Here's how fast food industry is failing while trying to use AI to replace workers

While the buzz around AI taking over people's jobs still exists, many are quite convinced that AI is not that efficient. Proving this, many AI technology applications show signs of malfunction and incompetence. One such area is AI voice recognition used in fast food drive-throughs. Recently, McDonald's announced the withdrawal of its automated order-taking (AOT) in drive-throughs after two years of test runs, as reported by the trade publication, Restaurant Business. In an email sent to its franchisees, McDonald's mentioned its plans to find a new partner for the AOT while ending their previous partnership with IBM.

Many other fast food chains like Wendy's, Dunkin, Tao John's Hardee's and so on have adopted this AI-based voice recognition software that takes customers' orders in drive-throughs, as per the media channel. However, several customers have found it nothing but an object of ridicule. While initially, the technology threatened people's jobs, with time, it became quite controversial for its inefficiency, per BBC. Several videos have been on the rounds of McDonald's AOT getting people's orders wrong, adding more items to their order or inaccurate items being added to the bill.

McDonald's might've retrieved this technology to "explore voice ordering solutions more broadly," but its clumsiness is what became popular on the internet. People had a lot to say about AI's failure to replace workers when u/RobbinThickeness shared BBC's article on Reddit. "Turns out, fast food workers who generate billions in value can’t be automated by Silicon Valley," the user mentioned in the title. With over 9400 upvotes this post gained traction on the platform and hundreds of users put forward their perspective on AI replacing fast food workers or just workers, in general. 

"'Unskilled labor,' 'Anyone can do it,' 'You're not meant to earn a living wage.' I could go on and on. That being said, why am I not surprised when a billion-dollar industry can't be bothered to test the software properly before implementing it? Oh right, because they don't care about professionalism or customer satisfaction," said u/HermitJem. "It's incredible how the rollout of AI is just completely backward. They keep trying to get AI to replace service workers even though it absolutely bombs at that. Meanwhile one of the very first practical applications of AI in China was replacing a CEO because it turns out AI is just fine at doing metrics-based decision-making," quipped u/splitinfinitive22222.

"We will see this on and off again for the next ten years. Useless C-suites will get sold by flim-flam men that AI can do anything, and then soft launch it. They’ll rush into fully implementing it, and then suddenly customers will be fleeing because it’s underdeveloped and not able to do any of the things that were sold to them. The people who made the decision will have already gotten huge bonuses, they’ll take the money and run, and then they’ll make big announcements that they’re hiring again," remarked u/BeMancini. "People think AI is magical and CEOs think it replaces workers. In its current form, it is not as good or better than humans but it is much faster at many mundane tasks. It is nowhere near the level of sophistication to do away with all workers in a particular field like fast food workers," added u/flavius_lacivious.