8 ms·

McDonald's AI drive-thru bot accused of breaking biometrics privacy law

66 points by donohoe 5y ago

kevmo314 5y ago
Using voice recognition to automate drive-thrus... Seems like they could've added QR code + online ordering to each of their parking spots instead but I guess AI is cool too.
- Phylter 5y ago
  They already have it so that you can order by phone. A touchpad/kiosk type thing would make perfect sense too except maybe it required more hardware than they wanted to spend money on?
- cbhl 5y ago
  McDonalds does offer mobile ordering, but their own-branded apps are segmented by country. If my App Store is set to the US and I order in Canada (or vice versa) then I have to fall back to more traditional ordering methods like going to a kiosk/cashier/drive thru. Honestly this (cross-country ordering and payment) is one of the things Uber Eats does really well, but you definitely pay a price premium for it over, say, the Starbucks or McDonalds apps.
- jsight 5y ago
  I've used touchscreen kiosks at Taco Bell and McDonald's and Subway. TBH, none of them are great experiences for simple orders. Order ahead is available from the app, but I wouldn't be surprised if regular audio is actually faster in most cases.
  - LanceH 5y ago
    Audio is probably faster per person. However, it is serial in nature. I walk up to 4 kiosks and want a combo #3 with a coke, and I get to skip the three families, each trying to talk their 4 year old into choosing fruit and milk over fries and a coke. Also, order verification is nice with a kiosk (for now). If I want something without pickles, I can see that right in front of me. It seems like every drive-thru and PoS that has a display which can provide order feedback has switched to displaying ads to buy some other product. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before the kiosks start to have modals which have to be cleared to continue with the order: Have you tried the hot apple pie? How are you enjoying the kiosk experience? Really, the people doing these things can never resist.
  - kevmo314 5y ago
    They could offer a phone number to call in to place your order so orders could be placed in parallel
  - joezydeco 5y ago
    Audio is much faster. McDs is way behind with mobile order and pickup. I've done curbside orders where I sat in the slot and watched the entire DT empty out before someone came out with my food. If you want to see a group that has their technical shit together, check out Chik-Fil-A.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  People who own cars aren't guaranteed to own smartphones, and McDonald's wants their business too. In addition, the McDonald's drive-thru is iconic, and the stickiness of that part of the brand means it won't go away soon.
  - joezydeco 5y ago
    And the fact remains, and McDonalds knows this, that their food doesn't survive 10 minutes in the bag, much less 30 with a delivery driver.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
fpgaminer 5y ago
> The software apparently has an 85 per cent accuracy rate. That number seems really low to me for a task specific system. i.e. it doesn't need to understand every possible thing someone could say; just the subset of language used to place orders at McDonald's. For reference (https://paperswithcode.com/sota/speech-recognition-on-librispeech-test-other https://paperswithcode.com/sota/speech-recognition-on-libris...) SOTA models are at ~5% WER for general speech. And besides, who wants to order from an AI that's going to fuck up 15% of the time? Compared to a human that error rate is perhaps on-par, but a human has an internal confidence measurement. We know when we've heard something wrong. Speech systems don't really have that (1). So the AI will just blunder forward with your order. I'd much rather interact with a system that says "Sorry, what was that?" 15% of the time (i.e. the current meat based voice recognition that fast food restaurants use) versus a system where I constantly have to check the screen and tell it "Oh, no, sorry, can you fix the, ummm, uhh, we don't want 20 orders of ketchup packets... Oh, god, no we don't want 40 ketchup packets! No our order isn't done! WAIT!" (1) Yes, you can guess at confidence by measuring the logits, but that doesn't work in practice. It's nowhere near a human's capability to self-measure confidence in our predictions.
- sumnuyungi 5y ago
  Using your own link, SOTA is 2.6%. WER could be lower for the much smaller vocabulary used in a drive-thru. I'm not sure what you mean by "that doesn't work in practice" re: using logits. Word-level confidence is pretty useful with GCP Speech-to-Text [1] [1] https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/docs/word-confidence#:~:text=When%20the%20Speech%2Dto%2DText,number%20between%200.0%20and%201.0 https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/docs/word-confidence....
  - version_five 5y ago
    > I'm not sure what you mean by "that doesn't work in practice" re: using logits. I suspect they mean they ML models are usually poorly calibrated and that the softmax-over-logits probabilities generally don't reflect actually error rates, so they're tough to use meaningfully for asking people to repeat themselves. Personally, if I have to deal with an automated order system, I'd rather some kind of search tree that let's me traverse it using three (left, right, back) well separated noises and a "dumb" back-end instead of having to pretend a ML system and I are having the meeting of the minds that a voice based discussion implies. I understand that such a system would be hard or impossible to train lay-people to use, but it would be nice to have a "cut the crap" option to let people interface more effectively with the order system and not take part in the charade of a "discussion"
