4 ms·

They are rolling out computer tellers all around my area. If they haven't done it in your area it is coming. There are a few companies working on automated mea

They are rolling out computer tellers all around my area. If they haven't done it in your area it is coming. There are a few companies working on automated meal makers and they are slowly being rolled out. It is just going a bit slow right now.

withinboredom 5y ago
I love this in other countries. I don’t always speak the local language well enough but I can tap on pictures and wait for my number to come up.
JacobThreeThree 5y ago
>It is just going a bit slow right now. Ahh yes, as the AI marketing department always says, we're 99% of the way there, it's just that the last 1% is the hardest! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-17/waymo-s-self-driving-cars-are-99-of-the-way-there-the-last-1-is-the-hardest https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-17/waymo-s-s...
- _-david-_ 5y ago
  I don't think the comparison to AI is apt since meal making robots do currently function and are in restaurants right now. It is literally just being rolled out slowly.
Ekaros 5y ago
I love them. Still, it seems that even those that clearly are solved problem can be done badly. Recently KFC rolled out here. And their kiosk seem to miss the basic options to customize the meals. Like just removing things. Can't do that with meals... Have list of extra options of stuff possibly not even in the product... Actually they don't even tell anywhere what is in their burgers. But I digress. All other chains including the local one manage to have these options present... So in the end automation won't always solve everything immediately...
brimble 5y ago
The ones I've seen (yes, at McDonalds specifically) are terrible, take forever to use, are abusive in attempting to push crap on the user and make some (what I'm sure are higher-margin) items easier to buy than others, and are yet another case of pushing labor onto the "consumer" and calling it automation(?!), like "automated checkouts" at grocery stores—a fucking lie, the buyer is doing almost as much work as paid workers used to, "automated" would be if you could just let go of your cart and a machine took care of the rest while you waited. Or like shifting from having workers fetch items for you to modern-style stores where you have to find everything yourself (that change was long enough ago that the idea that you should feel put-out at having to do this part of a store's job is lost to time). Or filling your own drinks, which is at least semi-compensated by being able to refill as much as you want or even "steal" an extra cup, but since a large soda costs the store pennies that's not much of a benefit. I'm struggling to think of a consumer-facing "automation" that wasn't actually just making consumers do more work. It's bad enough that we have to do the work of regulating prices (think of the time and brain-space you devote to figuring out whether the sale price on, say, apples is actually a decent one, keeping that figure/heuristic up-to-date, et c., now multiply by your entire shopping list, now multiply by the entire population)

withinboredom 5y ago

I love this in other countries. I don’t always speak the local language well enough but I can tap on pictures and wait for my number to come up.

JacobThreeThree 5y ago

>It is just going a bit slow right now. Ahh yes, as the AI marketing department always says, we're 99% of the way there, it's just that the last 1% is the hardest! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-17/waymo-s-self-driving-cars-are-99-of-the-way-there-the-last-1-is-the-hardest https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-17/waymo-s-s...

_-david-_ 5y ago
I don't think the comparison to AI is apt since meal making robots do currently function and are in restaurants right now. It is literally just being rolled out slowly.

Ekaros 5y ago

I love them. Still, it seems that even those that clearly are solved problem can be done badly. Recently KFC rolled out here. And their kiosk seem to miss the basic options to customize the meals. Like just removing things. Can't do that with meals... Have list of extra options of stuff possibly not even in the product... Actually they don't even tell anywhere what is in their burgers. But I digress. All other chains including the local one manage to have these options present... So in the end automation won't always solve everything immediately...

brimble 5y ago

The ones I've seen (yes, at McDonalds specifically) are terrible, take forever to use, are abusive in attempting to push crap on the user and make some (what I'm sure are higher-margin) items easier to buy than others, and are yet another case of pushing labor onto the "consumer" and calling it automation(?!), like "automated checkouts" at grocery stores—a fucking lie, the buyer is doing almost as much work as paid workers used to, "automated" would be if you could just let go of your cart and a machine took care of the rest while you waited. Or like shifting from having workers fetch items for you to modern-style stores where you have to find everything yourself (that change was long enough ago that the idea that you should feel put-out at having to do this part of a store's job is lost to time). Or filling your own drinks, which is at least semi-compensated by being able to refill as much as you want or even "steal" an extra cup, but since a large soda costs the store pennies that's not much of a benefit. I'm struggling to think of a consumer-facing "automation" that wasn't actually just making consumers do more work. It's bad enough that we have to do the work of regulating prices (think of the time and brain-space you devote to figuring out whether the sale price on, say, apples is actually a decent one, keeping that figure/heuristic up-to-date, et c., now multiply by your entire shopping list, now multiply by the entire population)