Wendy's is replacing humans with AI next month

[Brooksie359]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

The person I was responding to seemed to talk about things in a historical perspective, so my expiation was about inflation in general.

The situation we are in today is extraordinary and doesn't generally follow the usual trends for a variety of reasons.

 

 

 

I was giving that example since you said we never attack inflation at the consumer level in your post. We did during covid and it did arguably more harm than good.

We tackle inflation at multiple levels, but in general, the economy is steered by corporations (since those are the ones in charge of the jobs), and as a result that's the best way to adjust the economy. 

 

 

Honestly, your entire post reads as someone who has been reading too many posts written by people who have no education regarding economics. I barely have any higher level education in economics and even I can see through a lot of errors in your posts, which feels like someone parroting what they've heard others complain about.

 

 

But it's not sustainable in the long term. The solution to poverty isn't to have the government print a ton of money and hand it out to everyone. That would cause hyper inflation in the long term. Oh wait... That's almost the situation we are in because of it. It's extremely short-sighted to look at the stimulus check and go "wow, that could have solved poverty".

 

Again, you are missing the biggest picture. You get caught up in some minor detail and then use that to explain situations that are completely unrelated.

Believe it or not, but companies generally don't like to throw away products that they could otherwise sell because that's the same as flushing money down the toilet. If they throw away products they do it for a reason. Do you think they would throw away a perfectly good high-demand item if their shelves were empty and customers asked for said item? Of course not, they would try and sell it.

 

You finding some article about a store throwing out expired or damaged fruits does not mean there isn't a scarcity of let's say eggs.

 

 

I feel lost. Who said anything about increasing prices? What increased in price? Do we have any evidence of it increasing in price?
I feel like you just threw out this whole "they increase prices" out of the blue without establishing what we are talking about or providing any evidence for it. 

We were talking about Wendy's and whether or not their potential lower staff expense will result in lower prices for customers. I feel like you let your mind wander off into some other conversation without establishing that in our conversation.

 

 

 

In a free market, competitors will also decrease prices to try and get a selling point to customers. In general, the free market incentivizes lowering prices, not really "increasing them as much as they can get away with". But it's a hugely complicated subject and trying to get all the nuance of it into a single post is near impossible, which is why I think it's bad to try and paint companies in the light you are doing right now and blame them for several things when they are merely a part of a much larger system with several moving, interconnected, parts.

 

 

How do you propose we do that? Please remember that one of the biggest driving factors of increased prices is an increase in salaries, as explained by one of the largest unions in Sweden earlier.

By the way, increased interest rates hit really hard to companies too. They have loans too. Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but it sounds like you think that increasing interest rates is something that only affects consumers and that's why you are so pissed that's the tool often used to try and regulate inflation. If this is what you think then you have severe knowledge gaps that I think you need to correct before we can continue with this conversation. 

Maybe start by looking into why central banks use interest rates to manage inflation. It's not to punish consumers and give companies a free pass, I'll tell you that much because it often hits even harder on companies than consumers.

I am not sure how you don't understand what I am saying. When I said companies will increase prices as much as they can get away with that mean they increase the prices to the highest point where people will be still willing to pay this obviously means that if they price things so high that they make less money because not enough people are buying that would mean they increased to a point where they can't get away with it. If you looked at prices in general you would see that they increased way above the rate of increasing in costs like say shipping and raw materials that happened due to covid. Also food waste has been an issue for a long time and well documented. We don't have a scarcity of food we simply have to maintain scarcity to keep prices up. Unfortunately we are in a situation that we have plenty of demand for food and plenty of supply of food but not everyone who wants food can afford food. Also those clothes they threw away were totally usable they just didn't sell so rather than donating the new clothes or maybe selling them for a heavy discount they simply ripped them up and threw them away because they didn't want to devalue their clothing. Also I highly doubt that Wendy's will lower the price of their food simply because I doubt it would increase sales. You can say that they will decrease prices because they have less operation costs but I highly doubt that operation costs were ever a significant driver of their prices to begin with. Most likely they have enough margin that the prices are already at a price that maximizes sales based on demand. 

[Mark Kaine]

On 5/10/2023 at 7:30 PM, Fasterthannothing said:

Summary

do u really think they'll have "cooking robots"? :lol

[Donut417]

12 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

do u really think they'll have "cooking robots"? :lol

Those actually exist already. They are also being deployed in restaurants. What I seen is that it's cheaper to automate but there is a large up front cost. Thats why most restaurants dont have automation currently. 