cs2733 5y ago
Personally, I don't mind having all my data harvested. I'm aware this is a hot button issue on HN that keeps getting people outraged, again and again, but believe that eventually people will start shrugging about how invasive technology can be. Ultimately things are moving towards the end of privacy and even (within 50? 100 years?) the end of ownership. I don't see how a civilization that can - easily and with currently available means - house, clothe and feed everyone on the planet, can sometimes be so lost on petty issues as we do (myself included). I'm more concerned with the health hazards posed by modern technology and industrial processes - but that's me and the reality I subscribe to.
- apocalypstyx 5y ago
  > the end of ownership I think it more likely the acceleration of ownership. Near-infinite copyright, patented math, the trend has been more greatly in one direction than the other. Even the nature of FOSS/Creative Commons relies on this (even as many suppose it to be breaking free of it). (As someone from some documentary I can't fully recall put it: we will not be free and the world will not be fixed until every square inch of it is owned privately.) In previous western society, it was acceptable to own the physical human being. The investment was in ontology. But now the investment is moving towards epistemology. People are data. Own the data, own people.
- wyxuan 5y ago
  Here ye, here ye. It's just the direction things will go towards, and I know most other people will feel uncomfortable(and so do I) but I think it'll be something that could be changed by changing societal expectations. An analogy could be that 100 years ago the outrage was over women wearing revealing clothing and how it would affect the purity of society, but now attitudes have changed and now we barely blink an eye.
- tacitusarc 5y ago
  Someone will always own it, it just won’t be you.
  - est31 5y ago
amelius 5y ago
Isn't this what Google has been doing? Collecting our data (voice and whatnot) and using it to build automated systems?
- okareaman 5y ago
  They must have language in their Terms and Conditions that allow this. McDonald's probably has one too. "By using our drive thru service you agree to have your voice collected..." Also, what about the message "This call may be monitored for quality control purposes." That's not asking permission, but it is warning I suppose.
axus 5y ago
The McDonalds app is pretty good for special orders and large orders, which would otherwise be irritating for everyone involved. My local restaurant has always correctly removed the ketchup, onions, and pickle from the $1 cheeseburger. Saving my "Favorites" and the deals giving $3 off makes up for the mildly clunky app performance. Being able to take everyone's order before leaving the house is also nice.
throwawayboise 5y ago
As I've gotten older I've cut back on my fast-food intake quite a bit. Not really for heath reasons either, though it's a nice side benefit. It just really isn't very good food, and it seems to have gotten worse over the past 20-30 years. Especially for what it costs. However, I will never order from a voice-driven AI system. If that is the choice, then I decline. I don't use it in any other area of my life, in fact I cannot stand talking to computers despite using them professionally as a career. When I call someplace and have to speak to a computer I mumble jibberish until the system gives up and transfers me to a human. I'm a human, I want to speak to other humans, not computers.
- mLuby 5y ago
  Sorry to be Butlerian about it, but "conversing" with machine simulacra disrespects me, the customer. Someone should deploy a voice-producing AI to interface with companies' voice-processing AIs so I can order from the command line or from an app.
  - ALittleLight 5y ago
    Conversing with the machine simulacra disrespects you, but instructing your machine to converse with their simulacra doesn't?
- gambiting 5y ago
  English isn't my first language so I dread any kind of voice-based systems, and automatic recognition is just the worst. Calling a help line where you have to say what you're calling about to an AI first is just futile. If that's the only way to order at McDonald's then I'll just stop eating at McDonald's.
- okareaman 5y ago
  > I've cut back on my fast-food intake quite a bit Same here. I learned to cook and spice foods properly when I finally decided to go on a diet. I love making foods spiced just the way I like them. Now I can barely eat at McDonalds because the food is hideous - fat, sugar & salt that starts me craving and leaves me feeling sick.
ALittleLight 5y ago
Wow! That law is interesting! ----- BIPA) states: “No private entity may collect, capture, purchase, receive through trade, or otherwise obtain a person's or a customer's biometric identifier or biometric information.” unless it receives written consent. ... Under the BIPA, people can receive up to $5,000 in damages from private entities for each violation committed “intentionally or recklessly,” ------- Unless I'm missing something people in Illinois should get Amazon Echoes or Halos which both "voiceprint" users and then sue Amazon to collect their 5k reward.
plumeria 5y ago
There are Amazon Go stores in Chicago. I wonder how this could affect them? Is a 3D point cloud of your body considered to be part of your biometrics? Is accepting the TOS written consent as defined by the law mentioned in the article?
Thomaschaaf 5y ago
I wonder why they don't forward the drive thru calls to a call center even today.

