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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

#231

Post by balt_s »

krapp wrote: post #197
lordlimecat wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or we recognise that as we automate further that there's less collective work for humanity This has basically never been true in the history of work-saving technology improvements. Such advances tend to create entirely new, previously impossible jobs.

What entirely new, previously impossible job does automating away McDonald's workers create, that formerly employed McDonald's workers are qualified for? Are we going to send them all to coding bootcamps so they can program the kiosks and... oh wait, those jobs are already taken, never mind. Your statement tends to be true when automation involves some kind of revolutionary technological paradigm shift, and the numbe…

> What (..) job does automating away McDonald's workers create?

This is going to sound like a crude joke, but it's not: baby maker.

I am not hopeful about the future.

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

#232

Post by sjg007 »

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…

This is what fuddruckers basically does.

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

#233

Post by la_barba »

Ironically, all this voice input stuff is making the regular people bend over backwards so that the computer understands what they want. The one extreme is programmers who completely bend over backwards to tell the computer exactly what to do with each byte.

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

#235

Post by cannonedhamster »

aeternum wrote: post #182
stjohnswarts wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 longe…

We could feed the world, we don't. We could vaccinate, give clean water, nearly free electricity to every person on the planet. We don't. It's not that we don't have the resources, we consciously choose not to do these because they would cause a minor inconvenience to those who have enough. The top .001 percent don't even live in the same reality as the rest of us, and there's plainly no way they could. The don't interact with anyone who isn't like them.

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

#236

Post by cannonedhamster »

chrisco255 wrote: post #151
rangibaby wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We saved billions of dollars with automation! Why is no one buying our products anymore? Hmm, it must be because they are spending all their money on avocados! I think the only way to go is to do basic income funded by an automation tax. Henry Ford knew that people needed enough money to actually buy his cars and made it happen with high wages.

Why wouldn't the price of food plummet in an automated world? The cost of labor is priced into everything you buy. I still think we're a few decades from these scenarios, but I am not willing to solve a theoretical problem (permanent unemployment) until it becomes a problem in reality. Right now we've got 3.7% unemployment despite all this tech. So I remain very skeptical of this theory playing out and UBI being nece…

You can't grow food faster. You can only make more of it which requires more resources. The jobs being created today are mostly poverty level jobs or high end jobs and this trend is expected to continue which hollows out the middle class. Pure unemployment numbers aren't useful since the expected date increases with a tighter labor market haven't been happening at all. Once worker wages became decoupled from the value that they actually created, none of the idea that you're paid what your with was valid. Now you're paid what you can negotiate which depends entirely upon how much power you have. Most workers have none.

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

#237

Post by [deleted] »

noobiemcfoob wrote: post #201
jacobolus wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make doorknobs out of brass, they might still get poop on them, but many types of bacteria and viruses can’t survive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_co... Maybe we can start making public touchscreens out of brass...

Ok, but most doorknobs aren't brass.

[deleted]

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

#238

Post by repolfx »

ptah wrote: post #198
zanny wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go insane if I weren't optimistic that we can eventually reach a post-scarcity, totally automated, enlightened civilization. The alternative is our destruction anyway. Its going to happen in much the same way as space colonization or uploading our consciousness if we continue on. And there is kind of a doublethink in that statement. To stop automation requires state intervention in the first place. It would, natu…

>we can eventually reach a post-scarcity, totally automated, enlightened civilization this won't happen automatically. it will have to be a conscious decision. how do you propose to get there instead of the dystopian future where things are infinitely more scarce for some and not for others which seems to be our default trajectory

How is that our default trajectory? Things aren't infinitely more scarce for some these days. Poverty has been in long term decline across the world. The poor today are much better off than they were in the past despite huge populations; this is essentially because of improved technology. Much of it automation.

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

#239

Post by repolfx »

krapp wrote: post #197
lordlimecat wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Or we recognise that as we automate further that there's less collective work for humanity This has basically never been true in the history of work-saving technology improvements. Such advances tend to create entirely new, previously impossible jobs.

What entirely new, previously impossible job does automating away McDonald's workers create, that formerly employed McDonald's workers are qualified for? Are we going to send them all to coding bootcamps so they can program the kiosks and... oh wait, those jobs are already taken, never mind. Your statement tends to be true when automation involves some kind of revolutionary technological paradigm shift, and the numbe…

But most modern automation doesn't create new jobs or new technologies, the infrastructure for automation already exists and is stable. It just removes jobs, and at an unprecedented scale.

If that were true then we'd see record unemployment and virtually no open job reqs. We see the opposite, therefore, it isn't true. In the UK unemployment is at near all time lows, wages are climbing 3x faster than inflation. It's a good time to be a worker despite equally record levels of automation.

As for which jobs are absorbing people whose former work was automated, who knows?

If you insist on endless cynicism, a lot of the people freed up by automation of food factory jobs went and got worthless degrees and now sit in comfy offices creating pointless PowerPoints, earning/burning money to justify the bosses departmental budget. Don't assume everyone who started out burger flipping stays in food service forever!

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

#240

Post by habosa »

etrautmann wrote: post #159
habosa wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

San Francisco has some self-cleaning public bathrooms that work like that. Locks between each person and cleans the whole thing including the floors. Pretty cool.

Except when they’re not working, which is every single time I’ve tried one.

Only been in one, the one on Stanyan street near Waller. Worked fine for me!
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