McDonald's Starts Testing Automated Drive-Thru Ordering (cnbc.com) 133
New submitter DaveV1.0 shares a report from CNBC: At 10 McDonald's locations in Chicago, workers aren't taking down customers' drive-thru orders for McNuggets and french fries -- a computer is, CEO Chris Kempczinski said Wednesday. Kempczinski said the restaurants using the voice-ordering technology are seeing about 85% order accuracy. Only about a fifth of orders need to be a taken by a human at those locations, he said, speaking at Alliance Bernstein's Strategic Decisions conference.
In 2019, under former CEO Steve Easterbrook, McDonald's went on a spending spree, snapping up restaurant tech. One of those acquisitions was Apprente, which uses artificial intelligence software to take drive-thru orders. Kempczinski said the technology will likely take more than one or two years to implement. "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 said. Another challenge has been training restaurant workers to stop themselves from jumping in to help.
In 2019, under former CEO Steve Easterbrook, McDonald's went on a spending spree, snapping up restaurant tech. One of those acquisitions was Apprente, which uses artificial intelligence software to take drive-thru orders. Kempczinski said the technology will likely take more than one or two years to implement. "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 said. Another challenge has been training restaurant workers to stop themselves from jumping in to help.
Seems like 35% of orders need a human (Score:4, Insightful)
To AI: What do you suggest? (Score:4, Insightful)
waiting for coherent response on what to order, still waiting
'what oil are the fries cooked in?' waiting for response
'Can I get that without pickles?' waiting to see if there are pickles on breakfast sandwich.
It is already hard enough to place order thru crappy voice/speaker system with a human. Now we have to go thru voice prompt hell too?
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waiting for coherent response on what to order, still waiting 'what oil are the fries cooked in?' waiting for response 'Can I get that without pickles?' waiting to see if there are pickles on breakfast sandwich. It is already hard enough to place order thru crappy voice/speaker system with a human. Now we have to go thru voice prompt hell too?
Setting aside microphone quality, dialects, accents and other technical problems, those are actually questions the computer will probably be better at.
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However, if they could get the touch screens to work, they might be better than voice response.
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The touchscreens in my area work pretty well, the people won't even take your order inside the building anymore, they only deal with cash payment since the touchscreens aren't designed with money handling in mind.
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'what oil are the fries cooked in?' waiting for response
If you are this concerned about the food you put in your body then maybe McDonalds isn't for you.
Still, at least it's not KFC. I thought only farm animals ate food out of a bucket, but then those crazy bastards realized they could get humans to do it too. Mark my words, it's only a matter of time until they install the KFC feeding trough.
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Given the ubiquity of phones, I would think you could just order on your phone. The order creates a QR code on your phone screen you hold out your window to a camera, and boom the order is entered into the system. Almost foolproof.
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... Drive through orders ordered on phone....
Think this through; what you not supposed to do when you're using your phone?
Judging from the average city driver, I know most people don't know one of the answers is "drive", but it really is.
Besides, that's what I really want, yet another snoopy single use app on my phone.
What a garbage solution from a garbage "just use your phone" mindset created by a device saturated market.
So what happens when it screws up the order? (Score:3)
Oh wait, probably the same thing that already happens. Shut up and take your slop. If you wanted actual food, it wouldn't have been handed to you through a window.
Another challenge has been training restaurant workers to stop themselves from jumping in to help.
At least the focus hasn't unnecessarily shifted toward providing a quality customer experience. Had me worried for a moment there. /eyeroll
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I think 85% order accuracy is way better than they do now. To quote a comedian I long ago forgot the name of, "When you go to the drive-thru, what you order is just a suggestion."
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> handmade organic prepared by virgins.
Incorrect, virgins didn't have the grip strength to make proper Kofta Kebabs, we're still looking into why.
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WRONG
Virgins have TOO MUCH grip strength to make proper Kofta Kebabs. You were just looking at the wrong kind of virgins.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I stopped going to my local KFC because the order is rarely correct. Ask for mashed potatoes and always get fries. So how about we call it a reduction after it's tried? Because 85% is a lot better then what I get now, which is pretty much never accurate. Can't speak for McD's because I rarely eat much other fast-food, but it's the same people working these places so I assume that they have the same errors.
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You don't want to burn the reputation of the test stores (whether corporate or franchise) if the system isn't working well... mild frustration sure, but I'd imagine in the pilot there's proba
85% accuracy (Score:2)
that 85 percent accuracy is a whole lot better than the accuracy rate of the local mcd. I swear it hovers around 10 - if that high.
and when the ice cream machine is broken? (Score:2)
and when the ice cream machine is broken?
