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A.I. Drive-Thru Chatbots · Kvetch & Release

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  Welcome back to AM eight hundred CKLW It's another day and AI is It's still
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  all the rage, although here's a news story with a company deciding to pull
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  back a little bit. McDonald's in the United States confirmed they've decided to end
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  a global partnership with IBM. They were testing artificial intelligence technology at select drive
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  throughs going back as far as twenty twenty one. Now they're not ruling out
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  other potential AI drive through plans, and they say there might be other opportunities
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  now. Already there are other companies that are doing this. Wendy's has partnered
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  with Google Cloud, Whitecastle has teamed up with SoundHound AI. Paneras, RBS
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  and Popeyes have also implemented voice assistance. In the UK, Popeyes has an
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  AI drive through and here in Windsor, I don't think it's quite AI,
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  but there is voice recognition, which admittedly doesn't seem to work that well.
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  I won't say at which two drive throughs the they are, but they they're
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  they're They're not that accurate, I will say, but it seems like every
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  company is running headfirst towards AI and not stopping. And that seems like a
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  perfect opportunity to have a conversation with CTV tech expert Carne Levy. Tarmie,
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  how you doing, I am, well, we were just at a McDonald's
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  actually just a couple of weeks ago, and that AI technology not in use
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  in Canada, but they do have those high tech kiosks that are pretty cool
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  and work pretty well. They're kind of the example of the world. And
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  so there I was in the middle of McDonald's, far from home, having
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  a conversation with my family about how much I enjoyed this technology, and I
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  think other, uh, other customers were moving away from me because they thought
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  I was weird. Hey listen, Once they rolled out the soda machines that
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  have all the different flavors that you can make yourself, that was the world
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  of the future for me. So I love those. They're great. So
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  it seems like, as I was saying, every company has been throwing AI
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  and baking it into absolutely everything. I'm surprised that there hasn't been a remote
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  control that I've seen yet for a television that had an AI built in that
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  can tell me what to watch and when to watch it. What is your
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  thoughts about seeing that McDonald's is pulling back from this one, what does it
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  mean about, you know, the ubiquity of how quickly the AI has been
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  spreading. I think, you know, because AI is moving so quickly,
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  and that curve is so steep and getting steeper by the day of new forms
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  of AI being introduced that seem to you know, make obsolete what we were
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  using even just a few weeks ago. I think we're bound to have some
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  cases where we throw certain things at the wall and they just don't stick,
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  and they in some cases explode rather spectacularly before the company retreats. And I
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  think that's normal with technology, try a whole bunch of things. Some work,
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  some don't learn from the experience, move forward, and that's particularly the
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  case with AI. And so you know, and anyone who says, well,
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  I I just want to have an order of mc nuggets, I don't
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  care about AI. I think they miss the whole ethos of what fast food
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  really is. And these places, these restaurants are all about deficiency, are
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  all about, you know, getting the food made and out to you as
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  quickly and inexpensively as possible. And technology has always been part of that mix.
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  In fact, some of the most advanced technologies have always been introduced in
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  fast food restaurants, first in drive throughs to get us through more quickly,
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  to you know, address some of the weaknesses of sort of the human factors
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  in a restaurant delivery, and this is no different. So we're just putting
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  an AI label on it. But that's the way it works. If you
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  want it fast and cheap and accurate, you're going to have to accept that
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  technology, including AI, will be increasingly part of that equation. And we're
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  also going to have to accept that sometimes the experiments won't go right, they
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  will learn from them, and they'll rein the technology in an improved form at
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  some point in future. So it doesn't sound as if you're concerned that a
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  negative customer experience will sour people on either the company that they are at or
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  AI more broadly. Just rather, it's new tech. Stuff's gonna go funky
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  sometimes, that's right. And I remember when those high tech self order or
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  self serve kiosks were introduced in McDonald's restaurant a few years back, and at
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  the time on social media there was a backlash. Well, I'm never going
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  to use them. I would rather dictate my order to a human order taker
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  and then have them go fulfill my order. Never mind that half the time
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  they don't understand what you're saying. You don't understand what they're saying, and
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  then they get it wrong. Whereas if it's on a kiosk, it's kind
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  of hard to say no to the technology or disagree with the technology. And
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  so at the time there are a lot of people saying, we're just not
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  going to go to McDonald's again. And here we are a few years later.
