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McDonald’s to test run AI-powered drive-thru windows that don’t need employees to take orders
by Arsenio Toledo

Natural News) In another move designed to reduce shrink its workforce and save on labor expenses, McDonald’s is testing out its artificial intelligence-driven drive-thrus at 10 locations in Chicago.

In these locations, workers will no longer be taking down the drive-thru orders of customers. A computer will do it instead, according to McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski.

On Wednesday, June 2, Kempczinski spoke at the Strategic Decisions conference of investment firm Alliance Bernstein. He said the A.I. drive-thrus are seeing about 85 percent order accuracy. The remaining 15 percent of orders at the automated windows cannot be jotted down by the voice-ordering technology and still require human intervention.

If the implementation of the technology is successful, Kempczinski said it could be rolled out to locations across the world. This move would deprive thousands of employees of stable, good-paying jobs.

But Kempczinski said the technology will take more than one or two years to test run and successfully implement. No decision has yet been made on whether the A.I. tech would be installed at other restaurants across the United States.

“Now there’s a big leap from going to 10 restaurants in Chicago to 14,000 restaurants across the U.S., with an infinite number of promo permutations, menu permutations, dialect permutations, weather – and on and on and on,” he explained.

One other challenge Kempczinski pointed out was properly training employees to stop themselves from jumping in to help take down drive-thru orders.

Continues:

https://www.naturalnews.com/2021-06-08-automation-mcdonalds-artificial-intelligence-drive-thru-windows.html

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