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Great news, everyone! (Score:2)
They've doubled the human accuracy rate!
(You have to be this old to remember that Cheech and Chong bit...)
Machines are better. (Score:2)
Machines are always in on time. Scheduling them is a lot easier. They don't go on strike to demand a raise. They don't insult customers, They don't neglect their personal hygiene or decide to get tattoos on their foreheads. The minimum wage agitators are getting what they want: pretty soon the wages of all the hourly employees at McDonalds will go to zero as they are fired and replaced by machines.
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> the wages of all the hourly employees at McDonalds will go to zero as they are fired and replaced by machines
That would certainly be an improvement for customers.
Absolutely. Though I think that it would be a good prank to hijack the software. Hmm. https://youtu.be/jpFNS1RojAw?t... [youtu.be]
85% accurate? (Score:2)
McDonalds has tried similar before... (Score:2)
About 10-15 years ago, McDonalds used to route the orders from the speakers to an offshore call center, then have the people there type the orders in for the staff at the local place for orders. This seemed something that sounded good in theory, but the thick accents, inability to understand the local speech and such caused a lot of frustration, and that entire system was shelved, returning ordering back to an employee at the local shop.
This seems like the same thing, except trying the latest AI. However,
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That doesn't even sound good in theory. It sounds asinine. Automation I can get behind. But outsourcing local orders halfway around the world to a non-native-speaking population? That's just dumb.
Besides order accuracy, what they need is (Score:2)
We went to one of those Chicago-area McDonalds. (Score:2)
First time in quite a while. The McOrderBot screwed our order up -- really badly -- and it had to be manually corrected by one of the remaining humans. One. Item. At. A Time.
I stayed away from the drive-thrus for years because orders were far-more-often-than-not messed up and we wouldn't always catch it until we got home. Time to revert back to walking in and ordering. If we ever go back.
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The real question is, why can't they just weatherize one of those touch screen kiosk things they have in some stores already? If it slows down the line, put 2 in so two cars can order/pay in parallel.
This voice recognition thing seems like a less useful bandaid for a created problem. Like websites with limited options that make you call into a voice number to do anything more complex only to be faced with a shitload of voice-recognition menus that only get you the same limited crap from the website and try
Only has to be better ... (Score:2)
Why not outsource? (Score:2)
UBI is the answer here (Score:2)
I have the greatest respect for fast food workers, they work hard to provide for their families. They ought to be proud of that. But we as a civilization have wasted a human life if all some humans are doing for 8 hours a day is taking down orders. Would YOU want to do that? Imagine doing that every fucking day. Are you crazy? We should be ashamed as a society that someone has to do that in order to feed their family. Now what the FUCK is it that we have forced people to have to do these useless activities
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So you are the fat capitalist that owns all the factories.
I want my $5
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People shouldn't be working the window at McDonald's to provide for their families. It's a job for a completely unskilled worker, like a high school student, for instance. Someone that doesn't actually need a "living wage" because they still live at home and don't have to worry about expenses.
Whew! (Score:2)
Oh thank god. These awful, awful, low pay jobs every other Slashdot article complains about are going away.
I don't get it... why voice? (Score:2)
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A touch screen system that needs to be able to adapt to low cars, high trucks, short drivers, etc. and which is going to be a target for vandals
Choice 2:
Adapting the current microphone and speaker system using voice recognition software.
Guess which one is cheaper and has a lower total cost of ownership.
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AI'ization of /. editor function (Score:2)
I'ts been said before that Slashdot need to implement Unicode support, but this is the first time I've seen "smart" quotes having made it right into a summary.
So I would like to know whether they explicitly want to maintain the turn-of-the-millennium chic, or whether the editors are all "AI" bots to save cost for whoever owns it at the moment.
Better than the humans (Score:2)
Why? (Score:2)
How is this any better than just clicking on a menu on your smartphone, while you are in line?
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Doesn't matter, I don't eat out very often, but when I do, it's Wendy's. And she does me right every time :)
Bet you've never had a speech synthesizer talk dirty to you.
Re:So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems (Score:5, Interesting)
If employers don't want to pay a decent wage that a person could actually live on (assuming full time hours, of course), I see no compelling reason why anyone should expect a human being to have to do that job.
