near me also seems to almost entirely ESL inside. It’s quite a bizarre experience end-to-end but they will certainly not back down. I’m not saying I support it but it’s certainly one of the less evil AI implementations?

But despite some of the viral glitches facing Taco Bell, it says two million orders have been successfully processed using the voice AI since its introduction.

how much you wanna bet they're counting the orders where the drive thru worker had to step in and save the floundering algorithm who could not in fact understand basic speech, or even the purpose of a conversation, as orders "successfully processed" using AI

I like being able to give instructions without having to poke a damn screen.

I don't understand how taco bell survives in my city when I'm surrounded by dozens of real mexican restaurants and food trucks.

Because it costed them money, lol. The suits upstairs gave a quote in the article talking about how they will withdraw AI from all 500 locations they were implemented, and it also talks about how McDonalds did the exact same little dance over a year ago.

The mcdonalds thing was because the model they implemented was misinterpreting people and incorrectly placing orders. Yeah, obviously the thing wasn't working right so they pulled that. Sounds just like early personal assistants on phones and other devices, hell my wife still struggles with those. They clearly needed more time developing and testing it with a diverse range of customers from all over. I don't know if they trained it using recordings from real drive throughs from all over, but they should have.

The 18000 water example probably didn't cost anyone anything. Regardless of if it was intentional or not, it wouldn't have been fulfilled as part of an order. They mention it "crashing the system" - whatever that means in this context is impossible to know. Did it take down all of taco bell? Did it cause the LLM to stop responding on JUST this one site? All of them? Did it eventually time out and start working right? it's impossible to know because the details just aren't there and we have no insight as to the system architecture. I always assume there is a method to rely on traditional ordering where a person listening in while the chatbot talks to the person can take over and fix the problem. It's not like there aren't drive through workers still there.

I don't understand how taco bell survives in my city when I'm surrounded by dozens of real mexican restaurants and food trucks.

It use to be the spot when you had 3AM cravings and only $6 to spend. Now it’s overpriced meat-hose garbage.

Wait people eat at A&W? Is it any good?

There are multiple around me and I feel like I never see anyone in them and I myself have never been in 40+ years.

I have been to most every other fast food place more times than I can remember.

The mcdonalds thing was because the model they implemented was misinterpreting people and incorrectly placing orders. Yeah, obviously the thing wasn't working right so they pulled that. Sounds just like early personal assistants on phones and other devices, hell my wife still struggles with those. They clearly needed more time developing and testing it with a diverse range of customers from all over. I don't know if they trained it using recordings from real drive throughs from all over, but they should have.

The 18000 water example probably didn't cost anyone anything. Regardless of if it was intentional or not, it wouldn't have been fulfilled as part of an order. They mention it "crashing the system" - whatever that means in this context is impossible to know. Did it take down all of taco bell? Did it cause the LLM to stop responding on JUST this one site? All of them? Did it eventually time out and start working right? it's impossible to know because the details just aren't there and we have no insight as to the system architecture. I always assume there is a method to rely on traditional ordering where a person listening in while the chatbot talks to the person can take over and fix the problem. It's not like there aren't drive through workers still there.

Really the only cost here is the impact to consumer attitudes towards taco bell and AI because the video and news of this is circulating. One error is whatever, but public perception doesn't typically involve much critical thinking.

People are still irrationally terrified of all manner of technology even though science backs it up, like vaccines.

I don't understand how taco bell survives in my city when I'm surrounded by dozens of real mexican restaurants and food trucks.

Get rid of the damn kiosks inside too or at least stop forcing me to use them. I just want to place a regular order with a person. I hate going to fast food anymore, I don’t want your damn app either.

Two million successful orders!