McDonald’s is removing artificial intelligence (AI) powered ordering technology from its drive-through restaurants in the US, after customers shared its comical mishaps online.
A trial of the system, which was developed by IBM and uses voice recognition software to process orders, was announced in 2019.
It has not proved entirely reliable, however, resulting in viral videos of bizarre misinterpreted orders ranging from bacon-topped ice cream to hundreds of dollars’ worth of chicken nuggets.
Here’s what you do: You have the AI take the order, but the human checks each item. They’ll have enough time to work out the kinks
That is then not a technology ready for mass use. That would be McDonalds paying IBM to let it beta test (or alpha test it seems) its software for them.
And the only way to check the order would be to listen to each order and confirm the order is correct - so totally duplicating the AI’s job. It then becomes “what’s the point” for McDonalds?
AI tools at present are broken and not fit for purpose.
AI is a crapshoot, agree. But there has to be more testing before PR disasters like this happen. That isn’t “being my suppliers beta test”, rather sensible project managers not mindlessly putting it out there because the supplier said it worked. Now people are laughing at McDonald’s on top of their cost saving operations being delayed. But I agree overall that AI sucks to replace humans. I’m just criticizing McDonald’s jumping the gun