[HN Gopher] McDonald's AI drive-thru bot accused of breaking bio...
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McDonald's AI drive-thru bot accused of breaking biometrics privacy
law
 
Author : donohoe
Score  : 44 points
Date   : 2021-06-13 17:15 UTC (5 hours ago)
 
web link (www.theregister.com)
w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
 
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Wow! That law is interesting!
| 
| -----
| 
| BIPA) states: "No private entity may collect, capture, purchase,
| receive through trade, or otherwise obtain a person's or a
| customer's biometric identifier or biometric information." unless
| it receives written consent.
| 
| ...
| 
| Under the BIPA, people can receive up to $5,000 in damages from
| private entities for each violation committed "intentionally or
| recklessly,"
| 
| -------
| 
| Unless I'm missing something people in Illinois should get Amazon
| Echoes or Halos which both "voiceprint" users and then sue Amazon
| to collect their 5k reward.
 
| [deleted]
 
| kevmo314 wrote:
| Using voice recognition to automate drive-thrus...
| 
| Seems like they could've added QR code + online ordering to each
| of their parking spots instead but I guess AI is cool too.
 
  | jsight wrote:
  | I've used touchscreen kiosks at Taco Bell and McDonald's and
  | Subway. TBH, none of them are great experiences for simple
  | orders.
  | 
  | Order ahead is available from the app, but I wouldn't be
  | surprised if regular audio is actually faster in most cases.
 
    | joezydeco wrote:
    | Audio is much faster. McDs is way behind with mobile order
    | and pickup. I've done curbside orders where I sat in the slot
    | and watched the entire DT empty out before someone came out
    | with my food.
    | 
    | If you want to see a group that has their technical shit
    | together, check out Chik-Fil-A.
 
    | LanceH wrote:
    | Audio is probably faster per person. However, it is serial in
    | nature. I walk up to 4 kiosks and want a combo #3 with a
    | coke, and I get to skip the three families, each trying to
    | talk their 4 year old into choosing fruit and milk over fries
    | and a coke.
    | 
    | Also, order verification is nice with a kiosk (for now). If I
    | want something without pickles, I can see that right in front
    | of me. It seems like every drive-thru and PoS that has a
    | display which can provide order feedback has switched to
    | displaying ads to buy some other product. I'm sure it's just
    | a matter of time before the kiosks start to have modals which
    | have to be cleared to continue with the order: Have you tried
    | the hot apple pie? How are you enjoying the kiosk experience?
    | Really, the people doing these things can never resist.
 
    | kevmo314 wrote:
    | They could offer a phone number to call in to place your
    | order so orders could be placed in parallel
 
  | Phylter wrote:
  | They already have it so that you can order by phone. A
  | touchpad/kiosk type thing would make perfect sense too except
  | maybe it required more hardware than they wanted to spend money
  | on?
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | shadowgovt wrote:
  | People who own cars aren't guaranteed to own smartphones, and
  | McDonald's wants their business too.
  | 
  | In addition, the McDonald's drive-thru is iconic, and the
  | stickiness of that part of the brand means it won't go away
  | soon.
 
  | cbhl wrote:
  | McDonalds does offer mobile ordering, but their own-branded
  | apps are segmented by country. If my App Store is set to the US
  | and I order in Canada (or vice versa) then I have to fall back
  | to more traditional ordering methods like going to a
  | kiosk/cashier/drive thru.
  | 
  | Honestly this (cross-country ordering and payment) is one of
  | the things Uber Eats does really well, but you definitely pay a
  | price premium for it over, say, the Starbucks or McDonalds
  | apps.
 
| throwawayboise wrote:
| As I've gotten older I've cut back on my fast-food intake quite a
| bit. Not really for heath reasons either, though it's a nice side
| benefit. It just really isn't very good food, and it seems to
| have gotten worse over the past 20-30 years. Especially for what
| it costs.
| 
| However, I will never order from a voice-driven AI system. If
| that is the choice, then I decline. I don't use it in any other
| area of my life, in fact I cannot stand talking to computers
| despite using them professionally as a career. When I call
| someplace and have to speak to a computer I mumble jibberish
| until the system gives up and transfers me to a human. I'm a
| human, I want to speak to other humans, not computers.
 
  | mLuby wrote:
  | Sorry to be Butlerian about it, but "conversing" with machine
  | simulacra disrespects me, the customer.
  | 
  | Someone should deploy a voice-producing AI to interface with
  | companies' voice-processing AIs so I can order from the command
  | line or from an app.
 
    | ALittleLight wrote:
    | Conversing with the machine simulacra disrespects you, but
    | instructing your machine to converse with their simulacra
    | doesn't?
 
  | gambiting wrote:
  | English isn't my first language so I dread any kind of voice-
  | based systems, and automatic recognition is just the worst.
  | Calling a help line where you have to say what you're calling
  | about to an AI first is just futile. If that's the only way to
  | order at McDonald's then I'll just stop eating at McDonald's.
 
