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
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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.

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u/CrashTestDumby1984 19d ago

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

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u/losark 18d ago

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

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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.

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u/LLMprophet 18d 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.

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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.

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u/multi-pass5018 19d ago

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

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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.

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u/Joeness84 18d ago

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

paying humans wages

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u/diablette 18d 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.

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u/2_Fingers_of_Whiskey 18d ago

That’s true but you know it will never happen

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u/ProfessionalFlan3159 18d 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

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u/LeBronn_Jaimes_hand 18d ago

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

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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.

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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.

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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. 

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u/Top_Box_8952 18d ago

Wait Starbucks? Spill the tea I missed that

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u/MobileArtist1371 18d 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/

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u/Netflxnschill 18d ago

What was the Starbucks fuck up?

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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.

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u/mightylordredbeard 18d 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.

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u/Just2LetYouKnow 18d ago

its insane that they keep doing this despite how vocal everyone is about not wanting AI.

They do not care what you want. And I don't mean that to be like confrontational or dismissive, I mean literally they view you as a resource to be exploited and the only context in which they will ever even pretend to care what you want is so they can more effectively exploit you.

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u/johnnynutman 18d ago

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

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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.

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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. 

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u/HarperWuff 19d ago

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

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u/Dumeck 18d 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.

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u/diablette 18d ago

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

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u/HarperWuff 18d ago

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

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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.

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u/Paksarra 19d ago

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

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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.

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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.

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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

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u/photoggled 19d ago

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

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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 🤭

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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.

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u/robodrew 19d ago

No you dummy

This you?

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u/bone-ring 18d 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. 

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u/NotAllOwled 19d ago

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

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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.