McDonald's will stop testing AI to take drive-thru orders, for now

a nicely packaged bundle containing the information of hundreds of millions of customers' travel/spending/lifestyle habits ... would allow a company to sell more shit to those consumers ... so that information is worth money .... especially when collected en masse ...

The last I heard McDonalds said they aren't selling some of your data (like your credit card info or your location data) but that doesn't mean they can't sell other data, sell any of that data at some later date, or that the data won't get leaked or stolen and sold by someone else. Hasn't pretty much everyone gotten several data breach notifications by now?

> The OS won't let them track your location when you're not using it.

I can't speak to IOS but it will on android devices (with some limitations https://developer.android.com/about/versions/oreo/background...) If you give an app permission to access nearby wifi devices it can track you that way as well. If you give an app permission to use bluetooth it can track your location using that too.

> They'll profile you based on your credit card info whether you use the app or not.

They might, but they'll have a lot less data to connect with your purchase history. You consent to a lot more data collection by installing their app than you do just by walking into their store and buying something,

> The mom-and-pop places that people who make a fuss about these kind of business practices tend to love do all the things that those people claim to hate - track their customers, try to figure out how much money they have, offer special treatment to particular customers - so I've never quite got what exactly people are objecting to.

No one wants to be tracked by mom-and-pop places either. All this data collection means that you aren't getting a discount, you're actually being screwed over and the data they collect will continue to be used against you for the rest of your life in any way that they think will let them take more of your money or would otherwise benefit them. They aren't collecting that data and paying for the collecting/storage/use of that data for your benefit.

"Special treatment" doesn't mean what you think it does. This kind of surveillance leads to discriminatory pricing (see for example https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/A-special-price-just-f... and wendy's recent attempt at surge pricing) which companies are desperate to get consumers to accept because it stands to make them much much richer at your expense. Don't fall for this! I promise that you won't feel like you're getting "special treatment" if they get their way.

Another PSA:

Junk foods like McD’s slowly destroys your health.

When possible avoid encouraging others to support companies like McD’s who are a net negative for the world. [0]

[0] https://act.greenpeace.org.au/mcdonalds

Edit: clarity

If you only use the app how would you know? What happens when they take the menu board away and force you to use their app. How would you know then?

Maybe you really are getting %15 off on your french fries today, but you'll pay for those fries again and again every time they (or someone else) uses the data they collected against you. That data never goes away. It'll be used against you for the rest of your life. They only collect it in the first place because they know that it'll let them take more of your money from you. What a short term/short sighted "deal".

Yeah, but from what I can tell, there are some fundamental issues to be solved before we get an error rate anything like that with Generative AI.

The labor costs are not what's causing the price rises, the CEO have said so themselves on earnings calls. Also the costs of implementing the system at all restaurants when you have stuff like Kiosks already makes it overkill. They've already automated as much of the experience as is practical with AI's current limitations.

Perhaps just a turn of phrase, as they are very close to minimum wage and some of the lowest paid jobs you can get.

The point is that you can hire real live humans for not that much money.

Also all the bad publicity / videos on social media hits their corporate image of competence so it's also damaging their brand.

Exactly. A textbook example of using first principles for reasoning rather than just saying 'The cost of implementing this system vs paying a teenager minimum wage makes it not worth' - the equivalent of cavemen reasoning.

I'm not sure I believe that math though. The person taking the order is also the person responsible for the drinks and the payment. Most of the inside is already done through app and kiosks. Drive through also has the ability to pick up app orders. The drive through order taking isn't the big cost here. You would still need that person to hand food, prep drinks. The real time is in prepping the order not taking the order. Reason for the line at the drive through is the meal prep not the ordering process. If AI slows down the ordering process in any way it is actually a net negative.

> Minimum wage is $16/hr in California + employee overheard so lets say $25/hr. With 3 people covering shifts at the drive thru, that's $219k per year.

The part that you can get an AI to do, you can just as easily outsource to Indonesia or somewhere.