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Thanks, I know there is a lot a nuance in this.  This was highlighted for example with Elon Musk, he was never "rich" in a "money in the bank" sense, it was all assets and by their nature an asset is only worth what the market will pay for it right now, today.  So you can lose it all in seconds.  That is often also how they value a business which is grossly misleading.

 

That said, given money is only a made-up asset to begin with, the whole financial system is quite a bizarre thing when you really think about it.  If enough people decide money isn't worth anything at all then suddenly it becomes so.  Its why I will never understand why some people hoard money, putting others into poverty.  As money has to hold value for enough to work, if the rich end up with all the money, the poor would have to find another barter system and then suddenly those rich people hold nothing of value at all.

Those assets are what they often times use as a way to avoid taxes. Also those assets can be easily be turned into money by taking out loans against those assets super easily. It's actually what most of the ultra rich do. They keep most of their stuff in assets and then borrow against said assets with very low interest rates and this all makes it much harder to tax them because technically they are in debt sorta. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

4 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Those assets are what they often times use as a way to avoid taxes. Also those assets can be easily be turned into money by taking out loans against those assets super easily. It's actually what most of the ultra rich do. They keep most of their stuff in assets and then borrow against said assets with very low interest rates and this all makes it much harder to tax them because technically they are in debt sorta. 

Yeah I've read about that too, its insane as effectively if their assets value plummets then they can go bankrupt very quickly.

 

The system is rigged so its not beneficial to have funds around as like you said they are more easily taxed on actual money in the bank.

 

Its just so corrupt that the average person is looked down upon for getting into debt while the wealthy its literally how they live and puts the biggest risk on the economy.

 

Also as Louis Rossmann pointed out, its a big reason why NYC real-estate ends up empty.  They can set the rent high to keep the assets value with the bank higher, while nobody can actually afford that rent so the building remains empty. Whereas to actually get someone to rent the property they would have to drop the price which would reduce the assets value.  So holding onto an empty building is more valuable than actually renting it.

[Brooksie359]

3 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Yeah I've read about that too, its insane as effectively if their assets value plummets then they can go bankrupt very quickly.

 

The system is rigged so its not beneficial to have funds around as like you said they are more easily taxed on actual money in the bank.

 

Its just so corrupt that the average person is looked down upon for getting into debt while the wealthy its literally how they live and puts the biggest risk on the economy.

 

Also as Louis Rossmann pointed out, its a big reason why NYC real-estate ends up empty.  They can set the rent high to keep the assets value with the bank higher, while nobody can actually afford that rent so the building remains empty. Whereas to actually get someone to rent the property they would have to drop the price which would reduce the assets value.  So holding onto an empty building is more valuable than actually renting it.

Honestly the commoditization of housing is really horrible and I wish we treated housing more like we do food. We usually heavily subsidize food to try and keep prices down so most people can easily buy food but for housing we are using them as investment vehicles when this has horrible effects on affordability of housing. This especially sucks because this will likely never change because so many people are relying on their houses as investment vehicles that if we did try and fix this issue and try and decrease housing pricing we are also basically destroying people's investment in their houses. Nobody wants the price of their house to go down but that is what would happen if we made housing more affordable which make such policies very much not popular. Maybe once we all get replaced by AI we can get affordable housing as nobody will be able to pay for housing due to super high unemployment. 

[Sauron]

On 5/10/2023 at 8:09 PM, OhYou_ said:

are you implying AI wont drastically change education?

...are you implying it will?

On 5/11/2023 at 12:48 AM, StDragon said:

...that can't or won't be done by AI.

 

That's what's so disruptive about this technology, in the span of a few years it will completely change the workforce upending decades or more of careers. The young can adapt by moving towards a grey or blue collar jobs. For many others, they can't change and will either retire early or struggle to adapt to a new workforce reality that's picking up momentum with evermore changes. There's no stability in that, and a society can't function without a baseline of a work/life balance.

AI is awesome technology, but it's exceedingly disruptive at the same time. With the "good", you're going to accept the "bad" and "ugly" with it.

Meh, we'll see. For now it's way too unreliable to do anything other than the most basic stuff, i.e. taking orders at a drive through out of a fixed menu... which could have been automated anyway in dozens of other ways, for example by using an app to place your order or a touch screen by your car window.

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

taking orders at a drive through out of a fixed menu... which could have been automated anyway in dozens of other ways, for example by using an app to place your order or a touch screen by your car window.

I honestly don't understand why they didn't just do that, at least as the primary option.  Using speech at a drive through was always the worst way to do it.

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I honestly don't understand why they didn't just do that, at least as the primary option.  Using speech at a drive through was always the worst way to do it.

