
McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-throughs - johanam
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49664633
======
hirundo
Next they'll come for the cooks:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKCVol2iWcc](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
janitors could take the form of underwater scrubbing drones.

Put the kitchen in a shipping container that plugs into the restaurant. When
it breaks swap it out for a refurbished one and haul it back to the repair
center. With a self-driving truck.

Let customers watch their order being prepared on their phone, micromanaging
the bot with special requests.

~~~
Spooky23
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.

~~~
cbdumas
Really? I've seen touch screen ordering at McDonalds all over the place and
most people seem to have no problem with it. Why do you think people avoid it?

~~~
bluedino
We have those and they are slow. I wonder when they’ll put them in the drive
through.

~~~
randomdata
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.

~~~
bluedino
Custom orders are really slow to enter

~~~
JetSpiegel
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.

------
zaroth
Why would I order with my _voice_ by yelling at a microphone outside my
window? How stupid is that?

Obviously I order on my smartphone and a creepy robot hand extends the bag to
me as I drive by. The UWB radio in my phone will let them know which car is
mine.

Most of the time I’m ordering the same thing for my family of 4 (not at
_McDonalds_ , but you get the point) and so two taps later everything is
ordered and paid for. This takes like 2.5 seconds from the time the app is
launched.

I’m not going to, like, recite out loud the 7 different modifications I made
between the sandwiches, toppings, drinks, and sides every time I want
something to eat. That would be barbaric.

Next thing you’re going to tell me is I’m supposed to hand a thin plastic
rectangular device to a human so they can stick it in some other device just
to process my payment!

~~~
ilaksh
McDonald's app is really convenient for ordering and paying. And they have
coupons. I am a fan.

~~~
dole
Used to be a fan until they started having shittier coupons.

~~~
buzzerbetrayed
Their coupons used to be insane. I went all the time and they have to have
lost money on me. I couldn't believe the amount of food I would get for almost
nothing. It's no wonder that they couldn't sustain that.

------
wnmurphy
I cannot wait. Finally, going to McDonald's will lose all semblance of
visiting a restaurant, and be fully realized as the experience of receiving
various permutations of bleached flour, HFCS, and sad meat from a giant red
and yellow robotic playdoh factory that it was always meant to be.

One can only hope the robot arms will sport giant mickey mouse gloves. Value
added.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
As long as the AI can reliably and accurately serve me a _decaf_ coffee, I'll
be satisfied.

------
claar
Much better article about this direct from McDonalds -
[https://news.mcdonalds.com/stories/company-news-
details/acqu...](https://news.mcdonalds.com/stories/company-news-
details/acquistion-of-Apprente-a-voice-based-tech-start-up/)

@dang can we get the URL changed?

~~~
devoply
Article you posted is mostly P/R fluff. I would prefer a human taking my
order. Automating this stuff has 2 benefits, reduced costs while still selling
over-priced sub-par food. Second, being able to upsell using video and voice
technology. Are either of these good for consumers, not particularly. Nor are
they good for employees. They are potentially good for management and
ownership.

That's pretty sad outcome to all this. Optimizing increasing the number of
calories people are eating by up-selling sugary drinks and other add-on items
or larger sizes (was recently at a McDonalds and that's exactly what their
large ordering terminal was doing) and optimizing for increasing people's
weight.

Imagine using the same technology to reduce people's weight. But that's not
usually the way to profit for fast food companies like McDonald's.

~~~
loceng
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 efficiency - allowing them to still be
incentivized to do so, and simply taking a small portion - which is enough -
and redistributing it to society will lead to an exponential increase in
quality of life; the buying power of "$1,000" / month of UBI Yang wants to
give every adult American will increase exponentially as automation replaces
everything.

~~~
snaptravisty
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.

~~~
loceng
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.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
I am not sure voice based AI is up to the task. Even with a headset/mic Google
Assistant and Siri have problems with more complicated commands.

I am not sure how well the tech will hold up to the effects of wind, car
engine sounds, screaming kids, customizations (hold the pickles), accents,
etc.

What I think will happen is that they will roll out this technology, and then
be faced with a bunch of irritated customers re-doing their order at the
payment window because the voice AI completely screwed up their order.

I think mobile ordering through an app is a much more viable option.

~~~
jsharf
I'm not sure when the last time you tried the assistant was, but Google's
speech-to-text is getting ridiculously good. I think most of the time, it
would be able to get even complicated orders correct.

Anyways, I'm sure that for the 10% where it doesn't work, they can install an
interactive touchscreen for correcting orders (or have an app). And for the
90% of the rest, they save a ton of money by having computers do the task
instead of humans.

~~~
bluedino
Have you seen people order? I would shoot half the customers if I worked a
fast food counter much less the drive through.

~~~
Mountain_Skies
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 unless they conformed to the system. Or
maybe they'd just drive off, with the business losing a sale.

