After 2 Million AI Orders, Taco Bell Admits Humans Still Belong in the Drive-Thru
After 2 Million AI Orders, Taco Bell Admits Humans Still Belong in the Drive-Thru
www.cnet.com
After 2 Million AI Orders, Taco Bell Admits Humans Still Belong in the Drive-Thru
Fast food companies have been experimenting with integrating artificial intelligence into their restaurants, from Flippy the burger-flipping robot at White Castle to dynamic pricing at Wendy's. One arena where AI seems to really be struggling, though, is at the drive-thru -- and Taco Bell is the latest to experience AI mishaps at the order box. After taking 2 million orders with AI, Taco Bell has reached one conclusion: we still need humans.
Just drop speech, idiots. Make buttons. No need in LLM whatsoever. No need in humans either. Want a taco? Press button 1. Want a beer to that shit? Press button 2. Additional shit to your taco? Press 3.
Taco Bell had automated touch screen kiosks at certain locations in the ’90s. It worked great. The people were not ready for it.
brilliant
From a corporate viewpoint, that's a one time cost with a very small (likely national) ongoing component. People cost only some training up front, but then have a high ongoing cost (wages and everything that entails). Typically they are all over this.
In my area you can't really order anything in fast food places. You have a screen where you create and pay your order, then a human just assembles it. There are still people involved, but much less than 30 years ago. Clearly they took that trade.
Can you compare the price of 3 buttons and some 1 dollar microcontroller to the price of human salary? No, you can't :(
McDonald's already did this years ago, and cut workers taking orders in store. The in store kiosks use the same interface as their mobile app. He'll it's probably literally just the mobile app running on a large touchscreen. Half the time you can't even order with a person.