66 points by donohoe 5y ago

Using voice recognition to automate drive-thrus... Seems like they could've added QR code + online ordering to each of their parking spots instead but I guess AI is cool too.

Phylter 5y ago
They already have it so that you can order by phone. A touchpad/kiosk type thing would make perfect sense too except maybe it required more hardware than they wanted to spend money on?
cbhl 5y ago
McDonalds does offer mobile ordering, but their own-branded apps are segmented by country. If my App Store is set to the US and I order in Canada (or vice versa) then I have to fall back to more traditional ordering methods like going to a kiosk/cashier/drive thru. Honestly this (cross-country ordering and payment) is one of the things Uber Eats does really well, but you definitely pay a price premium for it over, say, the Starbucks or McDonalds apps.
jsight 5y ago
I've used touchscreen kiosks at Taco Bell and McDonald's and Subway. TBH, none of them are great experiences for simple orders. Order ahead is available from the app, but I wouldn't be surprised if regular audio is actually faster in most cases.
- LanceH 5y ago
  Audio is probably faster per person. However, it is serial in nature. I walk up to 4 kiosks and want a combo #3 with a coke, and I get to skip the three families, each trying to talk their 4 year old into choosing fruit and milk over fries and a coke. Also, order verification is nice with a kiosk (for now). If I want something without pickles, I can see that right in front of me. It seems like every drive-thru and PoS that has a display which can provide order feedback has switched to displaying ads to buy some other product. I'm sure it's just a matter of time before the kiosks start to have modals which have to be cleared to continue with the order: Have you tried the hot apple pie? How are you enjoying the kiosk experience? Really, the people doing these things can never resist.
- kevmo314 5y ago
  They could offer a phone number to call in to place your order so orders could be placed in parallel
- joezydeco 5y ago
  Audio is much faster. McDs is way behind with mobile order and pickup. I've done curbside orders where I sat in the slot and watched the entire DT empty out before someone came out with my food. If you want to see a group that has their technical shit together, check out Chik-Fil-A.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
shadowgovt 5y ago
People who own cars aren't guaranteed to own smartphones, and McDonald's wants their business too. In addition, the McDonald's drive-thru is iconic, and the stickiness of that part of the brand means it won't go away soon.
- joezydeco 5y ago
  And the fact remains, and McDonalds knows this, that their food doesn't survive 10 minutes in the bag, much less 30 with a delivery driver.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

fpgaminer 5y ago

> The software apparently has an 85 per cent accuracy rate. That number seems really low to me for a task specific system. i.e. it doesn't need to understand every possible thing someone could say; just the subset of language used to place orders at McDonald's. For reference (https://paperswithcode.com/sota/speech-recognition-on-librispeech-test-other https://paperswithcode.com/sota/speech-recognition-on-libris...) SOTA models are at ~5% WER for general speech. And besides, who wants to order from an AI that's going to fuck up 15% of the time? Compared to a human that error rate is perhaps on-par, but a human has an internal confidence measurement. We know when we've heard something wrong. Speech systems don't really have that (1). So the AI will just blunder forward with your order. I'd much rather interact with a system that says "Sorry, what was that?" 15% of the time (i.e. the current meat based voice recognition that fast food restaurants use) versus a system where I constantly have to check the screen and tell it "Oh, no, sorry, can you fix the, ummm, uhh, we don't want 20 orders of ketchup packets... Oh, god, no we don't want 40 ketchup packets! No our order isn't done! WAIT!" (1) Yes, you can guess at confidence by measuring the logits, but that doesn't work in practice. It's nowhere near a human's capability to self-measure confidence in our predictions.

sumnuyungi 5y ago
Using your own link, SOTA is 2.6%. WER could be lower for the much smaller vocabulary used in a drive-thru. I'm not sure what you mean by "that doesn't work in practice" re: using logits. Word-level confidence is pretty useful with GCP Speech-to-Text [1] [1] https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/docs/word-confidence#:~:text=When%20the%20Speech%2Dto%2DText,number%20between%200.0%20and%201.0 https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/docs/word-confidence....
- version_five 5y ago
  > I'm not sure what you mean by "that doesn't work in practice" re: using logits. I suspect they mean they ML models are usually poorly calibrated and that the softmax-over-logits probabilities generally don't reflect actually error rates, so they're tough to use meaningfully for asking people to repeat themselves. Personally, if I have to deal with an automated order system, I'd rather some kind of search tree that let's me traverse it using three (left, right, back) well separated noises and a "dumb" back-end instead of having to pretend a ML system and I are having the meeting of the minds that a voice based discussion implies. I understand that such a system would be hard or impossible to train lay-people to use, but it would be nice to have a "cut the crap" option to let people interface more effectively with the order system and not take part in the charade of a "discussion"

cs2733 5y ago

Personally, I don't mind having all my data harvested. I'm aware this is a hot button issue on HN that keeps getting people outraged, again and again, but believe that eventually people will start shrugging about how invasive technology can be. Ultimately things are moving towards the end of privacy and even (within 50? 100 years?) the end of ownership. I don't see how a civilization that can - easily and with currently available means - house, clothe and feed everyone on the planet, can sometimes be so lost on petty issues as we do (myself included). I'm more concerned with the health hazards posed by modern technology and industrial processes - but that's me and the reality I subscribe to.

