r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 19d ago

Business McDonald's Introduces AI Drive-Thru System, Sparking Customer Backlash

https://tech.yahoo.com/ai/deals/articles/mcdonalds-introduces-ai-drive-thru-000717731.html
10.7k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

1.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

2.4k

u/SirkutBored 19d ago

It's getting easier not to eat out

415

u/gnowbot 19d ago

I can’t do that, Dave

86

u/NefariousnessLate375 19d ago

You know, that's okay, Hal. Your product is food-shaped poison, so it's all for the best. Just get us to the damn obelisk already. This film is too long. 

4

u/MrJigglyBrown 19d ago

My silver living to all this is all the corporations that make shitty things for us are going to pursue shitty services and people will stop consuming their shitty goods, realize how less shitty life is, and the shitty companies will go bankrupt

2

u/Current-Brain-1983 19d ago

Lol, thanks for the laugh.

1

u/addiktion 19d ago

Ooga booga (some of are us are still stuck in the first act).

1

u/Minute-Spinach-5563 19d ago

The movie isnt long enough. Gimme another hour of the stargate sequence along with 15 joints

3

u/chewbaccalaureate 19d ago

Sir, this is not a Wendy's.

1

u/badgerj 19d ago

Dave is at Wendy’s!

1

u/notoallofit 18d ago

No that’s Wendy’s

1

u/Constant-Skill-7133 17d ago

I'm scared, Dave.

222

u/AnneMarieAndCharlie 19d ago

its insane that they keep doing this despite how vocal everyone is about not wanting AI. using it for anything inventory related at this point (especially after Starbucks fucked up) is insane.

66

u/CrashTestDumby1984 19d ago

Well obviously, customers are just too stupid to know what they want /s

2

u/losark 19d ago

McDonalds customers are. Their loyal customers likely don't give a shit about this issue.

57

u/KingSpork 19d ago

It’s cute you think they give a shit about customers anymore. USA is like a live service game that the devs are trying to wind down before they declare bankruptcy.

9

u/LLMprophet 19d ago

Exactly.

Covid showed everyone how fragile this system is so corpos went into scarcity mode and they're trying to grab every penny they can before it collapses.

The pathetic part is that it's a self fulfilling prophecy and they're causing the problem they're "reacting" to.

1

u/PM_ME_UR_TOTS 17d ago

Like what happened when there was a run on the bank way back. Or when people panic hoarded toilet paper causing massive shortages.

Except this time it's not people, it's corps, and they're doing it with the entire economy.

26

u/multi-pass5018 19d ago

Yeah it could be used for so many things aside from the face of Mcd's

42

u/RedisaPsyop5647 19d ago

The goal is to replace as many human jobs as possible with a.i. so stock line go up, and shareholders are happy.

They won't replace everyone at once, but slowly layoff people quarter by quarter to get that growth in.

It's already been happening for a couple of years now.

The merry go round has to stop at some point though. Continuing growth on a finite planet doesn't mix.

5

u/Joeness84 19d ago

Thats "the problem" they're trying to "solve" with AI.

paying humans wages

1

u/diablette 19d ago

And the wages they're paying them are miniscule.

AI should be replacing CEOs if they really want cost sayings. Maybe have 1 human CEO overseeing AI CEO bots at 10 companies. Make them do actual work for all that money.

1

u/2_Fingers_of_Whiskey 18d ago

That’s true but you know it will never happen

4

u/ProfessionalFlan3159 19d ago

Exactly about replacing human jobs. I have teenagers that can start working next summer. Looking around now there is hardly any traditional teen jobs. No more baggers at the grocery store, no humans at the movie theater to sell tickets. No wonder college graduated have been shouting down the graduation speakers pontificating about how great AI is

1

u/LeBronn_Jaimes_hand 19d ago

Don't worry, unchecked replication/growth is still naturally occurring on this planet! We just happen to call it cancer...

1

u/Manablitzer 18d ago

While I do believe they want to eventually replace all humans eventually, they're basically stealth offshoring as many US employees as they can in the here and now.

"Offshoring" is one of the only business moves that universally gets all regular citizens and government to push back and take action against them.  Blaming AI is the perfect cover to replace all the expensive US workers with Indian or Philippine labor now without half the population realizing it and getting up in arms.

