Although AI has been very popular over the past decade, and even more within the past five years, it still has its limitations. McDonald's US experimented with using AI to take orders for customers in their drive-thrus since 2021, and they have decided to pull the plug on the test this coming July. They will be removing their AI drive-thrus on July 27.
I have seen how ChatGPT is capable of voice recognition almost with 100% accuracy, if not 100% accuracy, no matter how people pronounce words or whether they have an accent. However, it's different when you're simply dictating a message that you want to send to a family member, a friend, or your spouse, or if you just want to make a note without having to type it. Then, AI will probably suffice. However, for a business like McDonald's, accuracy is the top priority since making a mistake means a lot of disgruntled and dissatisfied customers. It will cost them billions.
So, perhaps that's one of the reasons why they've decided to axe their AI drive-thrus. Initially though, they had considered these as a success with an 85% order accuracy. But 15% is still a lot, given how many people order at McDonald's every single day. Just some examples of order shenanigans include giving a customer cream packet instead of "no caramel" on their sundae.
According to the memo sent out by McDonald's US, they will continue to stay in partnership with IBM from whom they got the AI machines for their drive-thrus. The main challenge according to that memo was that the technology from IBM had trouble interpreting different accents and dialects. And given the massive ramifications that a single mistake would translate in terms of the bottom line, it's no surprise that McDonald's decided to ditch it after just three years of experimenting.
This just goes to show that AI will definitely not replace human beings any time soon, as one of the primary roles or functions that human beings still excel at much more than any computer or AI is communication and interpretation of the messages being given. Despite the great strides that AI technology has had, it still doesn't compare to humans' language ability, creativity, spatial understanding, and deductive reasoning.
(Image credit: Eduardo Soares/Unsplash)
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