Re:So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems (Score:5, Insightful)
That's hogwash. Automation-displaced workers typically take a pay cut, and many end up retiring earlier than they want. When automobiles replaced horses, most horse ranchers did not go into automobile-related fields. They stayed with some kind of farm work, but often with a pay cut because they were newbies at a different farm task.
Whether automation is a good thing overall depends. Machines doing most the grunt work is only good if the money somehow trickles down from the machine owners. They don't like to share, and bribe politicians to keep from sharing.
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But then car mechanics entered into the market, which is another skilled trade. In your example the horse trainers were replaced with other humans from a different trade. Jobs will always come and go with technological progression.
I believe this is the OPS point. It will force people to learn a trade which nets better pay. If you're arguing that people simply want a flip-flop job that pays... everyone can dream I guess.
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The OPs point though is that those mechanics are NOT the same people who were training the horses for the most part. That someone else is making a good living at mechanics work is cold comfort to the unemployed horse trainer!
The automobile (and related things like small gasoline tractors) did not replace the horse over night, it did not replace all applications for horses immediately either. You might have taken your car to down but you still plowed your field and skidded logs with your horse team.
There was
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The OPs point though is that those mechanics are NOT the same people who were training the horses for the most part.
Correct, the mechanics are the children of those who were horse ranchers, black smiths, farriers, etc.
Re: So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems (Score:2)
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Jobs will always come and go with technological progression.
Not any more, jobs that people can train into in a few years, like auto mechanic or programmer, are going to have AI applied to them and the human will no longer be necessary. Facebook already generates a large amount of its code automatically, a breast cancer pathologist can examine 1/4 of a biopsy slide in 10-15 minutes, an AI can view the entire slide with higher accuracy in under one. Only the inertia of the insurance industry keeps most pharmacists employed. For that matter today's auto mechanic alr
NOT the "same as it always was" (Score:2)
Yes, "other" humans. But many still got screwed.
Can you prove "always" with any certainty? Machines have always been significantly dumber than humans in the past. But that may not continue. There may be a point where machines become smart enough to take more jobs than they create.
For example, there's been an explosion of homeless in the USA. This was even duri
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if history is any indication
Unfortunately it's **NOT** any more. There are no new low-to-no education jobs appearing out there. Farm laborers went to work in the factory when tractors replaced them, factory workers went to Walmart when their jobs were phased out. Where does the Walmart drone go when the shelves start stocking themselves? If the Libertardians have their way they go live under a bridge, but there aren't enough bridges in the country to shelter the people that are going to be replaced by automation in the next decade
Re:So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.
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And FDR only looks good because he had literal Nazi's to fight! I mean really the FDR worship of the left is pretty amazing when you consider the very same peoples complaints about the undemocratic and norm breaking behavior of Trump!
Not all work is valuable enough pay for a living. McDonalds is not critical infrastructure, if every MCD store shuttered an hour from now nobody staves!
There are lot of workers that are just in it for supplemental income or pocket money. The formerly stay at home parent that ne
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Then why should you expect a living human being such an amount?
If the job is not worth paying enough to live on, then either the job should either be automated, or else you do without the job being done at all.
Re:So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems (Score:4)
Yes it is though. Maybe not in NYC, or any major city where even my Salary would barely cut it, but those aren't the norm. A Livable wage isn't the same as being a wage where you can afford a house, expensive phones, top tier internet service, etc... It's literally a wage to get you by day-to-day; the absolute minimum. $15 covers that, even less is needed in many places.
Sure, you'll be living in a smaller apartment, have low-end phones, and slower internet speeds....But that's what you get for choosing low-skill bare-minimum jobs that you can flip-flop between without a thought. That's the incentive to better society and learn skills.
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It's "not the norm" as in not the single most common living situation, but that doesn't mean that the poor in those large cities somehow don't deserve to be treated like human beings. Obviously the living wage depends greatly on which municipality we are talking about., As for the number it impacts, roughly 31% of Americans live in such cities right now, and that percentage only cont
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The minimum wage is still $7.25/hr, not $15.00/hr. There isn't a state in the country where one could live on that, even if they were camping under a bridge.
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Its Econ 101 not 523. It gets more complex than that . Its learning addition and stopping and then when some one brings up calculus you claim they don't understand addition.
Re: So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems (Score:2)
You say that the current move to $15/hr is so big it actually went back in time to 2019 to trigger the purchase of this tech?
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So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems to be taking hold speeding automation in the fast food industry and elsewhere along."
Yep, certain portions of the media certainly are convincing people that capitalism doing what capitalism naturally does is somehow instead caused by a political party.