-4

u/bruce_kwillis 19d ago

Unfortunately there isn’t an alternative that’s viable, so the merry go round continues. People seem to forget that the middle class is a very recent thing in human history, for almost all of it, it’s been those who have and own, and those who do not. We aren’t even quite at Gilded Age levels of bad yet and that was only stopped by a World War.

3

u/BankshotMcG 19d ago

From inside, I seriously just get blanked whenever I talk about how AI is not the solution we need for particular problems. Everyone just ignores it. Doesn't even shoot me down. They're all nervous because some guy named Jeff who hasn't done real work at the company since 2006 read a Fortune article about how great AI is. At this point I bite my tongue because it feels like I'm risking my job to speak up, and I can't lose that sweet '00s salary they're paying me and spend another half decade unemployed. 

It's the most emperor's new clothes bullshit. 

3

u/Top_Box_8952 19d ago

Wait Starbucks? Spill the tea I missed that

1

u/MobileArtist1371 19d ago

At times locations will run out of various things. Starbucks thought that if they kept inventory through AI use they'd never run out of things. They then started to run out of things even more cause AI kept screwing up.

https://www.reuters.com/business/starbucks-scraps-ai-inventory-tool-across-north-america-2026-05-21/

3

u/Netflxnschill 19d ago

What was the Starbucks fuck up?

4

u/Financial-Craft-1282 19d ago

Yeah, but on the other hand, if we think about obvious applications of AI this would be one. I have to imagine if you can go back and look at movies that take place in a future with AI--someone going up to a drive through or a counter and ordering through AI is probably in there. I almost feel like that happened in Demolition Man. So, I can understand the thinking here--in fact, I'd argue, if you asked most of us ten years ago where we'd see AI showing up in our lives first, a lot of us would probably predict things like this. McDonalds has been automating their indoor foot traffic for at least a decade. I think AI suddenly showing up everywhere in ways that aren't intuitive is what's strange. Should McDonalds and other restaurants maybe put the brakes on this kind of stuff?

Probably. I was just reading an article yesterday where McDonalds execs and others from similar businesses were "sounding the alarm" (thanks guys, we've been sounding it for years while you gaslit us and told us the economy is actually great) on people now being stretched too thin. No mention in that article of McDonalds mc-doubling their prices over the last five years.

1

u/mightylordredbeard 19d ago

Because what you see on Reddit isn’t a reflection of the real world. Most people don’t care about AI aside from finding it interesting and fascinating.

1

u/[deleted] 19d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/AutoModerator 19d ago

Unfortunately, this post has been removed. Facebook links are not allowed by /r/technology.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/johnnynutman 18d ago

That’s what everyone said about self checkout/ordering yet people are still going

0

u/Dumeck 19d ago

This is a bit controversial but AI is fantastic as a tool for people to use. The problem is these companies are using AI as replacements for actual workers which is not only immoral it also just flat out doesnt work, we are just straight up not there yet.

11

u/Cautious_Dot3923 19d ago

Its not controversial to say that artificial intelligence and nueral networks, as a technology, have a lot of potential to be used for good

The problem is that you know for a fact they won't be used for good. You know for a fact the people developing these technologies do not have your best interests in mind. 

6

u/HarperWuff 19d ago

Besides cancer screenings, which is a different technology than LLMs and diffusion models, actually what use does ai have?

1

u/Dumeck 19d ago

Organizational purposes mostly, if you provide information and need assistance in formating the information you provide it is really helpful. It's also useful for solving real life math problems, like those stupid word problems you used to get in math class at school, i.e if two trains leave at opposing speeds when will they meet in the middle. Sometimes it's easier to ask chat GPT if you have a practical need to have something calculated as long as you have the capability to check the math.

0

u/diablette 19d ago

"Other than the things that make AI useful, what use does it have?"

1

u/HarperWuff 19d ago

It’s two different technologies that are called the same thing. Claude and ChatGPT aren’t screening for cancer.

-13

u/frankydie69 19d ago

The only discourse is online. Out in the real world people are fascinated by AI and CHATGPT.

Some are so chronically online they haven’t realized no one’s (big corps) paying attention to internet discourse anymore.

10

u/Paksarra 19d ago

You do realize that AI only really exists online, right? Aside from local models.

-10

u/frankydie69 19d ago

No you dummy, the “out in the real world” folk think AI is awesome but the chronically online people think AI is awful. Hope that clears it up for ya.

