san francisco In the US, employees of the Wendy’s burger chain will be working with artificial intelligence (AI) as early as June. The fast-food company announced pilot tests on Tuesday in which customers can still order from the car at the drive-through counter – but not from a human employee, but via voice input from an AI.
The system restaurateurs have a turnover of a good 1.7 billion dollars in the USA and currently employ around 14,500 people. A partnership with Google should help the chain with thousands of branches with digitization.
Wendy’s CEO Todd Penegor invoked his company’s innovative spirit in the statement – using the example of the drive-through counter: “Wendy’s introduced the first modern pick-up window in the industry more than 50 years ago.” With Google, the company now wants technological innovation initiate.
In the USA, the infrastructure is even more geared towards cars than in Germany. Banks, for example, even have service windows during which customers do not have to leave the car. At Wendy’s, 75 to 80 percent of customers use the drive-through, the company said.
Penegor is convinced that the new system is so good that customers will not notice any difference. “You won’t know you’re speaking to anyone other than a staff member,” he told the Wall Street Journal. The question that initially remains unanswered: What will happen to the people who have previously earned their money at the fast food window?
People get kicked out at Wendy’s?
Wendy’s doesn’t say whether the new AI system could lead to layoffs. Krishna Gupta, head of the restaurant service provider Presto, meanwhile predicted in an interview with the US television station Bloomberg: “I don’t think that in three years there will still be a drive-through where a person takes the orders.” Wendy’s is a pioneer , other fast food companies could follow.
These are statements that address a primal fear in relation to digitization and AI systems – the rationalization of human employees. And it’s a fear fueled by recent hype. The text robot ChatGPT from the start-up OpenAI triggered a new race for the best solutions based on AI when it was launched in November 2022.
The system can not only write texts, but also computer programs and develop business models. Since then, nearly every major tech company has announced plans to add new AI capabilities to their products. These are intended to make activities easier – but they can also replace complete tasks in the future.
For example when taking an order. The seemingly simple task is more complex than it appears. For the new system, Google had to overcome numerous hurdles, Thomas Kurian, head of the company’s cloud division, told the Wall Street Journal: “You might think that driving past and placing an order at the drive-through would be a simple problem for AI is, but it’s actually one of the most difficult.”
Orders placed in a car are often not easy to understand because the radio and engine are running or children are screaming in the background. In addition, customers often changed their minds during the order. All of this has to be mastered by the AI system, says Kurian. In addition, special terms have to be learned. At Wendy’s, for example, the abbreviation “JBC” stands for Junior Bacon Cheeseburger.
At IBM, 7,800 jobs could be taken over by AI
Just a few days earlier, the boss of the US technology company IBM, Arvind Krishna, had announced that a number of jobs, for example in the human resources department, could soon be taken over by artificial intelligence.
“I could well imagine that in a five-year period, 30 percent of that will be replaced by AI and automation,” he told Bloomberg news agency. That would correspond to a reduction of around 7,800 jobs. However, there will be no layoffs, but positions should not be filled, IBM said.
The positions are partially shifted. While IBM wants to cut 5,000 jobs this year, the group is still hiring in areas such as software development. In total, the group currently employs around 260,000 people.
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In an analysis, the major US bank Goldman Sachs had forecast the loss of 300 million jobs. AI could replace a quarter of work tasks in the US and Europe, but also mean new jobs and a productivity boom, the report said.
In its analysis, the bank predicted that the impact of AI will differ across sectors.
46 percent of administrative tasks and 44 percent in the legal profession could be automated, but only six percent in construction and four percent in maintenance and repairs.
With agency material
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