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

bbc.com

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

#241

Post by andrewnc »

delfinom wrote: post #218
bhouston wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a guy that maintains robots at a factory. They are literally a 1 hour side task once a month. The robot arms basically only needed a rebuild once in 15 years. The tooling is the only thing that goes bad and needs replacing every month and it's designed such that only a small part of the tooling needs replacement.

Do you have some contact information? I'd love to ask a few questions about this.

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

#242

Post by contingencies »

delfinom wrote: post #218
bhouston wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a guy that maintains robots at a factory. They are literally a 1 hour side task once a month. The robot arms basically only needed a rebuild once in 15 years. The tooling is the only thing that goes bad and needs replacing every month and it's designed such that only a small part of the tooling needs replacement.

As a guy buying robots for a factory right now I have heard many stories like this. Including some robot arms operating for over 22 years with minimal maintenance. Incidentally, I am building a factory to build food robots!

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

#243

Post by contingencies »

imtringued wrote: post #210
LanceH wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If robo cooks are truly inexpensive, we could feed a lot more people in need for less money.

Cooking at home isn't expensive. Robot cooks will probably cost more than your kitchen.

We will share them as public infrastructure.

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

#244

Post by contingencies »

sct202 wrote: post #222
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 great for repetitive tasks that have low variability like industrial parts that are almost exactly identical to spec. But when things aren't exactly to spec, I'm not sure that the robots would be easily able to recover with where the tech is today. Like let's say a slightly customized order, few buns stick together, something falls, tomatos are slightly more mushy than normal, or isn't loaded to the machin…

This is true but predictable failure modes can be designed around.

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

#245

Post by loceng »

snaptravisty wrote: post #71
loceng wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you should take your analysis a bit further. Freeing up human time by using machines is amazing, the issue is distributing resources - which is what Presidential candidate Andrew Yang's #1 policy of UBI ("Freedom Dividend" as he's branded it) will do - and paid for via a 10% VAT tax, so companies like Amazon who paid $0 in taxes last year can't avoid taxes. Allowing management, owners, innovators to maximize…

If I'm not mistaken, the VAT is a consumption tax that is paid for by the consumer and collected by the companies for the government. It's not a tax paid by companies. I assume such a tax would replace the local state based sales taxes? Having said that when I was in the US, it was very frustrating to never know how much something would cost me based on the advertised price.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Your initial point's thinking isn't evolved enough: in Europe the # I have heard, however I haven't confirm - it does however align with my own understanding, is that 55% of the VAT tax is paid for by a company's profits; companies have to maintain being competitive by not transferring 100% of the tax to consumers, e.g. companies will compete based on how much profit margin they're giving themselves.

I'm not sure how Andrew Yang at least will implement the VAT - it will be 10% VAT vs. Europe's 20% - which will maintain competitiveness with Europe. Likewise, Yang doesn't think income tax is a good idea because he believes you should incentivize and not penalize people who are actually working; tax people who are consuming.

And agreed, there is indeed a planned confusion - psychological trick - that occurs, manipulates people - when something is priced at say $9.97 - where people tend towards not calculating the final price that includes tax, and it otherwise requires people to unnecessarily use mental energy to do calculations if the person wants to stay very price conscious.

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

#246

Post by loceng »

Scoundreller wrote: post #61
loceng wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a design funnel using AI system that doesn't respond to the shenanigans would take the reward away from them, and they'd just "behave" and order.

Sounds great for the employees, but where's the sell for the franchisee/HQ?

Eh, competitors who are doing it will put you out of business if you're not innovating towards same efficiencies. :)

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

#247

Post by JetSpiegel »

contingencies wrote: post #243
imtringued wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cooking at home isn't expensive. Robot cooks will probably cost more than your kitchen.

We will share them as public infrastructure.

Should the US Federal Government nationalize McDonald's then? It's already an ambassador for the country anyway.

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

#248

Post by JetSpiegel »

spacechild1 wrote: post #189
Traubenfuchs wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There's the terminal customization, and no-holds-barred buffet-style Just a Bunch of Food to mixup.

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

#249

Post by JetSpiegel »

bluedino wrote: post #128
randomdata wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ones that McDonalds has here are fairly well implemented. Certainly preferable to dealing with the average cashier not thrilled about the job. But I haven't travelled enough to see what systems are being used in other regions of the world. It seems that what you and others are saying is that they are not all the same.

Custom orders are really slow to enter

You should also have some kind of hash of the order as a simple hex string, or "correct horse battery staple" thing, if you always order the same thing. Or the terminal could read a QR Code.

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

#250

Post by woutr_be »

WalterBright wrote: post #173
woutr_be wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in Hong Kong, every McDonalds has 3+ touch screens, I hardly see anyone lining up at the counter these days. I for one only use the touch screens.

I use the McD touch screens. It works, but it takes about 30 clicks to buy something. Also, I was flummoxed until I figured out that [Add To Order] actually means "I'm done, I want to pay now". I suppose all this was extensively play-tested, but I have no idea what sort of person play tested it given the result.

Maybe the software is different per country/region, because here it takes maybe ~5 clicks to buy something. And you can easily add multiple items before paying.
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