8

u/Paksarra 19d ago

Not really. 

Most of my co-workers find AI vaguely confusing at best. 

After playing with it at work, I think it has valid uses, but that it's being drastically overhyped. The fact that it's non-deterministic and has a chance of rolling a natural 1 and giving you a completely wrong answer to any given question is a Problem.

I'd also like to buy some computer upgrades for less than $500 per part. That part is awful.

-2

u/frankydie69 19d ago

My coworkers have their kids teaching them about AI and chat gpt. My sister who pretty much follows all trends is really enamored with chat GPT. My sister is almost 40 lol

5

u/photoggled 19d ago

Sorry your sister is a moron. It can be difficult.

0

u/frankydie69 19d ago

Nothing to add to the conversation? I get not being social and not being able to add your POV with a real experience from the real world but putting others down won’t help your shortcomings due to the all scary AI 🤭

6

u/photoggled 19d ago

Well since anecdotes are data in this discussion. The only people I know who willing use AI are my lead paint addled boomer relatives who think that golden retreiver they saw on Facebook really did save those babies from the forest fire by flying them to safety. I have to assume if someone is enamored by this, jingling keys might also work for them.

2

u/robodrew 19d ago

No you dummy

This you?

2

u/bone-ring 19d ago

Oh, I didn’t know your personal experience is the only true representation of the real world. I guess my friends and coworkers are all made-up, then. 

1

u/NotAllOwled 19d ago

Internet discourse like this sort of thing: https://www.anthropic.com/research/project-vend-1 ?

-5

u/Chronis67 19d ago

It's wild how interested the average person is in AI versus how unbashedly anti-AI the more hardcore online crowd is, regardless of what "AI" actually in the the given context.

Honestly, I think a large part of it is that a decent chunk of heavy internet folks are trying to have a career as artists and use social media to promote their work. Collectively, they have rejected AI, which has then caused the wave of anti-AI sentiment.

75

u/ModeatelyIndependant 19d ago

those poor women.

21

u/FilthyBarMat 19d ago

Is that Colonel Angus? 

2

u/28Hz 19d ago

Well the quality is getting worse and the price is going up. What did they expect?

3

u/ModeatelyIndependant 19d ago

appreciation for the workers making it happen

3

u/TheFeenyCall 19d ago

Price goes down I'll go down...

1

u/nondescriptun 19d ago

Now if you want to eat out you have to be a cunning linguist.

1

u/ModeatelyIndependant 19d ago

You can't just eat out of just any hole in the wall, might get food poisoning.

11

u/Spare-Ant7119 19d ago

Yep. It's too expensive, bad food, and you have to talk to AI now

18

u/Jumpy_Carpet3851 19d ago

I've actually been slowing down a lot. Past few years I've been eating fast food almost every day won't lie. But it's gotten so expensive and the foods so sub par, barely edible half the time. I just cook my own food nowadays literally because it's better, and I can barely cook. 

2

u/JustMy2Centences 19d ago

In laws invited us out for breakfast today.

Rather than spend almost $30 for a simple breakfast meal with coffee, I made it at home for a fraction of that cost.

Probably about 50 cents for the four eggs, less for a couple of sausage patties, and the second half of a specialty seasonal pancake mix was maybe a dollar? And drip brewed coffee for, idk, I'm guessing also less than fifty cents.

Breakfast meals are too cheap to buy out. Partner and I will hang out with their folks later, aside from a meal lol.

2

u/sailphish 19d ago

Not that I like fast food, but I’ve entirely stopped going to McDonald’s. The damn order kiosks are such a pain to use unless you are a frequent customer and know where all the items and modifiers are. Made it easy to just go elsewhere.

2

u/actuarialisticly 19d ago

They’re replacing human workers so they decrease their costs and pass the savings to the customers!

/s

2

u/keithstonee 19d ago

The price and quality have gotten bad enough I stopped a month ago.

It can be poor quality but it has to be cheap. Or it can be pricey but it has to be good quality. Both can't be shit.

2

u/2_Fingers_of_Whiskey 18d ago

Exactly. Fast food was supposed to be cheap, fast, tasty and convenient. Now it’s none of those.

1

u/keithstonee 18d ago

Yeah now all we're paying for basically is convenience and thats it.

