Our most favorite food chain ‘McDonalds’ has recently been doing a lot of tech deals to help evolve user experience. McDonalds largest deal in the last two decades has been its acquisition of Dynamic Yield, which specializes in personalization and decision logic technology. In today’s time even food chains are turning away to automation and uprising technology plans to keep their company on board and clients intact.
McDonald’s is trying to replace the human servers with voice-based technology in its US drive-through’s to make the ordering process more efficient, cutting down on service time. The start-up Apprente is helping it implement this technology which uses AI to understand drive thru orders. It is also said, that in future this tech can be used for self-order kiosks and mobile apps. By using machine learning and artificial intelligence, the fast food chain has high hopes of predicting what the customers would want to eat before they could even tell. The chain has digital boards programmed to market food strategically, taking into account factors like time of the day, weather and traffic enabling them to coax people and make more money. For example, automatically suggesting McFlurry ice cream on extremely hot days or telling customers their hot selling item of the day, thereafter nudging customers to order more. Sometimes its scary to think, how there could be a time when machines would know more about us than we ourselves.
McDonalds has further tested technology at some of its drive through’s which can recognize license-plate numbers of cars enabling the company to receive record of the customers previous orders beforehand as long as the person signs away the data.
Adopting newer technology for its functioning, helps one stay ahead of its competition, just as this chain is doing but again raises the question, is automation and AI making human jobs obsolete?
Source : https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/10/mcdonalds-acquires-ai-company-trying-to-automate-the-drive-thru.html
I actually went to McDonalds the other day in State College and I was hoping for a screen so I could just browse the menu without rush. However they did not have the new updated technology so the experience was different. I think that screens are actually beneficial to overall costumer experience but it also comes with some negative effects. It’s not easy to ask simple questions to a worker who may be at the cash register. I also don’t necessarily think that the machines take jobs away without replacing them in a different area. People are still needed to open and close the store, clean the tables and facilities, make and package the food, etc. People are also needed to install the machines in every store. I don’t think its necessary for McDonald’s to recognize license plates and have a history of their past orders because it’s just too extra and I think a lot could definitely go wrong with it, but I think a simpler way of seeing past orders is a good idea. For example, a car sticker with a specific code that can scan through the drive through may be beneficial and efficient without being over invasive.
I believe that our society today is too focused on AI advancements especially in the area of jobs. AI shouldn’t be taking as many jobs in our country as they should. While its nicer for the companies because its more efficient and cheaper but there are so many people that need jobs and the fact that we are replacing easy to do jobs with robots really hurts these people and their search for a job.
All kinds of technologies will take jobs from people, which is an unstoppable trend. Before cars appear, people rely on the coachman to get from one place to another. However, when trains and cars were invented, these people are not required as much as the past. Also, the whole mailing system changed radically since the company only need one driver to carry things from one place to another. So each time a new invention appears, there are always some jobs taken by inventions. It is not a bad thing for inventions to take jobs since most of the jobs taken are repetitive jobs, which are not creative.
If AI take jobs that are repetitive, humans can focus more on developing new technologies or creating new things, which can speed up the development of the whole world. Jack Ma said in the video that once AI can take up the job market, more people will focus on invention and creativity, which can drive humans into a new and better era.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3lUEnMaiAU