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Much better article about this direct from McDonalds - https://news.mcdonalds.com/stories/company-news-details/acquistion-of-Apprente-a-voice-based-tech-start-u

by claar 7y ago

Much better article about this direct from McDonalds - https://news.mcdonalds.com/stories/company-news-details/acquistion-of-Apprente-a-voice-based-tech-start-up/ https://news.mcdonalds.com/stories/company-news-details/acqu... @dang can we get the URL changed?

donmcronald 7y ago
Yeah. That's a much better article. They're buying a company to work on it. It sounds ridiculous on the surface, but I remember a Microsoft presentation from Build 2016 (ish ?) where the presenter was showing a natural language query product where they used food ordering as an example. I thought it was super cool the way they trained it. The computer would guess everything it could and then a human would shuffle boxes of words around to fix mistakes / assign unknown variables. The coolest part was where they showed how they could teach the computer that "my crib" was slang for my home location. It's one of those things where I figured it would be big deal and then I never heard about it again. I can't even remember what it was called. In this case, I imagine they could do something similar. As long as the computer can do good enough speech to text, there can be a human in there somewhere fixing up the tough stuff. I imagine it's a prelude to ordering directly from your phone as you're driving to pick up the food.
- hsod 7y ago
  Seems like they have access to a goldmine of labeled training data
devoply 7y ago
Article you posted is mostly P/R fluff. I would prefer a human taking my order. Automating this stuff has 2 benefits, reduced costs while still selling over-priced sub-par food. Second, being able to upsell using video and voice technology. Are either of these good for consumers, not particularly. Nor are they good for employees. They are potentially good for management and ownership. That's pretty sad outcome to all this. Optimizing increasing the number of calories people are eating by up-selling sugary drinks and other add-on items or larger sizes (was recently at a McDonalds and that's exactly what their large ordering terminal was doing) and optimizing for increasing people's weight. Imagine using the same technology to reduce people's weight. But that's not usually the way to profit for fast food companies like McDonald's.
- burgerboy 7y ago
  Their company doesn't need to use your morals
- vikinghckr 7y ago
  So you have a problem with a fast-food restaurant trying to sell fast foods?
- loceng 7y ago
  I think you should take your analysis a bit further. Freeing up human time by using machines is amazing, the issue is distributing resources - which is what Presidential candidate Andrew Yang's #1 policy of UBI ("Freedom Dividend" as he's branded it) will do - and paid for via a 10% VAT tax, so companies like Amazon who paid $0 in taxes last year can't avoid taxes. Allowing management, owners, innovators to maximize efficiency - allowing them to still be incentivized to do so, and simply taking a small portion - which is enough - and redistributing it to society will lead to an exponential increase in quality of life; the buying power of "$1,000" / month of UBI Yang wants to give every adult American will increase exponentially as automation replaces everything.
  - snaptravisty 7y ago
    If I'm not mistaken, the VAT is a consumption tax that is paid for by the consumer and collected by the companies for the government. It's not a tax paid by companies. I assume such a tax would replace the local state based sales taxes? Having said that when I was in the US, it was very frustrating to never know how much something would cost me based on the advertised price.
    - dgzl 7y ago
      > I assume such a tax would replace the local state based sales taxes? Probably not. Government's aren't keen on reducing tax.
    - loceng 7y ago
      Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Your initial point's thinking isn't evolved enough: in Europe the # I have heard, however I haven't confirm - it does however align with my own understanding, is that 55% of the VAT tax is paid for by a company's profits; companies have to maintain being competitive by not transferring 100% of the tax to consumers, e.g. companies will compete based on how much profit margin they're giving themselves. I'm not sure how Andrew Yang at least will implement the VAT - it will be 10% VAT vs. Europe's 20% - which will maintain competitiveness with Europe. Likewise, Yang doesn't think income tax is a good idea because he believes you should incentivize and not penalize people who are actually working; tax people who are consuming. And agreed, there is indeed a planned confusion - psychological trick - that occurs, manipulates people - when something is priced at say $9.97 - where people tend towards not calculating the final price that includes tax, and it otherwise requires people to unnecessarily use mental energy to do calculations if the person wants to stay very price conscious.