With the near ubiquity of internet connected phones and tablets, making a
greater push for people parking outside the restaurant, ordering on their
phone and having it delivered to their car curbside seems like the better
medium to long term play. Get rid of the drive thru altogether. Likely would
make the entire place safer for pedestrians too.

~~~
loceng
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.

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

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

------
tracker1
"Double Quarter Pounder, just the sandwich, only cheese, no bun. Two side
salads no croutons, no dressing, two dip cups of ranch for nuggets. Large diet
dr pepper, easy ice."

Lets see if the AI can get that right more often than their staff can.

~~~
js2
Oh, you're one of those. My parents _never_ order what's on the menu. They've
always got to customize it. Which is fine. But then they get all bent out of
shape when the order isn't right. From a fast food joint. Can't you just order
what's on the damn menu?

:)

~~~
tracker1
It's not like they don't have the ingredients.. and I'm expressly asking them
to give me less of them, not adding any.

It's not like being pissed off because something isn't in the color I want.
Product colors and manufacturing are hard problems... getting a fast food
order right isn't.

The problem is the younger generations don't give a damn about their quality
of work.

------
cavisne
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.

~~~
triggercut
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.

------
randomerr
The local economist has been ascribing this move to the $15 minimum wage. His
take is that the only way fast food can stay profitable, with the higher
minimum wages, is automation. Computers cost less than people.

~~~
chillacy
Everyone in the latest YC class working on an automation-like product can now
bump up their "cost savings" numbers in their pitch decks. Minimum wage
increases work only if companies have to hire people.

------
vallismortis
Welcome Manna.

[https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](https://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

~~~
SECProto
Was there some other short story about a similar concept (AI managed fast food
workers)? Something by Stallman or Doctorow maybe? I have vague deja-vu at
that story, but from much longer ago than 2017, when Manna was published.

~~~
hnick
It's from 2003. I guess the copyright notice became a hassle to update after
2017 :)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_\(novel\))

~~~
SECProto
That explains it, thanks!

------
mc32
Whimsically, I’d like to see this system only take orders in Japanese.

Well, you can speak to it in English (or whatever native tongue you prefer)
but it gets translated out loud to you, then in response it speaks Japanese
back to you and again on the fly translates that to you in your native tongue.
Imagine a live translator between you and the ordering system (as redundant as
it is).

Eventually returning customers would learn to order in Japanese and they would
not need the translations.

But I want it to have a contrived aspect of Japanese futurism even if it’s
rubegoldbergian.

M:いらっしゃいませ

C:ハンバーガーを1つくださ

M:はい

------
habosa
At many fast food restaurants, especially the less busy one, the person taking
drive through orders is multitasking. I've seen people run the front register
and the drive through ordering at the same time.

It's very impressive, and it also means this won't cost quite as many jobs as
it could.

------
fma
I've never understood why drive through ordering was not done through a call
center. It could be in India for cheap labor. At the end of the day, you are
"calling" someone and they punch things into a computer that is the same
system no matter where you are ordering.

~~~
mattferderer
I believe they experimented with this in the late 90's early 00's. I recall
seeing job ads for rural remote workers doing exactly this kind of work.

You don't even need to go overseas, as rural America & people looking for temp
work would probably offer you higher quality for very low wages.

~~~
delfinom
>You don't even need to go overseas, as rural America & people looking for
temp work would probably offer you higher quality for very low wages.

Hah. Low wages yes, but not Indian low wages. Profit trumps all.

------
kylec
Why not just use a call center for this? Someone pulls up to the speaker, and
someone in another part of the world takes their order and puts it into the
restaurant’s system. Surely that would be easier and have a greater chance of
success than voice gen?

~~~
heavymark
Presumably because the idea is to save money, and a call center forever would
be more expensive but the far more realistic issue, if unlike an AI that could
provide a consistent on brand experience, with a call center your experience
would be hit or miss every time and drive thoughts are already not usually a
great experience so a low wage call center would probably be even worse.
Taking away jobs is certainly an issue in itself but I imagine overall this
will mean a more consistent experience that they can improve over time.

------
ineedasername
Lots of people here are saying they should just use a phone app.

I see it as problematic to require drivers, even those stopped at a drive
through, (you don't generally put your car in park) to use their phone. There
are laws against it, and they don't have exclusions for drive through
ordering. I'm not even sure that a McDonalds policy that said "put it in park"
would pass legal review since the car is on and you're only stopped
temporarily.

There would also be an issue with keeping the orders in the proper order. 10
people in line at the drive through sending their orders through at once would
make that difficult, error rates could be high.

Maybe a kiosk would work though.

~~~
jmkni
I use the phone app every time I go through the Mcdonalds drive thru (in the
UK). I order on my phone, drive up, give them the order number.

This is already a thing. The only thing it's missing is number plate
recognition, so I don't need to talk to anybody.

------
esotericn
Why not just stick a kiosk there?