Because you have people like the assistant manager I work with that would not know how to use those methods. If he cant talk to a human he wouldn't be able to order. Thats why Im waiting for him to go to Wendy's and encounter AI because it's going to be a good story. Some wild shit flys out of his mouth. 

[Sauron]

6 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

I honestly don't understand why they didn't just do that, at least as the primary option.  Using speech at a drive through was always the worst way to do it.

Because AI is the cool new buzzword. Some exec walked in to some meeting and said something like "AI is the future, we should incorporate it into our company and replace those pesky minimum wage college students" and this is the result. I would be amazed if this actually saved them a significant amount of money, considering that these systems need to be deployed and maintained by people who likely make quite a bit more than minimum wage and that these orders still need to be passed on to humans who actually prepare and bring you the food.

[Sauron]

15 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Because you have people like the assistant manager I work with that would not know how to use those methods. If he cant talk to a human he wouldn't be able to order. Thats why Im waiting for him to go to Wendy's and encounter AI because it's going to be a good story. Some wild shit flys out of his mouth. 

Keep in mind that stuff like siri and alexa has existed for years and does not require gpt... a large language model only gives you something more than those if your goal is to get a dynamic answer to a question you can't necessarily predict, which is never the case when taking a meal order out of a fixed menu. Also I foresee the actual speech-to-text part of this to be a huge achilles' heel; it's hard enough to do automatic speech recognition for small phrases preceeded by special keywords ("hey google" or whatever) and spoken without ambient noise, it's much harder to do the same thing with someone shouting out of a car window with a bad microphone and, as someone pointed out, kids shouting in the background.

[Mark Kaine]

17 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Those actually exist already. They are also being deployed in restaurants. What I seen is that it's cheaper to automate but there is a large up front cost. Thats why most restaurants dont have automation currently. 

i mean fair enough you can heat a shitburger automatically,  but this article / headline implies no humans there at all, which is frankly not possible,  there's no such thing as "AI"

 

 

Ofc that probably won't stop them trying lol

[Donut417]

34 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

but this article

When I scanned the article it stated that the AI was doing drive thru, which implies that humans are still involved in the creation of said food and other things. 

 

37 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

you can heat a shitburger automatically,

I mean yes fast food is generally cooked from frozen food. But the biggest thing automation does is make things more consistent. That means the proper amount of ingredients goes in to making the product. By making sure extra amounts are not added you save on food cost. Automation also makes things more efficient, making sure only the amount of food needed is cooked at any given time, reducing waste. The only reason you dont see this more wide spread is because most independent franchisees dont probably have the capital to invest in one, but over the long term its cheaper to do the automation. 

 

44 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

there's no such thing as "AI"

That depends on how AI is defined. I do agree this is not sky net. These are very basic for what they are. But I think this is really the start of AI, and in a few more decades we will have something of greater scale and ability. 

[PocketNerd]

On 5/10/2023 at 10:50 AM, OhYou_ said:

humans can do anything

Oh you sweet, summer child.

[Brooksie359]

15 hours ago, Donut417 said:

When I scanned the article it stated that the AI was doing drive thru, which implies that humans are still involved in the creation of said food and other things. 

 

I mean yes fast food is generally cooked from frozen food. But the biggest thing automation does is make things more consistent. That means the proper amount of ingredients goes in to making the product. By making sure extra amounts are not added you save on food cost. Automation also makes things more efficient, making sure only the amount of food needed is cooked at any given time, reducing waste. The only reason you dont see this more wide spread is because most independent franchisees dont probably have the capital to invest in one, but over the long term its cheaper to do the automation. 

 

That depends on how AI is defined. I do agree this is not sky net. These are very basic for what they are. But I think this is really the start of AI, and in a few more decades we will have something of greater scale and ability. 

Honestly when I see how McDonald's stuff is made I realize how they make their food so consistent. Might not be the best food out their but I know what I am going to get when I go to McDonald's. Compare that to Wendy's and it is really hit or miss. I find that often times they go way to light on the condiments for Wendy's burgers but at some Wendy's they get it right. It's why I won't go to the wendys by my place as they routinely make worse food than basically any other wendys I have been to.

[maartendc]

I would be seriously in favor of just banning AI technology for certain uses (such as this).

 

Sure, it stands in the way of "progress". But the proponents of this kind of "progress" always state some kind of rosy picture where due to more industrialization and more automation, humans will be free to live a life of luxury and leisure.

 

This is not true at all of course. The owners of the tools of automation will reap the rewards (i.e. the rich will get richer) while others will be left behind.

 

This is akin to the industrial revolution 150 years ago. Governments and corporations need to learn lessons from what went wrong back then, and be proactive on how to use this technology wisely, while helping those who are displaced by it.