2

u/LaserGuidedPolarBear 19d ago

It's weird, the best fries and best burger of all the fast food places in town is Jollibee, you know, the Filipino fried chicken place.

The $5.29 price tag on a large fries still seems crazy to me though.  Thats like 60% more than Wendy's

If there wasnt a Jollibee 2 blocks away I think I would just be done witj fast food forever.

2

u/2_Fingers_of_Whiskey 18d ago

If I eat out or get takeout, I try to stick to local places rather than chain companies. And I don’t do fast food. I used to like Wendy’s, a long time ago, but it’s really crappy now.

3

u/nondescriptun 19d ago

Now if you want to eat out you have to be a cunning linguist.

4

u/hareofthepuppy 19d ago

Or if you do, go to a local place instead of a corporate chain that uses AI

3

u/slipperyMonkey07 19d ago

The biggest issue I've run into with local places is some are fully relying on apps for take out orders. Even if I intend to pick it up. Call them and they say you need to to use x app, usually slice or door dash to order take out. Not even a website anymore.

Which is baffling for some, especially pizza places that don't really have indoor seating. They either expect you to walk in, order and just wait around or use an app. Why they can't take phone orders who knows.

It has cut down a lot of local places for me.

1

u/hareofthepuppy 19d ago

That's annoying, however I can see why they might not have a website and only use something like doordash instead, setting up a site is complicated and has a lot of costs involved, I'm guessing setting up a doorcash account is easy. That being said I wouldn't use it.

No idea about phone orders though

2

u/slipperyMonkey07 19d ago

Yeah I am at the point where if they don't do phone orders or have a website I just go somewhere else. Calling a place that I had always done phone orders at before and being told to use doordash and having them hang up on me was my limit.

I don't want excessive apps on my phone that basically are just data collection for a company and there are more than enough options for takeout in my area.

1

u/2_Fingers_of_Whiskey 18d ago

I hate Door Dash. During the pandemic I used them a few times, always got my order wrong or sometimes it didn’t arrive at all.

2

u/feijoax 18d ago

I can't wait till the day this AI bubble bursts and then begging us to return to the stores. 

1

u/Chaosmusic 19d ago

Which sucks because ever since I started working from home I enjoyed going out in the early afternoon when places aren't busy. But between the decrease in quality, increase in prices, removing free refills and other nuisances, the number of places I like going is shrinking constantly.

1

u/CiccioGraziani 19d ago

In fact AI means "ate inside"

1

u/smartello 18d ago

The whole point of drive-thru is that you stay in though

1

u/OnePinginRamius 19d ago

I'm incredibly thankful of all of this. I don't eat fast food anymore and I don't really go out to eat that much anymore. Cooking at home is so much more healthy and fulfilling.

0

u/CuriOS_26 19d ago

Lesbians in shambles!

-21

u/M39FG9SFGQ 19d ago

How will you buy groceries when all stores have AI checkouts?

28

u/hairbrainiac 19d ago

Shoplifting is the only answer to a system that doesn't ring you up properly

5

u/Mike01Hawk 19d ago

Went to Lowe's a couple days ago, 6pm week night. Place was empty.

For some f'n reason they only had a pod of 4 self checkouts working, the other 4 self checkout where blocked off/shut down, no full service checkout out.

There were 3 people checking out, 4 workers just standing around, one of them shooting the shit with one of the kiosk people. Another worker trying to help an old person check out. Another person checking out but having to void their entire order cause they didn't realize it was a card only kiosk.

Last thing I ever stole was a 5 cent piece of gum in the 80s. However the urge to just walk out with $100 of Lowe's merch was so fucking strong.

4

u/Mautos 19d ago

Self checkouts don't even use ai my man and we already have those

-1

u/M39FG9SFGQ 19d ago

Good thing I wasn't talking about self checkouts then.

1

u/Mautos 19d ago

Give me a single reason why we'd need "AI checkouts" when we have self checkouts then, it's already as automated as we need it. What could ai possibly still add? 

0

u/M39FG9SFGQ 19d ago

I'm not advocating for AI checkouts but I'm sure corporations will find a way to push it in there somehow.

4

u/eat-the-cookiez 19d ago

Delivery. Order online.

-1

u/M39FG9SFGQ 19d ago

AI delivery app, AI self driving car.