Taco Bell Says 'No Más' to AI Drive-Thru Experiment

I fucking love this because it leaves everybody with one of two conclusions. One, AI isn't capable of doing the simplest of jobs. or Two, working a drive thru is actually quite complex and difficult and humans that master it are more capable than trillion dollar software.

Or C: taking orders is easy and AI is on the verge of doing it better than a human any day now, just give us another billion dollars bro.
- 😭 Daaaammnnn... this is gonna be the answer... 😭
working a drive thru is actually quite complex and difficult
Especially in the US where you can customize and substitute almost everything in your order. If it was a simple fixed menu where you can’t really do anything else but pick whatever is listed, maybe AI can somewhat work.
- A simple fixed menu wouldn't even need AI to be automated, just buttons.

How long is going to take these corporate morons to realize they're being duped? Like, you could have tested this with a focus group and realized it wasn't going to work in 5 minutes and saved yourself the trouble...

I think it's all performative bullshit, not good policy.
Some decision maker has to appear innovative to his superiours, so he decides to have some number of locations assigned to a trial group and some bullshit installed. Even if it fails, just as long as he finds the right moment to start appearing critical of the experiment he can still pull off his play. After all moving fast and failing fast are also virtue in modern corporate bullshit lingo.
- This. I'm watching it in real time. I want to grab these fuckers by the shirt and shake them until they get it.
  Instead, they'll get promoted and leave the mess to be cleaned up by someone else.

Now can they turn off that "Are you here for your app order pickup?" pre-roll followed by an actual person yelling "WHAT DO YOU WANT?!"

I just ignore it and wait for the employee to say something. That way I'm not just barking an order at them before they're ready to accept it, like Taco Bell corporate wants. That's the real reason for that stupid pre-recorded prompt, to trick people into thinking that it's a real person, so that they respond with "No thank you. Can I get uhh...", instead of simply waiting for the employee to be ready.
That's some selfish sub-human shit, and I refuse to participate. I'm not a psychopath: I can wait an extra minute or two while the employee takes care of other business.
- I do the same thing at mcdonalds. "Will you be using myrewards today?". It doesn't matter what you say it won't help you get your order done any faster

Seeing people say weird shit to make the AI squawk box spaz out and get a live person was pretty funny at least.

Always check to see if it's a real person before you curse wildly at it to get a real person...
And keep your physical threats nonprosecutable
- And keep your physical threats nonprosecutable
  "Listen here you fucking clanker, if you don't get me a real person to take my order I swear I'm going to put my quantum harmonizer in your photonic resonation chamber."

I am very confused by this repot, as it seems to imply something different than what it's saying and what it's saying seems to be... nothing specific at all?

So things are not going great, but that is not stopping Taco Bell from pushing forward with its AI embrace in one way or another. The fast food staple’s parent company, Yum Brands, announced a partnership with Nvidia earlier this year with the goal of improving the technology that powers its AI operations, including the order takers.

Now I have cognitive dissonance from both the uncanny use of fastidiously grammatically correct but unnanutral sounding Spanish in the headline AND the headline being entirely mismatched with the article.

Also, Gizmodo is still a thing? Holy shit. Would have lost money on that bet.

EDIT: Oh, it turns out the mismatched headline seems to be because the article is straight up retyping a similar piece from WSJ. WSJ's take is also light on a specific event they're reporting, beyond an executive talking about a thing, but at least they bother clarifying to what extent there is a change of policy. Turns out Gizmodo is absolutely still a thing. I had forgotten the regurgitated reporting-on-reporting stuff.

- One employee posted that the AI assistant started telling people that the restaurant was out of everything but drinks and sauce packets. A person attempting to order a Chalupa Supreme with onions from the AI assistant ended up with three chalupas, and when they tried to replace meat with beans, the AI simply refused.
  So things are not going great, but that is not stopping Taco Bell from pushing forward with its AI embrace in one way or another.
  Taco Bell: No, ¡más! 😂
- hey that's pretty fuckin good lol

We know how that ended up. Yikes.

Same reason why having call centres to run drive throughs doesn't work. It just feels wrong for people and if it fucks up you can't just fix it like human drive through fuckups

I haven't gone through a drive-through in three years, but McDonald's tried this and it was atrocious. Every time I tried it it did not work and a human had to be pinged in.

Never mind AI; drive-throughs themselves are absolutely shit-tier urbanism and ought to be outlawed.
McDonalds did this 3 yrs ago?
- Yup, at least in major cities they were.

Honestly, the drive thru speaker is on the brink of disappearing if mobile order continues at the pace its going. They'll get rid of it for a QR code or NFC scanner.

Me to all restaurants, stores, basically anybody : I'm not installing your fucking app.
Edit: I realize I'm abnormal and most people are fine with it, but I'm not okay with it and I won't do it
- It's a remarkable entitlement.
  Let's say I've never dealt with your restaurant before. Why would I start my relationship with you by installing your lowest-bid spyware on my personal device? You have yet to even convince me I'll ever want a Quesachalupa Wrap Crunch Bellgrande (the same as "taco, add tomatoes", but $3.72 more) again.
- Same friend.
I doubt mobile orders will continue to grow as people still wait at the drive through because ordering while driving isn't safe or practical. A big part of the convenience is just being able to stop by without a lot of preplanning.
This has been a wonderful development for me. As a non smartphone person the deals being in the apps has been part of whats gotten me to stop using fast food. The main reason is the price but the online deals would have had me back if I could just stop in and order them. Its mom and pop shops for me until they get roped into the app ecosphere.
- Have you tried comparing the in app deals to the local coupon mailers? I don’t eat much fast food so I’ve never ordered through an app but I receive the mailer coupons weekly.
Seconded, mine got rid of actual in store ordering and replaced it with kiosks that are basically just a giant interface for the mobile app years ago. I've heard most of their drive through orders are from mobile orders too now, but that is purely anecdotal just from chatting with the guy at the drive through window while I was waiting after placing a mobile order in the parking lot.
- I refuse to use those stupid self order kiosks. I went to the drive thru Instead and refused to pull up there so they could deliver my food while artificially keeping the drive thru time per customer statistic low.

Yessss.

Give in to your fear.

I just used the drive through ai system. It worked just fine. Not saying I'm happy about how these scum corporations don't give two shits about people.

Place on center rack of oven, bake at 350 for four years.

Dang, I actually thought this feature worked really well.