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IMO they already solved this issue. The app lets you order with 100% accuracy. You can add/remove and customize your order and it remembers previous orders so you can order "the usual". Pre-Covid I could order from my desk and when I'm within range, hit pickup and I could bypass all the plebs during the lunch rush.
Re: So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems (Score:2)
Thank you for pointing out what should be obvious. This is pretty much what I do waiting in line at the drive through for them and most other fast foodies.
I am honestly surprised that they just didn't put a flat screen to show the app and have Siri/Google/Alexa navigate you through the menu. You can even do multilingual support. They don't even need those big menus behind the 1950s speaker box.
Anyway, this automation was planned for a long time. I am surprised all the chains didn't have an app when the iP
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to be taking hold speeding automation in the fast food industry and elsewhere along.
"It was ignorant of you, to expect anything less." - Greed
Re:So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems (Score:4, Insightful)
> "It was ignorant of you, to expect anything less." - Greed
As posted by someone who probably never created or owned a business, never had to make payroll, never had to work a zillion hours to keep a business alive in a nightmare of regulations and market changes... Yeah, it is just/always greed.
As posted by someone who sure as hell knows how to ASS-U-ME.
McFuckingDonalds, is WHO we're talking about here. The multi-billion dollar real estate mogul and one of the largest human employers in the US. Or used to be.
Also known as the one who can more than afford to operate a global business. You're talking about a company that could raise the price of ONE of their products by 10 cents and generate millions in profit. You're also talking about consumer capture driven by chemical addiction that is more than willing to pay that 10 cents, and more.
No. They're not a struggling Mom and Pop who stresses over a $15 minimum wage. They're driven by exactly what I said; Greed.
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>"No. They're not a struggling Mom and Pop who stresses over a $15 minimum wage. They're driven by exactly what I said; Greed. "
So you are proposing the $15 minimum wage should not apply to the "struggling Mom and Pop" businesses?
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>"No. They're not a struggling Mom and Pop who stresses over a $15 minimum wage. They're driven by exactly what I said; Greed. "
So you are proposing the $15 minimum wage should not apply to the "struggling Mom and Pop" businesses?
You don't really want to know what I think about a minimum wage, because it was never meant to be a living wage. Therefore, I don't support the increase to $15 at all. I support creating real opportunities instead, and keeping minimum wage as it was designed to be.
We also shouldn't have a "gig" economy either, but that shit exists too.
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It should absolutely not apply. A $20 minimum wage should apply to ALL businesses. $15 isn't a living wage any more, inflation happened.
A minimum wage job was never meant to be a living wage, and making everything expensive from the bottom up is certainly one way to light inflation on fucking fire. Keep that up, and a $20 wage will be considered poverty.
Keep minimum wage as it should be, or increase it a reasonable amount. Provide people with real opportunity instead of this "gig" bullshit where we feel forced to call minimum wage a living wage.
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amusing.
the foundation for the stainless steel rat is being created in the windy city
This investment was made before $15 min wage talks (Score:2, Insightful)
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The Fight for $15 started in 2012, these investments happened in 2019. Perhaps they had a time machine?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik... [wikipedia.org]
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You really don't understand economics, do you? Must be another Libertardian.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/podc... [ieee.org]
And we also have a tax system that preferentially taxes labor over capital. So, for example, my employer pays payroll taxes that include contributions by an employer for various social service systems. In the UK that’s about a 13 percent national insurance contribution, or in the US it’s an employer portion of payroll taxes. If you have an AI do the same job, then the employer doesn
Re: So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems (Score:4, Interesting)
We want people involved in productive activity that adds to the sum of goods and services beyond what machines can already give us for very little. Otherwise, its a poor allocation of resources for the consuming group.
Though I am against the minimum wage, I do not think automation is a negative side effect. It frees more people to do more productive work.
Re: So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems (Score:3)
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The inflation has already happened over the last several years. It will take more than changing minimum wage to see a huge spike in inflation from where we are now.
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It has been a constant but raising minimum wage has always been a contributor also. Tuballoy is absolutely correct. Sorry you don't like that.
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"Productive activity" is "economically viable" activity.
At a $15/hr minimum wage, the purchase, maintenance, and depreciation of the computer may be cheaper than the human so it's more "economically viable". At the $8/hr wage level, the human may be more economically viable so the human is engaging in "productive activity".
