The New York Times: McDonald’s announced internally this month that it was ending its partnership with IBM and shutting down its AI tests at more than 100 U.S. drive-throughs after ordering mistakes frustrated customers.

McDonald’s announced internally this month that it was ending its partnership with IBM and shutting down its AI tests at more than 100 U.S. drive-throughs after ordering mistakes frustrated customers.

260 McNuggets? McDonald’s Ends A.I. Drive-Through Tests Amid Errorsnyti.ms Ordering mistakes frustrated customers during nearly three years of tests. But competitors like White Castle and Wendy’s say their A.I. ordering systems have been highly accurate.

I suspect we're going to see variations of this headline play out a lot in the next few months. "Corporate mega company parts ways with ai company after a poorly designed ai-based service does a ton of stupid shit and ruins their reputation."

They could do it as Mad Libs to just fill in the company name and the type of AI screw up.

"oh, haha, we wasted a bazillion dollars on the AI thing no one really understood properly, oopsy.'

I'm lovin it.

Excellent comment!

Thanks.

Huh. An organization that avoids the sunk cost fallacy vis-a-vis AI.

I'm sure the terms of their partnership make it easy. They're giving IBM an opportunity for live testing on a gigantic market, they're not getting left holding the bag with that.

We should go to McDonalds and reward them for admitting ai sucks.

Another brick was knocked out of the wall this month. Use AI to enhance humans in their work, not replace them.

Hahahahaha

Who could have ever predicted this?!

AI missed it

good.

McDonald’s has a history of leaping before looking. 30 years ago they tried doing pizza and abandoned the idea when franchises complained that the pizza box wouldn’t fit through the drive through window

Unrealistic expectations of AI or over-selling? Not sure why there wasn't a human in the loop to avoid this public humiliation for both companies.

Good, McDonald's. Now do something about your ties with Israel.

Gosh, it's almost as if the shitty, malfunctioning plagiarism software used as an excuse to fire people isn't paying off as much as the 1% hoped.

But then you read this: "“The IBM model was still based on natural-language understanding,” Mr. Lefevre said, explaining that the model works like a tree. When the A.I. hears the customer’s order, it has a limited number of branches to follow that dictate its responses and actions."

3 years of testing...

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