[Vishera]

Good thing most people in the world don't live in the American dystopia.

 

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, maartendc said:

would be seriously in favor of just banning AI technology for certain uses (such as this).

So you rather some of these places going out of business? Because I can tell you that many fast food places around me are desperate for employees and not many are applying. 

 

You're also acting like every restaurant is going to do this. The fact is it probably costs a pretty penny to implement something like this. Bear in mind while the Wendy's corporation might have Billions they can spend, the mom and pop who own the actual restaurants dont. With interest rates the way they are, borrowing capital is out of the question. 

[ThousandBlade]

On 5/10/2023 at 11:30 AM, Fasterthannothing said:

Summary

Starting in June Wendy's will roll out AI to their stores and begin the process of being completely automated.

 

Quotes

 

My thoughts

Well I guess it's official boys and girls AI has started replacing people's jobs in mass scale as do as June. The estimates say this system will displace 14 million workers just at Wendy's alone.

 

Sources

 https://www.techspot.com/news/98622-happening-ai-chatbot-replace-human-order-takers-wendy.html

 AI will never capture the discontent and defeated tone of a tormented minimum wage worker when he says:

Sir, this is a Wendy's.

[Holmes108]

4 hours ago, maartendc said:

I would be seriously in favor of just banning AI technology for certain uses (such as this).

 

 

 

That's so short sighted though. it's like telling someone to beat their clothes on a rock when they could use a washing machine, "just because". Talking big picture, technology has done nothing but help civilization as a whole, historically, every time. Will one of these technologies be the exception to that rule? Perhaps, but:

 

1: There's no way to know which one

2: There's nothing you can do to stop it anyways

 

[maartendc]

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

So you rather some of these places going out of business?

If they are so poorly run or doing poorly that they need to resort to these kinds of tactics, yes, let them go out of business. If you cannot find enough employees, maybe try paying them a wage they can actually live on.

 

This is the same kind of logic that people used in my country when the government implemented a digital cash register system that made it much harder for restaurants and bars to evade taxes. "But they will go out of business". Good, if they are so poorly run they cannot afford to pay their taxes, they deserve to go out of business. FFS.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, maartendc said:

If you cannot find enough employees, maybe try paying them a wage they can actually live on.

You never worked at fast food and it shows. No amount of money is going to get people in the door, it’s a shit job. Restaurants have slim margins so they cant pay that great. Because customers will go else where if they massively raise prices. 

[wanderingfool2]

3 hours ago, maartendc said:

If they are so poorly run or doing poorly that they need to resort to these kinds of tactics, yes, let them go out of business. If you cannot find enough employees, maybe try paying them a wage they can actually live on.

Or replace them with technology.

 

Over time there has always been arguments that you are making to stop the process of technology.  When the automated loom became a thing, or in general automation it's always been people like who you invoke arguments which effectively amounts to think of the people you are displacing.

 

History has shown time and again that jobs will be found in other sectors.

 

To address your "poorly run" notion; if you pay the lower workers "living wage" you will find very quickly that inflation kicks in or you lose business.  There were a few restaurants in BC that had a "living wage" (without no tipping necessary), they went out of business because no one wanted to pay for the higher prices.  Paying people more means usually a few things, either reducing the size of the meal (thus saving on cost but customers get less), raising rates (customers avoid or go less), become more efficient (i.e. less staff doing more), or make less profit (which isn't realistic when you are a franchise owner who paid $1 mill plus to start the franchise at a location).

 

If people are to the point they need to work at a job with fast food with minimal pay, then at a certain point it's on them to try improving their life.  It might seem harsh but it's true, I think there are a lot of people who end up working fast food for a while because it gives them their first job experience and a bit of pocket money.  There will be some that work it because they need to, but I'd be willing to bet it's not the majority.

 

There are people who I know who complain living paycheck to paycheck and I know for the fact that they make more than myself.  The difference is they have a $100+ cell phone plan, or they buy coffee every morning, they go out to theatres to watch movies, go out to eat...while I take things more conservatively and can afford to go on vacation and save up funds despite making less.  Even a $2 cup of coffee every day adds up to $730 a year.  I can feed my family of 4 for a day at an average cost of $3/person/day (buying things on sale, while in season, bulk or close to expiry).

[Brooksie359]

2 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Or replace them with technology.

 

Over time there has always been arguments that you are making to stop the process of technology.  When the automated loom became a thing, or in general automation it's always been people like who you invoke arguments which effectively amounts to think of the people you are displacing.

 

History has shown time and again that jobs will be found in other sectors.