When the computer replaces the human, the human (typically a low skill position that is generally populated by those with lower education and skill levels) may not be able to find another
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You mean prices aren't already as high as they can get them? You don't need a degree in economics, you need a degree in reality. All that bad stuff you mention has been happening *anyway*.
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>"You mean prices aren't already as high as they can get them? "
Oh hell no. It can get really bad. Look at the 70's. In fact, as the Federal government continues to spend countless trillions of dollars we don't have, and may never pay, inflation will eventually kick in hard. The economy can't just continue to grow ahead of it forever, and you can't tax your way out of it.
>"All that bad stuff you mention has been happening *anyway*.
Actually, we have been in a very long period of low prices and low
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You mean prices aren't already as high as they can get them?
Ah, but they can get them higher if they can point to higher costs.
Re: So the $15 dollar minimum wage seems (Score:2)
Except if you actually HAD an economics degree, you would see that none of that happens. I grew up in that academia where the prevailing thought was just as you put it... except that hasn't happened.
The reality and econ has shown this does not occur except when you raise the costs beyond a viable product. And at $15 by 2025, we aren't even close to that.
If minimum wage was kept up with inflation like it was between the 1930s and 1970, it should be $11 right now. It should be $24 if measured against product
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creates more unemployment, creates higher barriers to entry in employment, denies more people access to work experience,
This absolutely happens. It is very hard for kids to get their first job, even in fast food, because there are so many at the low end who have been priced out of work. I have seen this personally with my own kids, no one even bothers to call them back, because they have no experience, but if no one hires, it is impossible to get that experience.
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I've seen this play out every single time the minimum wage went up for my entire lifetime. Businesses and the Chamber of Commerce scream, "The world is ending! Every small business in the country will shutter its doors! Runaway inflation and waves of unemployment are coming! Cats and dogs will be sleeping together!" Then nothing happens and they all pretend they never said anything, until the next proposed hike in the minimum wage. Wash, rinse, repeat.
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This is why we need UBI and strong Unions.
Right. It's the unions that got us into this situation in the first place.
If you don't provide $15 in value with your labor, don't demand $15 in compensation.
The unions demanded more compensation than the labor is providing in value to the employer, so the employer looks at alternatives. And they found it.
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This is why we need UBI and strong Unions.
We do not want busy work just for the sake of getting a pay. We want labor to be freed up to do stuff that computers cannot do or is still too expensive to do for us. Unions were to protect people from being abused or underpaid but cannot impose a corporation to keep a job that isn't needed anymore. It can only impose to reassign the worker to something else that is available.
Also, the high turnover in this industry makes it pointless. As people leave, they simply won't get replaced.
I don't see this as a
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We do not want busy work just for the sake of getting a pay. We want labor to be freed up to do stuff that computers cannot do or is still too expensive to do for us.
If the people working the register had the skills or experience for a better job, they'd get one. My local McDonalds had 6 registers staffed with 6 people. Now there's one register and 5 kiosks. Where did those 5 people go after they got "freed up"?
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Short term, they can go to another place that hasn't upgraded and run a cash register there.
There are also lots of things a computer cannot do that a person can do.
Long term, this is a problem caused by society's current ways of taxation, living, and education and while I think it will cause hardships, I think it will open a much-needed debate on how things are run in th
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If it happens on its own, great. If it happens from an artificially high minimum wage and UBI then we'll end up with vast numbers of people who just don't want to work. And that isn't a good thing.
If you feed a wild animal then it will stop hunting. Same goes for people.
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Actually the animal keeps hunting, although at a lower rate, for its own amusement. Dogs have been domesticated for 40,000+ years but my wife's dogs still fanatically hunt rats, rabbits and ducks. (The little one latched onto a goose three times her size last year, which dragged her into the canal and tried to drown her.)
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Maybe those people could seek out opportunities in such a place.
Methinks that you haven't worked with those people, they work fast food long term because they're stupid, lazy, unambitious, or a combination of those. That's why I worked in fast food for several years, lazy and unambitious. There are a **LOT** of people out there who just aren't smart enough to do anything more complex than ask, "Do you want fries with that?", almost certainly more of them than you think. Work on a farm for a while, in factories, in construction, in restaurants, in pretty much any fiel
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So what do you propose should happen to the people who are to stupid to do anything but flip burgers or walk a security patrol? Soylent?
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"I'll have an egg Mcmuffin and an orange juice."
"We're out of orange juice. Is apple juice okay?"
"Sure, whatever."
*Audio of someone pissing into a cup.*
Driver peels out and blasts out of the parking lot.