I feel like the article skips over all the interesting stuff. How did user out weird the AI? In what ways did they troll it?
Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru
121–130 of 237 posts
Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah it’s this, Starbucks isn’t a coffee place; it’s a caffeinated drink place. Their brewed coffee (outside of their higher end tasting room stores) is deliberately undrinkable to push you to their espresso drinks or their sugary concoctions.
Its a flavored milk business that also sells coffee
That’s spot on! I really like the chocolate milk at Starbucks. And sometimes I will get one with the optional shot of coffee added.
Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have never heard someone describe drive-thrus as a “famously bad experience.”
They’re usually a lot slower than going inside and people have been cracking jokes about the quality of the speakers since the 80s.
Interesting. I've found going inside to be much slower because the cashiers are so busy with the drive thru. I guess this probably varies from brand to brand, if not store to store.
Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hasn’t been the case since the 80s. Speaker tech works really well these days.
Speakers work well if they're set up well, maintained well and used correctly. Most drive thrus sound like shit because none of those are true.
So the ai here isn’t what’s improving anything, it’s the companies forcing themselves to upgrade.
But all of the chains around me have upgraded their drive throughs years ago and they’ve been great, outside of the recorded pre-sell they do. That’s caused me to just go inside and pick up my mobile orders.
Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have never heard someone describe drive-thrus as a “famously bad experience.”
There’s a StarBucks near me that takes about 3-4 minutes per car at the drive thru. Frequently there would be 3-6 cars in line. Yes, people literally wait 15-20 minutes in line before they can even order, much less get their order. Sure, maybe they’re just inefficient and shouldn’t be rewarded. However the people there are indeed working feverishly (and paid poorly). Going inside and ordering isn’t any faster. I’d pu…
Honestly sometimes sitting in my car away from everyone for an extra 20 minutes without actually having to interact with anyone is exactly what I am looking for. No other demands on my attention. While waiting for my over priced sugar coffee concoction I can just relax for a bit.
Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru
#126[dead]
Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru
#127When the AI gladly accepts orders that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars or 18,000 cups of water, it’s probably not production ready https://youtube.com/shorts/FDZj6DCWlfc https://www.tiktok.com/@90daygrinder/video/75355084374472983... (another example from a different chain)
I feel like we watched different videos.. Seemed like the AI (or other monitoring system) recognized a problem with the 18000 cups of water order and quickly transitioned to a real human. That instance looked pretty production ready to me.
I suspect the human worker still had a headset to listen in to the orders at the drive-through and just intervened when she heard that order.
Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m shocked that anybody with a smartphone is installing tracking fast food mobile apps, creating accounts, giving emails, and even enabling notifications. Another capitalistic hellscape flimsly masquerading as a great deal for you.
"capitalistic hellscape" get a grip lmao
When buying a taco without installing the tacocorp app is treated as a weird edge case, we have reached capitalistic hellscape. We are pretty close.
Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru
#129I will say, there is a Wendy’s near me that is piloting an AI drive-thru experience, and I prefer it 10-to-1 to the human version. It had a clear voice, it didn’t disappear randomly, it understood what I meant the first time (even though I was speaking naturally - I didn’t know at first it was AI), and it asked me for feedback (“what sort of sauce?”) in a very understandable way. Drive-thrus are famously a bad experi…
I've had two interactions with Wendy's AI drive-through, and the first time I was pleasantly surprised, but the second time it would not stop suggesting add-ons after every single thing I said. It was comically pushy. A human would have pretty quickly picked up on my increasingly exasperated "no, thanks" and stopped doing it, but the AI was completely blind to my growing frustration, following the upsell directive wi…
you've hit the nail on the head here. AI rollout has this hilarious consequence where "lower" departments have for a long time insultated the c-suite against their worst excesses and worst mistakes. Now that barrier is slowly crumbling due to AI-first, giving the c-suite an incredibly rare opportunity to discover how bad some of its ideas are in practice and there's less opportunity to blame those outcomes on others.
Re: Taco Bell AI Drive-Thru
#130I will say, there is a Wendy’s near me that is piloting an AI drive-thru experience, and I prefer it 10-to-1 to the human version. It had a clear voice, it didn’t disappear randomly, it understood what I meant the first time (even though I was speaking naturally - I didn’t know at first it was AI), and it asked me for feedback (“what sort of sauce?”) in a very understandable way. Drive-thrus are famously a bad experi…
I've had two interactions with Wendy's AI drive-through, and the first time I was pleasantly surprised, but the second time it would not stop suggesting add-ons after every single thing I said. It was comically pushy. A human would have pretty quickly picked up on my increasingly exasperated "no, thanks" and stopped doing it, but the AI was completely blind to my growing frustration, following the upsell directive wi…
It's the speed limit problem.
Everyone who's detached from reality whether an MBA in HQ or some two bit in the internet comment section who fancies themselves a central planner thinks that the problem is the people on the ground not following "the rules" when in reality "the rules", in just about any situation where there are rules are crap if followed and often themselves are knowingly crap written in response to other crap ("government says you need to tell you wear this PPE, no exception, yes we know you'll get heat stroke in some conditions, we're not checking " type stuff).