by claar 7y ago

donmcronald 7y ago

Yeah. That's a much better article. They're buying a company to work on it. It sounds ridiculous on the surface, but I remember a Microsoft presentation from Build 2016 (ish ?) where the presenter was showing a natural language query product where they used food ordering as an example. I thought it was super cool the way they trained it. The computer would guess everything it could and then a human would shuffle boxes of words around to fix mistakes / assign unknown variables. The coolest part was where they showed how they could teach the computer that "my crib" was slang for my home location. It's one of those things where I figured it would be big deal and then I never heard about it again. I can't even remember what it was called. In this case, I imagine they could do something similar. As long as the computer can do good enough speech to text, there can be a human in there somewhere fixing up the tough stuff. I imagine it's a prelude to ordering directly from your phone as you're driving to pick up the food.

hsod 7y ago
Seems like they have access to a goldmine of labeled training data

devoply 7y ago

Article you posted is mostly P/R fluff. I would prefer a human taking my order. Automating this stuff has 2 benefits, reduced costs while still selling over-priced sub-par food. Second, being able to upsell using video and voice technology. Are either of these good for consumers, not particularly. Nor are they good for employees. They are potentially good for management and ownership. That's pretty sad outcome to all this. Optimizing increasing the number of calories people are eating by up-selling sugary drinks and other add-on items or larger sizes (was recently at a McDonalds and that's exactly what their large ordering terminal was doing) and optimizing for increasing people's weight. Imagine using the same technology to reduce people's weight. But that's not usually the way to profit for fast food companies like McDonald's.

burgerboy 7y ago
Their company doesn't need to use your morals
vikinghckr 7y ago
So you have a problem with a fast-food restaurant trying to sell fast foods?
loceng 7y ago
I think you should take your analysis a bit further. Freeing up human time by using machines is amazing, the issue is distributing resources - which is what Presidential candidate Andrew Yang's #1 policy of UBI ("Freedom Dividend" as he's branded it) will do - and paid for via a 10% VAT tax, so companies like Amazon who paid $0 in taxes last year can't avoid taxes. Allowing management, owners, innovators to maximize efficiency - allowing them to still be incentivized to do so, and simply taking a small portion - which is enough - and redistributing it to society will lead to an exponential increase in quality of life; the buying power of "$1,000" / month of UBI Yang wants to give every adult American will increase exponentially as automation replaces everything.
- snaptravisty 7y ago
  If I'm not mistaken, the VAT is a consumption tax that is paid for by the consumer and collected by the companies for the government. It's not a tax paid by companies. I assume such a tax would replace the local state based sales taxes? Having said that when I was in the US, it was very frustrating to never know how much something would cost me based on the advertised price.
  - dgzl 7y ago
    > I assume such a tax would replace the local state based sales taxes? Probably not. Government's aren't keen on reducing tax.
  - loceng 7y ago
    Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Your initial point's thinking isn't evolved enough: in Europe the # I have heard, however I haven't confirm - it does however align with my own understanding, is that 55% of the VAT tax is paid for by a company's profits; companies have to maintain being competitive by not transferring 100% of the tax to consumers, e.g. companies will compete based on how much profit margin they're giving themselves. I'm not sure how Andrew Yang at least will implement the VAT - it will be 10% VAT vs. Europe's 20% - which will maintain competitiveness with Europe. Likewise, Yang doesn't think income tax is a good idea because he believes you should incentivize and not penalize people who are actually working; tax people who are consuming. And agreed, there is indeed a planned confusion - psychological trick - that occurs, manipulates people - when something is priced at say $9.97 - where people tend towards not calculating the final price that includes tax, and it otherwise requires people to unnecessarily use mental energy to do calculations if the person wants to stay very price conscious.