Show us the sauce code... Wendy's and Google to test drive-thru order-taking bot
- Reference: 1683669933
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/05/09/wendys_google_ai_chatbot/
- Source link:
The system works by converting spoken fast-food orders to text that can be processed by Google's large language model. A generative component added to the system is designed to make the chatbot interact with people in a more natural and conversational manner, so that it's less rigid and robotic.
The completed model was trained to recognize specific phrases or acronyms customers typically use when ordering, such as "JBC" describing Wendy's junior bacon cheeseburger, "Frosties" milkshakes, or its combination meal "biggie bags." Unsurprisingly, the chatbot, like human workers, will gladly offer to upsize meals or add more items to an order since it has been programmed to try and persuade hungry patrons to spend more cash.
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It's the sort of story we could imagine on the [2]Computer Chronicles in the 1990s, but it's 2023 and this drive-thru bot has all sorts of next-gen neural network tech that's apparently needed.
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"You may think driving by and speaking into a drive-through is an easy problem for AI, but it's actually one of the hardest," said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.
[5]IBM adds side order of NLP to McDonald's AI drive-thru chatbots
[6]Do you want fr-AI-s with that appy-meal? McDonald's gobbles machine-learning biz for human-free Drive Thrus
[7]Latest from the coming AI robot apocalypse: we're going to be fine
[8]AI's most convincing conversations are not what they seem
Wendy's will try out its AI-powered drive-thru service in June at a restaurant in Columbus, Ohio, in a deal [9]first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Up to 80 percent of orders are reportedly placed by customers at the burger slinger's drive-thru lanes, an increase of 30 percent since the COVID-19 pandemic.
CEO Todd Penegor said he believes that automating the ordering process with AI will speed up the food-generation pipeline, allowing Wendy's to serve more customers. Long queues of cars in the drive-thru service put people off, and the new system could speed up throughput. Penagor said his company is not looking to replace workers with AI, even though the new chatbot seems to be doing just that.
"It's at least as good as our best customer service representative, and it's probably on average better," CIO Kevin Vasconi added, based on early trial results.
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It's not the first time a fast-food chain has rolled out software from Big Tech to automate its drive-thru lanes. McDonald's in-house tech team, McD Tech Labs, was [11]acquired by IBM in 2021, and the franchise [12]uses Big Blue's natural language processing software for its chatbots.
The technology, however, is often glitchy. Funny videos shared on TikTok show the chatbot making mistakes, adding wrong items to orders. In [13]one case , the McDonald's system seemingly added 21 McNuggets meal orders totaling over $200. Wendy's will be hoping its upcoming AI chatbot will be less error-prone. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZFsW5WFHu7CxI7MmKPVfQQAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://archive.org/details/computerchronicles?tab=about
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZFsW5WFHu7CxI7MmKPVfQQAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZFsW5WFHu7CxI7MmKPVfQQAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/30/ibm/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2019/09/11/mcdonalds_ai_chatbots/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2018/05/14/ai_robot_apocalypse/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/20/ais_most_convincing_conversations_are/
[9] https://www.wsj.com/articles/wendys-google-train-next-generation-order-taker-an-ai-chatbot-968ff865
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/aiml&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZFsW5WFHu7CxI7MmKPVfQQAAAFI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/27/ibm_buys_mcdonalds_tech_labs/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/30/ibm/
[13] https://www.tiktok.com/@typical_redhead_/video/7192248491853303086?amp%3Bt=1676307505881&q=robot%20mcdonalds%20fail
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Great
Agreed.
At least in Australia, many of these fast food service jobs are taken up by young people as their first job - where they gain experience of the work environment, as well as training (and whatever else you say about McD's in particular, they do provide good training, can't speak for Wendy's). Take those opportunities away and you have a lot of school leavers trying to enter higher level jobs with no experience and little in the way of customer service skills.
*sigh* this is not going to end well. Even if the thing works as advertised - and I bet it doesn't - what happens when some technical hitch shuts the thing down? It's a recipe for hangry customers and disgruntled staff.
I'm not a big fan of drive-thrus anyway, but dealing with the bored-sounding, barely concentrating human operator is infinitely preferable to dealing with a machine.
Have these people learnt nothing from supermarket self checkouts? The majority of people do not like them, as evidenced by the long queues winding away from the one or two remaining human staffed checkouts while many of the self checkouts stand idle. Humans like to interact with other humans, maybe a little idle chitchat while packing bags etc. "Surprising item in bagging area, please wait for assistance" just isn't the same. There will be tears before bedtime. Again.
Why wait for a technical hitch? You can be sure that the first day out, someone's going to order 1000 burgers, then drive off without paying. Or grab a shopping cart and make a hundred orders for 10 burgers. Tons of fun will be had on 4chan/TikTok/Reddit by people finding ways to game the bot. How much profanity can the bot handle? Can it f'ing handle a f'ing order with f'ing profanity every f'ing word or two? You know someone's going to find out. Social engineering is for computers now too.
Absolutely! People will fuck about with it, either for gain or just for fun. And then there will be those with unusual accents, speech impediments or, as you say, an abundance of profanity. The opportunities for chaos are endless. This is not a good idea!
Great
Destory the min wage jobs so everyone can continue to struggle even more. As has been said, if you're going to destroy min wage jobs you need to give every person a set benefit each month to compensate for no longer being able to do a job.
We also need to remember these are starting off point jobs. So people who run McDonald's stores are often franchise stores. They work from the bottom up. If you can no longer work from the bottom up you'll struggle to get in the middle because they're be less and less jobs available due to everyone being desperate for those positions.