I’m frankly getting tired of all the hoop-la about Artificial Intelligence taking over millions of jobs. It’s just a natural outgrowth of the ‘robotics’ revolution. And I’m particularly fed up with all the doom-sayers claiming ‘The End Is Nigh’…
A prototype AI-driven digital Fast Food menuboard: Great at gathering information and
analysing it. But notice the humans actually taking and delivering the orders…
I couldn’t keep silent after seeing yet another round of bombastic, doom-laden predictions about the future of work under the influence of AI.
Misinformed, misconstrued, misguided
The post claimed to spotlight ‘10 Jobs AI Will Replace In The Next 3 Years‘. “Nonsense!” I huffed, aloud. The proof that prediction is sadly in error is all around us.
What jobs?
The post claims retail store cashiers, bank tellers, data entry clerks, receptionists, customer service reps, telemarketers, professional drivers, assembly line workers, and warehouse workers will all be out of work sooner than you can say, ‘Press 1 for English’.
But what really frosted me was the bald assertion that Fast Food workers would soon be cast away by the chains like so many disposable coffee cups. That’s simply not going to happen. Not in my life-time, anyway.
Case in point…
The author of the ‘AI-Doomed Jobs’ post must not read much. The story about McDonald’s cancelling the rollout of its nascent AI drive-thru program was covered by all the industry media and most of the mainstream outlets as well.
“While there have been successes to date, we feel there is an opportunity to explore voice ordering solutions more broadly,” Mason Smoot, Chief Restaurant Officer for McDonald’s USA, told Restaurant Business. “After a thoughtful review, McDonald’s has decided to end our current partnership with IBM on AOT and the technology will be shut off in all restaurants currently testing it no later than July 26, 2024.”
That’s an excessively wordy, evasive equivalent of King Arthur’s, “Run away! Run away!” (from the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog) in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
And the début of Wendy’s drive-thru system earlier this year – which was supposed to be low-key – was anything but. The chain only had trial installations in place for a few days when a flood of social media reports surfaced – and went viral – about how the systems couldn’t handle even the simplest ‘exceptions’ to the ordering rules.
One fan reported that he ‘crashed’ the AI drive-thru attendant simply by asking it to ‘hold the onions’. A human employee had to intervene to set things straight again.
Why it won’t happen
Only someone who was misinformed or misguided, or misconstrued the clearly visible evidence, would assert that AI was anywhere near ready to ‘take over’ fast food jobs.
Robotics has shown it’s ready to take over the preparation of fries and even burgers. But humans will still be needed to check orders before they’re sent out (albeit by conveyor belt and automated dumb waiters) to the customers. As the McD’s AI drive-thru ‘experiment’ demonstrated, there will always be exceptions that only humans can deal with.
And let’s not forget… Humans will always be needed to feed ingredients to the AI cooking and assem-bly systems. And take out the garbage. Not to mention cleaning them often. And fixing them when they inevitably break down…
~ Maggie J.