 

To address your "poorly run" notion; if you pay the lower workers "living wage" you will find very quickly that inflation kicks in or you lose business.  There were a few restaurants in BC that had a "living wage" (without no tipping necessary), they went out of business because no one wanted to pay for the higher prices.  Paying people more means usually a few things, either reducing the size of the meal (thus saving on cost but customers get less), raising rates (customers avoid or go less), become more efficient (i.e. less staff doing more), or make less profit (which isn't realistic when you are a franchise owner who paid $1 mill plus to start the franchise at a location).

 

If people are to the point they need to work at a job with fast food with minimal pay, then at a certain point it's on them to try improving their life.  It might seem harsh but it's true, I think there are a lot of people who end up working fast food for a while because it gives them their first job experience and a bit of pocket money.  There will be some that work it because they need to, but I'd be willing to bet it's not the majority.

 

There are people who I know who complain living paycheck to paycheck and I know for the fact that they make more than myself.  The difference is they have a $100+ cell phone plan, or they buy coffee every morning, they go out to theatres to watch movies, go out to eat...while I take things more conservatively and can afford to go on vacation and save up funds despite making less.  Even a $2 cup of coffee every day adds up to $730 a year.  I can feed my family of 4 for a day at an average cost of $3/person/day (buying things on sale, while in season, bulk or close to expiry).

This is a whole lot of cope. I know a couple of different places that increased the minimum wage they pay significantly and it didn't even raise prices almost at all and they still get a ton of business. These fast food places make more profit than you think and can absolutely afford to pay the workers more they just don't as that would mean owners making less and they can get away with paying people horrible wages because there aren't alot of alternatives for people who work there. Also the biggest issue facing people going paycheck to paycheck is the cost of housing. Most of those people spend the vast majority of their paycheck on rent with not a ton left over. I think the assumption that everyone who is poor is their own fault is pretty naive especially in places where the cost of housing is so insanely high that nobody can realistically live there with wages that your typical jobs pay. This has become a huge issue because demand for housing is so high that the prices for housing is very high but if you don't have housing for the people who do service jobs the who is going to make your coffee or make your food? People can preach that everyone should get better jobs but I doubt people would say that if they can no longer get coffee or food from restaurants because they have no workers. The unfortunate truth is realistically we need some people to do these jobs and to simply say it is OK to pay these people wages that they can't live off of is crazy. It's sorta funny because it's not like this has always been an issue. It used to be that even lower level jobs could still afford to make a decent living but wages have stagnated for a long time now leading to our current issue. The biggest reason for such huge wage issues has been the results of unions largely going away. It use to be the case where there were enough union related jobs that made it so people couldn't afford to pay people crap wages as they would simply get a job that does pay well but now there are way less unions leading to people having way less bargaining power. The funny thing is if you look at fields that have unions even if you don't work at someplace with a union you still on average make more because they have to pay more to be competitive otherwise people will just leave for places that do have unions seeing as they already have experience in the field. 

[wanderingfool2]

52 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

This is a whole lot of cope. I know a couple of different places that increased the minimum wage they pay significantly and it didn't even raise prices almost at all and they still get a ton of business. These fast food places make more profit than you think and can absolutely afford to pay the workers more they just don't as that would mean owners making less and they can get away with paying people horrible wages because there aren't alot of alternatives for people who work there

You think they make a lot of profits?

 

Let's see, Wendy's Q1 2023;

Revenue: 528.8 mill

Cost of Revenue: 444 mill

Net Income: ~40 mill (There was roughly an extra 44 mill not associated with the costs but still other expenses)

 

Yes such a large "profit" $40 mill despite having revenues of $528.8 mill.

 

Getting a ton of business does NOT equal being financially stable as a company.

 

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

I think the assumption that everyone who is poor is their own fault is pretty naive especially in places where the cost of housing is so insanely high that nobody can realistically live there with wages that your typical jobs pay

It's a naive response to only associate issues with things like "housing" and similar.  There are so many people who I see talk about housing and living paycheck to paycheck, who I see getting Starbucks or other similar.  I'm not saying there are people who live paycheck to paycheck who aren't trying to be fiscally responsible; but there are still a vast majority who don't want to give up  on the "luxuries" of life if it means positioning themselves in a better position.

 

It really bothers me when I hear people, especially at work, who whine and complain about their salary and say they should be paid a "living wage" and when I bring up that they get paid more than me instantly it's "Your rent isn't as high as mine" (because they chose to live in Vancouver), "I don't want to give up Starbucks", "You live a boring life".  The simple fact is, there are a lot more people who get themselves in a situation (it can boil down to education and lack of education of finances).

 

It bugs me though when people look at revenues and just assume "company XYZ can pay more".