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McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs

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Re: McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs

#181

Post by tozeur »

bhouston wrote: post #135
hirundo wrote: post #15

Next they'll come for the cooks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKCVol2iWcc There are ~487k fast food cooks employed at ~$22.6k average wages. That's more than an $11 billion annual incentive to bring robochefs to retail. And that's just fast food, just in the US. Robo janitors may take a bit longer. Maybe they can design automated kitchens that work like jumbo dish washers. Seal, flood, heat, drain, reopen. The jan…

Robots are so much high maintenance than just touch panels and voice rec. Thus while it is a good idea the hurtles are much higher to get a positive ROI.

Think to the future my friend. In time the technology will get better.

Re: McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs

#182

Post by aeternum »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #105
zanny wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxing automation is absolutely wrong. We want automation. In the same way it would be wrong to say landlords of condos make too much profit because there are so few condos so we are going to tax condos more. More automation is required to contribute to liberate resources to eventually push our civilization to the next level. If anything, incentivize it. We want things behind made with "infinite" productivity. But we…

This would be nice if it were true. Since the top 0.1% have figured out how to own the nation via politics and trying to dumb down the general populace to ignore what they're doing I don't have nearly as much confidence in automation as you do.

The top 0.1% very much enjoy their iphones, yachts, entertainment options, and the other products of a strong economy. They don't have much incentive to tear it all down.

Automation has overall improved quality of life significantly. We can now grow so much food that we can easily feed the world many times over. Clothing has become so cheap that many items are practically free. And trips around the world are no longer accessible to only that top 0.1-1%. It's not all gloom and doom.

Re: McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs

#183

Post by flarg »

hirundo wrote: post #15

Next they'll come for the cooks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKCVol2iWcc There are ~487k fast food cooks employed at ~$22.6k average wages. That's more than an $11 billion annual incentive to bring robochefs to retail. And that's just fast food, just in the US. Robo janitors may take a bit longer. Maybe they can design automated kitchens that work like jumbo dish washers. Seal, flood, heat, drain, reopen. The jan…

You're missing a trick I think ... Why not do an IKEA style build-it-yourself burger operation, where food is cooked and deposited into a box with how-to-build-your-burger instructions printed on top. The perfect personalised burger experience! We might even get websites that sell McD hacks that you can add to your self build burger experience!

I mean, what is the real MVP for McD? It's sourcing, uni-forming, storing and then cooking food. Assembly doesn't really need to be part of it.

Re: McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs

#184

Post by ThePadawan »

ilaksh wrote: post #119
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first job was at Burger King. Working the drive thru was seen by most as a punishment. During the day it wasn't that bad but at night people were absolutely ridiculous in their behavior and expectations. It didn't help that many were drunk or under the influence of other intoxicants. Not sure how well automated systems would be able to deal with such situations. Maybe the customers simply couldn't order food unles…

Good point. Actually, why do they need a restaurant at all? Why not just a kitchen and a window that delivery people or robots go to get the food when its ready. Although I think drone delivery could be more efficient. Even though you are flying, you are moving maybe 50 or 100 pounds instead of 2000 or 3000.

Coffee delivery by drone was in the trial stage in Australia beginning of this year: https://www.ubergizmo.com/2019/01/google-coffee-delivery-dro...

Re: McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs

#185

Post by triggercut »

cavisne wrote: post #70

I wonder if mcdonalds records/retains the audio from its drive through systems. Seems like a goldmine of validation data thats already labelled (with the order the employee entered). Voice with some minor interaction seems like a much better solution for the kiosks as well. "Large Big mac meal" is a lot quicker than clicking through a kiosk.

Unless the technology has improved I would say that most systems are not much better than a CB radio.

The external microphones can be subject to a lot of wear and tear, external noise. I haven't any knowledge of a system as sophisticated as recording voice and storing, let alone pairing an audio segment to data on the pos. But rightly identified as a perfect opportunity to label training data, and you wouldn't think it would be too hard to deploy, at least in a limited capacity for the initial training and validation on this project.

Re: McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs

#186

Post by Traubenfuchs »

flarg wrote: post #183
hirundo wrote: post #15

Next they'll come for the cooks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKCVol2iWcc There are ~487k fast food cooks employed at ~$22.6k average wages. That's more than an $11 billion annual incentive to bring robochefs to retail. And that's just fast food, just in the US. Robo janitors may take a bit longer. Maybe they can design automated kitchens that work like jumbo dish washers. Seal, flood, heat, drain, reopen. The jan…

You're missing a trick I think ... Why not do an IKEA style build-it-yourself burger operation, where food is cooked and deposited into a box with how-to-build-your-burger instructions printed on top. The perfect personalised burger experience! We might even get websites that sell McD hacks that you can add to your self build burger experience! I mean, what is the real MVP for McD? It's sourcing, uni-forming, storing…

In Austria, for a few shining years, we had "build my burger" where you could use the order terminals to create your perfect burger. For a year I ate a mess of three chicken patties and lots of cheese on a daily basis.

Sadly, they got rid of it.

Re: McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs

#187

Post by tibbydudeza »

Up to 2 years ago our local McDonalds drive-in used to have a separate booth where you interacted with a person when you placed an order.

Now you have to shout through a rather crappy tinny loudspeaker that sounds like a telephone and they now inevitably get it wrong so you repeat the order to each other 3 times to make sure.

Re: McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs

#188

Post by jhbadger »

Gorbzel wrote: post #107
Spooky23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next they’ll come for the liquidator. The Burger King on the NYS thruway north of nyc went to touchscreen ordering. Everyone refuses to use it and there is one long line going to the one register that remained.

Unclear why one needs kiosks when the user's device is much more compelling. While there are some (very good) exceptions, many remain yesteryear's technology and meh to outright garbage UIX. The only reason is to maintain some local control and (when available) human common sense in the equation. Brick & mortar kiosks are the DVD Netflix of fast food.

Do you really want dozens of apps on your phone, one for each restaurant you could possibly eat at? I don't.

Re: McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs

#189

Post by spacechild1 »

Traubenfuchs wrote: post #186
flarg wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing a trick I think ... Why not do an IKEA style build-it-yourself burger operation, where food is cooked and deposited into a box with how-to-build-your-burger instructions printed on top. The perfect personalised burger experience! We might even get websites that sell McD hacks that you can add to your self build burger experience! I mean, what is the real MVP for McD? It's sourcing, uni-forming, storing…

In Austria, for a few shining years, we had "build my burger" where you could use the order terminals to create your perfect burger. For a year I ate a mess of three chicken patties and lots of cheese on a daily basis. Sadly, they got rid of it.

The new terminals have an option to customize your burger, I guess that's pretty much the same thing. Or did they remove it only recently?

Re: McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs

#190

Post by pmontra »

mschuster91 wrote: post #179
test6554 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are a lot like stray cats in that the more you feed them and house them, the more of them you have eventually. At some point, before we are all underwater, we are going to need to have a fertility discussion.

No, quite the other way around: the wealthier a country gets, the less kids are born as parents don't need as many of them to reproduce successfully. In fact this trend is so strong that countries like Japan or Germany are facing a really massive demographic problem as the working population shrinks over the next decades.

IMHO the reason is that in rich societies people has many possible activities to perform. They feel that parenting kids is not one of the most attractive ways to spend their time on. Furthermore raising kids cost more in rich countries than in poor ones, so they can't afford as many as their parents or grandparents could.
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