In Europe most McDs have kiosks inside them... make it weatherproof / stick a
roof over it, done.

~~~
macintux
Everything outdoors needs to be fairly robust, and the kiosks would be hard to
reach and painfully slow compared to any voice system.

I use them most times I go to McDonalds, but they’re always slower than it
would be to just order if there’s no line, and worse, they feel much slower
than they probably are.

------
dredmorbius
I'm about 99.99964% positive that a key point behind voice (and touchscreen)
sales interfaces will be to integrate upsell and/or advertising into the
transaction consistently.

Witness: petrol station pump adverts, hold-queue upsells

Also: the range of accents and ordering styles is likely to be challenging for
voice response, particularly at volume and for McD's demographic.

------
jumelles
"What drinks do you have?" "Can I get combo without the drink?" "How much
cheaper is it with a water?" "My kid wants the rainbow Happy Meal toy, can we
have that one please?" "What time did you stop serving breakfast?" "Do you
still have McFlurries? What flavors are there?"

This won't go well.

~~~
CamperBob2
Yeah, because the same machines that wiped the floor with a 9-dan Go champion
a couple of years ago will be completely flummoxed by people placing orders at
McDonald's.

~~~
mattkrause
They’re totally different domains. McDonald’s orders don’t have the crazy
branching structure of Go, but they also aren’t nearly so self-contained.

~~~
CamperBob2
How is this not a _perfect_ example of a self-contained problem? There are
only so many items on the manu. Each can only be prepared in so many different
ways, with so many different ingredients.

Never mind Go, this application would have been possible in the days of Zork
if speech recognition had been up to the task. It is now. Anyone who doesn't
understand that has questionable business on a site called "Hacker News," IMO.

Frankly this entire subthread is surreal, as if the site had seen a lot of
recent signups from people who've never used a smart speaker before.

~~~
mattkrause
If you can get people to treat it like a voice-activated commandline (“tea,
Earl Grey, hot; Big Mac combo, medium, Sprite”), then sure, it’s probably
doable. This is how people mostly use Alexa, Siri, etc. It’s not the greatest
experience though, especially when there’s “state” to manipulate.

On the other hand, humans conversations assume a lot of background knowledge.
“I’ll have a coffee if it’s fresh; orange juice otherwise” needs facts the
system might not even have access to. You need to know a bit of pragmatics to
figure out that “a cheeseburger with nothing on it” should still have cheese
and a bun and exactly how many drinks and fries are being ordered when someone
says “Two cheeseburger happy meals and one chicken nugget. I’ll have crispy
chicken sandwich too. Fries and milk for the kids; just a Diet Coke for me.”

It’s obviously not impossible to figure this stuff out, but it might require
emulating more of a teenager than you might naively imagine.

------
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.

------
nestorherre
TBH I wondered why they took so long.

------
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.

------
masonic
Those of you who are touting use of the McDonald's app: have you bothered to
look at the _permissions_ you are granting to the contents and usage of your
phone in order to use the app?

------
lupanar
Logical turn of events though, everything goes to human replacement by robots
and/or AIs in many kind of manufactures. Total human replacement by robots is
a matter of time I believe.

------
King-Aaron
Oh that won't be infuriating at all

------
echang426
Great another move to remove the human touch of service from the food
industry. If anything I feel like we're still a few years away from being able
to have AI sophisticated enough to mimic conversion for people to comfortable
enough to use daily for even simple tasks such as taking orders.

~~~
owenmarshall
I am fairly violently opposed to automation eliminating human jobs without
some type of compensating control, which gets into a political place I don’t
want to go right now.

But having said that...

The human touch of fast food ordering? What human touch? There isn’t much
conversation that happens with the human that’s there today.

~~~
chillacy
There are the beginnings of political attention right now.

Andrew Yang is of course the biggest champion in this cycle. But it's also
started to catch the attention of Biden and DeBlasio (robot tax).

Then on there are still some candidates who are in the "it's not happening"
camp.

------
aaron695
> McDonald's is to replace human servers with voice gen in its US drive-
> throughs

So that's a lie.

[https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/McDonalds-acquires-
Israeli...](https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/McDonalds-acquires-Israeli-
founded-Apprente-to-accelerate-drive-thrus-601292)

Remember in 2006 how they outsourced the drive in windows to a call centre in
Hawaii, how did that turn out?

Did it immediately sack everyone one or did it not work out?

[https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/technology/the-
longdistan...](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/technology/the-longdistance-
journey-of-a-fastfood-order.html)

Yes, yes AI will kill jobs, what we don't know is when.

This article contributes nothing.

All evidence is AI/voice gen is to immature yet, since nothing is actually
implemented by McDonald's nothing contradicts this yet.

~~~
Scoundreller
> "Their job is to be fast on the mouse -- that's their job,"

Ugh. No wonder why the project failed. It treated people as tools instead of
people.

There should be a custom board of keys. The more common the order item, the
bigger the button to press.

