Fast Food A. I.

Recently, I read an article that said Wendy’s (an Ohio-based fast food company) was partnering with Google to bring customers “Wendy’s FreshAI.”  This is short for “Wendy’s Fresh Artificial Intelligence.”

The first thing that struck me was the interesting oxymoron of “fresh” with “artificial.” Then I realized there were many more ramifications to this than a funny grammatical issue.  According to the article – in the Wall Street Journal, by the way, so not some fly-by-night internet site – there will be a “chatbot” (another new word combining “chat” with “robot,” I presume) that will take verbal orders for customers who line up at drive-thru windows.  The purpose, they say, is to reduce “long wait times.”

               First of all, HA!  These geniuses have clearly never called a company and tried to get a real human on the line, saying the word “representative” over and over until you want to scream, without success.  Or pressed the number for “representative” to be told, “no such number exists.”

               Secondly, these incredibly smart folks say that there will be “a restaurant team member” who will be present to monitor the chatbot.  So, if there’s going to be a human monitoring the chatbot, why doesn’t the human just take the order?  How does this speed anything up?

               The team at Google acknowledged that they have to program this chatbot for a number of extraneous factors, including (but not limited to):  knowing the lingo (“milkshake” means “frosty” and “JBC” means “junior bacon cheeseburger”), adapting to accents, ignoring people talking in the backseat – or children screaming, vehicle noises on the street, radios, construction, and passersby talking.  Oh, yes, this seems like an easy thing to do. There won’t be any problems with that!

               Finally, what about those of us who can’t hear well and depend on lip reading?  When the chatbot records our “double cheese with a side of fries” as “double fries with a side of cheese,” just how are we to correct it?  We can’t hear them repeat it, so….I’m guessing I’ll just eat what they give me?

               Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian acknowledged that these problems are some of the hardest to combat in creating this chatbot.  And – good news – if the chatbot isn’t getting it right, the customer will “have the option” of speaking with a human.

               Why are we changing this again?  To speed things up?  I’m not seeing how it’s going to speed anything up except our frustration.  Wendy’s spokespeople stressed that there is “no plan to replace existing workers with technology.”  They just want to “enhance the customer and crew experience by taking the complexity out of the ordering process so employees can focus on serving food and building relationships.”

I’m not sure that ordering fast food at a drive-thru is “complex.”  At least, it never has been for me.  But I’m not worried about job loss for humans – I bet the existing workers will be busy with their new roles as customer complaint representatives.