Burger King is testing a new approach to using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Fast Food sector. It’s a communalization of the network powering employees wireless headsets, with AI listening in all across the BK chain. They claim it will help improve management and service…
‘Big Burger is listening’
So much for homage to the 1948 dystopian social satire by George Owell, 1984. And so much for humour, for this post, at least.
For those not aware of the future-scare classic, it’s a picture of daily life of Winston Smith, an average Briton living in Orwell’s vision of 1984. It’s damned scary, on its face, but perhaps more so because it parallels, and foretells, many social realities of the present day.
Orwell predicted we’d be surveiled by closed-circuit TV cameras everywhere we went in public. He also suggested Big Brother, the department, or service charged with ensuring society was uniform and docile, could hear everything we said. And if it didn’t pick up your words of sedition, your fellow citizens were not only encouraged but required to report you.
‘Big Brother Is Watching’, the construction-hoardings posters warned. I’ve always thought that was a wry reference to the posters Churchill had ready if the Nazis actually invaded England: ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’…
Nevertheless…
BK is currently testing, intensively, a new AI-driven system that listens in on employees communi-cations headsets. You’ve seen them on every Fast Food drive-thru attendant.
“The AI chatbot, known as ‘Patty’, can talk to employees through the headsets, and is intended to be a ‘coaching tool’,” according to Thibault Roux, Burger King’s Chief Digital Officer, US and Canada.
“Patty will combine data across several aspects of the business, including drive-thru conversations, [inventory] levels, and kitchen equipment,” METRO adds. “Staff will be able to ask the chatbot quest-ions, such as how to make burgers and for instructions on cleaning equipment like the milkshake machine.”
Quelling fears?
A spokesperson for the company told The Grocer: “BK Assistant is a coaching and operational support tool built to help our restaurant teams manage complexity and stay focused on delivering a great guest experience.”
According to what BK told that industry periodical, “It’s not about scoring individuals or enforcing scripts. It’s about reinforcing great hospitality and giving managers helpful, real-time insights so they can recognize their teams more effectively.”
My take
Restaurant Brands International (RBI), which owns Tim Horton’s and Popeye’s as well as Burger King, confirmed last week that ‘Patty’ is being ‘trialled’ at 500 BK locations cross the US. If the trial is deemed successful, the system will be expanded to all US BK restos.
My feelings about Patty are somewhat akin to my fears about the potential evil uses of the ubiq-uitous, new Fast Food digital menu boards. They’re also connected to the cash registers and to big computers in the resto’s back rooms, which are, in turn connected to who knows what at the head office.
But one thing that particularly bugs me is the potential for not only employees’ but customers’ privacy rights to be infringed by future enhancements to the Patty system…
~ Maggie J.