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  That controversy has now been forgotten. It's now normal these kiosks to be
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  in McDonald's, and in fact, they're showing up everywhere. Go for a
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  drive on a four hundred series highway in Ontario and in the en Roots,
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  there will be these kiosks as well for all the other restaurants, and nobody
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  complains about those. They keep things less crowded, they get you your food
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  more quickly and more precisely, and you no longer have to be kind of
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  yelling into a speaker hoping they understand you on the other end. And so
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  I just think this is just the way the world works, and we're sort
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  of deploying resources in a way that allow better service delivery, and so no,
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  I don't think it's a negative at all. And in this case,
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  they didn't roll this technology out to every McDonald's everywhere. It was only about
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  one hundred restaurants in the US, and that was the plan. It was
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  a pilot program on a limited deployment basis, designed to understand what works,
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  understand what doesn't, understand what changes need to be made. And so even
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  though they have ended that pilot program, I can guarantee you that they are
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  taking all of the data and all of the lessons that they've learned from that.
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  They are studying them very carefully for version two of whatever it is that
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  they roll out, because I think we can pretty much assume there will be
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  a version two because restaurants that do not use technology like this are going to
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  be left behind. It'll cost them too much to deliver that service, they
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  won't be competitive, and eventually they'll just close down. Yeah, I don't
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  think we're putting the proverbial AI genie back into a bottle anytime soon. I
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  want to pull back a little bit because we were just talking. You were
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  just mentioning there about the data that was collected. So one hundred stores let's
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  say, you know, we've got these other companies, White Castle, Panera,
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  Arbi's, Popeyes. You know, they're all over the place. Now,
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  there's a lot of data that's being collected, just from the voice data
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  itself, but also the contextual data with it. It requires a huge amount
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  of process and power. They're not getting rid of that data, I imagine,
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  Oh no. In fact, I imagine they are probably pouring through all
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  of the information that they ingested during the period of this pilot. So they
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  did it for three years, it's started in twenty twenty one. Multiply that
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  by one hundred stores in the US. That's a lot of interactions. That's
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  a lot of McNuggets bought over that period of time. And so I'm sure
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  they learned from when they got the order right, and they're learning from when
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  they got the order wrong, and they're learning from all sorts of other aspects
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  that they probably could not have even foreseen when they first flip this technology on.
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  And I'm sure they're using that as part of the design process for whatever
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  comes next. And I think that's a good thing. I think that's just
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  the way technology is supposed to be developed. You create something, you develop
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  a solution, and then you send it out into the real world and let
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  it get beaten up, let it get broken, and learn from that process
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  where it gets put into the hands of real people in the real world,
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  and you'll learn things that you could not have foreseen when you were developing it
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  in the first place. And I think that's healthy. That's a healthy part
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  of the process. This is not a failure by any stretch of the Imagine
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  nation. I do think we need to talk about, though, you know,
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  our consent to that data. That when I drive into a drive through
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  and I'm speaking with an AI bought, what data is being collected on me,
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  and where is it being used, and who has access to it under
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  what terms? And is all of that being made clear to me as I
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  pull up in my car, And if it isn't being made clear to me,
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  and if they are using my data in ways that will compromise my privacy,
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  then I think we've got to have a conversation. And especially as AI
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  becomes a much bigger part of the technology solution at a particular restaurant, I
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  think we owe it to ourselves to understand what are the data implications here?
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  And am I given up too much my privacy just so that I can have
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  my fast food fix. Well, I don't want them to like my voice
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  so much when I order my big Mac and large fries that they decide to
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  turn it into the standard voice that's used to greet people. That would be
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  that'd be terrifying. But here's here's a question for you. So the whend
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  he's partnered with Cloud and they've developed their Wendy's Fresh AI chat bot, I
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  wonder does the Wendy's chatbot have feelings? CARMI. It's interesting because Jeffrey Hinton,
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  who's known as the godfather of AI, he's speaking at the Big Collision
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  conference in Toronto this week and he's been making the rounds over the last few
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  weeks about, you know, do chatbots have an emotional component to them?
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  And he's been suggesting that they probably do. He can't explain it because a
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  lot of it is what's called black box. He knows that it will generate
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  an emotional response, but he can't explain why or how it came to be.
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  And I think that's a pretty provocative Like we're at a provocative point in
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  the development of AI technology where we're talking about does this stuff have a soul
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  and can we make it upset? And I would hate to think that I
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  would be talking with the Wendy's chatbot and it would start to cry because you
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  know, I ordered rings instead of fries. But we we may get to
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  that point. And I think it is inevitable that as AI continues to develop,
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  that there will be components of humanity that may or may not be real
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  or may not feel real. I think right now is just really great programming
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  coupled with huge compute capacity, so it looks real, but it's still code.
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  It's still software, and we still have the option of stopping that software
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  from working or unplugging it, so humans are still in control. But five
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  years from now we may be having a very different conversation as the technology continues
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  to advance. Wild stuff. I'm so happy that we get to have these
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  conversations. CTV tech expert Krmei Lev, thank you so much for your time
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  today. So wonderful being with you. John, Thank you. We'll be right back