apocalypstyx 5y ago
> the end of ownership I think it more likely the acceleration of ownership. Near-infinite copyright, patented math, the trend has been more greatly in one direction than the other. Even the nature of FOSS/Creative Commons relies on this (even as many suppose it to be breaking free of it). (As someone from some documentary I can't fully recall put it: we will not be free and the world will not be fixed until every square inch of it is owned privately.) In previous western society, it was acceptable to own the physical human being. The investment was in ontology. But now the investment is moving towards epistemology. People are data. Own the data, own people.
wyxuan 5y ago
Here ye, here ye. It's just the direction things will go towards, and I know most other people will feel uncomfortable(and so do I) but I think it'll be something that could be changed by changing societal expectations. An analogy could be that 100 years ago the outrage was over women wearing revealing clothing and how it would affect the purity of society, but now attitudes have changed and now we barely blink an eye.
tacitusarc 5y ago
Someone will always own it, it just won’t be you.
- est31 5y ago

amelius 5y ago

Isn't this what Google has been doing? Collecting our data (voice and whatnot) and using it to build automated systems?

okareaman 5y ago
They must have language in their Terms and Conditions that allow this. McDonald's probably has one too. "By using our drive thru service you agree to have your voice collected..." Also, what about the message "This call may be monitored for quality control purposes." That's not asking permission, but it is warning I suppose.

axus 5y ago

The McDonalds app is pretty good for special orders and large orders, which would otherwise be irritating for everyone involved. My local restaurant has always correctly removed the ketchup, onions, and pickle from the $1 cheeseburger. Saving my "Favorites" and the deals giving $3 off makes up for the mildly clunky app performance. Being able to take everyone's order before leaving the house is also nice.

throwawayboise 5y ago

As I've gotten older I've cut back on my fast-food intake quite a bit. Not really for heath reasons either, though it's a nice side benefit. It just really isn't very good food, and it seems to have gotten worse over the past 20-30 years. Especially for what it costs. However, I will never order from a voice-driven AI system. If that is the choice, then I decline. I don't use it in any other area of my life, in fact I cannot stand talking to computers despite using them professionally as a career. When I call someplace and have to speak to a computer I mumble jibberish until the system gives up and transfers me to a human. I'm a human, I want to speak to other humans, not computers.

mLuby 5y ago
Sorry to be Butlerian about it, but "conversing" with machine simulacra disrespects me, the customer. Someone should deploy a voice-producing AI to interface with companies' voice-processing AIs so I can order from the command line or from an app.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  Conversing with the machine simulacra disrespects you, but instructing your machine to converse with their simulacra doesn't?
gambiting 5y ago
English isn't my first language so I dread any kind of voice-based systems, and automatic recognition is just the worst. Calling a help line where you have to say what you're calling about to an AI first is just futile. If that's the only way to order at McDonald's then I'll just stop eating at McDonald's.
okareaman 5y ago
> I've cut back on my fast-food intake quite a bit Same here. I learned to cook and spice foods properly when I finally decided to go on a diet. I love making foods spiced just the way I like them. Now I can barely eat at McDonalds because the food is hideous - fat, sugar & salt that starts me craving and leaves me feeling sick.

ALittleLight 5y ago

Wow! That law is interesting! ----- BIPA) states: “No private entity may collect, capture, purchase, receive through trade, or otherwise obtain a person's or a customer's biometric identifier or biometric information.” unless it receives written consent. ... Under the BIPA, people can receive up to $5,000 in damages from private entities for each violation committed “intentionally or recklessly,” ------- Unless I'm missing something people in Illinois should get Amazon Echoes or Halos which both "voiceprint" users and then sue Amazon to collect their 5k reward.

plumeria 5y ago

There are Amazon Go stores in Chicago. I wonder how this could affect them? Is a 3D point cloud of your body considered to be part of your biometrics? Is accepting the TOS written consent as defined by the law mentioned in the article?

Thomaschaaf 5y ago

I wonder why they don't forward the drive thru calls to a call center even today.