| fpgaminer wrote:
| > The software apparently has an 85 per cent accuracy rate.
| 
| That number seems really low to me for a task specific system.
| i.e. it doesn't need to understand every possible thing someone
| could say; just the subset of language used to place orders at
| McDonald's. For reference
| (https://paperswithcode.com/sota/speech-recognition-on-libris...)
| SOTA models are at ~5% WER for general speech.
| 
| And besides, who wants to order from an AI that's going to fuck
| up 15% of the time? Compared to a human that error rate is
| perhaps on-par, but a human has an internal confidence
| measurement. We know when we've heard something wrong. Speech
| systems don't really have that (1). So the AI will just blunder
| forward with your order. I'd much rather interact with a system
| that says "Sorry, what was that?" 15% of the time (i.e. the
| current meat based voice recognition that fast food restaurants
| use) versus a system where I constantly have to check the screen
| and tell it "Oh, no, sorry, can you fix the, ummm, uhh, we don't
| want 20 orders of ketchup packets... Oh, god, no we don't want 40
| ketchup packets! No our order isn't done! WAIT!"
| 
| (1) Yes, you can guess at confidence by measuring the logits, but
| that doesn't work in practice. It's nowhere near a human's
| capability to self-measure confidence in our predictions.
 
  | sumnuyungi wrote:
  | Using your own link, SOTA is 2.6%. WER could be lower for the
  | much smaller vocabulary used in a drive-thru.
  | 
  | I'm not sure what you mean by "that doesn't work in practice"
  | re: using logits. Word-level confidence is pretty useful with
  | GCP Speech-to-Text [1]
  | 
  | [1] https://cloud.google.com/speech-to-text/docs/word-
  | confidence....
 
    | version_five wrote:
    | > I'm not sure what you mean by "that doesn't work in
    | practice" re: using logits.
    | 
    | I suspect they mean they ML models are usually poorly
    | calibrated and that the softmax-over-logits probabilities
    | generally don't reflect actually error rates, so they're
    | tough to use meaningfully for asking people to repeat
    | themselves.
    | 
    | Personally, if I have to deal with an automated order system,
    | I'd rather some kind of search tree that let's me traverse it
    | using three (left, right, back) well separated noises and a
    | "dumb" back-end instead of having to pretend a ML system and
    | I are having the meeting of the minds that a voice based
    | discussion implies.
    | 
    | I understand that such a system would be hard or impossible
    | to train lay-people to use, but it would be nice to have a
    | "cut the crap" option to let people interface more
    | effectively with the order system and not take part in the
    | charade of a "discussion"
 
  | jeeeb wrote:
  | > SOTA models are at ~5% WER for general speech.
  | 
  | Do SOTA results measure performance in difficult environments
  | though?
  | 
  | Presumably dealing with people talking out of their car window
  | next to a busy road would be a lot more difficult than dealing
  | with a relatively clear audio recording.
  | 
  | EDIT: It looks like the linked results are for an audio book
  | dataset. That seems like an optimal environment where you're
  | going to get clear enunciation with minimal background noise.
 
  | thrower123 wrote:
  | 15% error is wildly less than I normally get ordering at the
  | McDonalds drive-through. Not quite half the time I have to give
  | my order again at the second window, then again at the third
  | window.
 
    | gambiting wrote:
    | Here in the UK when you go through the drive through at McDs
    | the order appears on the screen next to the microphone, they
    | ask you to confirm that's what you ordered. Never had a wrong
    | order this way. Seems like a very simple solution if
    | something this is isn't standard everywhere.
 
| cs2733 wrote:
| Personally, I don't mind having all my data harvested. I'm aware
| this is a hot button issue on HN that keeps getting people
| outraged, again and again, but believe that eventually people
| will start shrugging about how invasive technology can be.
| 
| Ultimately things are moving towards the end of privacy and even
| (within 50? 100 years?) the end of ownership. I don't see how a
| civilization that can - easily and with currently available means
| - house, clothe and feed everyone on the planet, can sometimes be
| so lost on petty issues as we do (myself included).
| 
| I'm more concerned with the health hazards posed by modern
| technology and industrial processes - but that's me and the
| reality I subscribe to.
 
  | apocalypstyx wrote:
  | > the end of ownership
  | 
  | I think it more likely the acceleration of ownership. Near-
  | infinite copyright, patented math, the trend has been more
  | greatly in one direction than the other. Even the nature of
  | FOSS/Creative Commons relies on this (even as many suppose it
  | to be breaking free of it). (As someone from some documentary I
  | can't fully recall put it: we will not be free and the world
  | will not be fixed until every square inch of it is owned
  | privately.)
  | 
  | In previous western society, it was acceptable to own the
  | physical human being. The investment was in ontology. But now
  | the investment is moving towards epistemology. People are data.
  | Own the data, own people.
 
  | wyxuan wrote:
  | Here ye, here ye. It's just the direction things will go
  | towards, and I know most other people will feel
  | uncomfortable(and so do I) but I think it'll be something that
  | could be changed by changing societal expectations.
  | 
  | An analogy could be that 100 years ago the outrage was over
  | women wearing revealing clothing and how it would affect the
  | purity of society, but now attitudes have changed and now we
  | barely blink an eye.
 
  | tacitusarc wrote:
  | Someone will always own it, it just won't be you.
 
    | est31 wrote:
    | Someone will always have privacy, it just won't be you.
 
  | leppr wrote:
  | Things are not moving towards the generalized end of privacy
  | and ownership. That may be the case for a specific subset of
  | the population (the 99 percenters), but overall things are
  | simply moving towards a centralization in information
  | availability and asset ownership.
  | 
  | The "elites" (sorry for the boogeyman word Overton window'd out
  | of acceptable use, but it's accurate) own more and more, know
  | more and more about you and your peers, and you still don't
  | know anything about them, or have any democratic control over
  | them.
  | 
  | For someone presumably working in the information industry,
  | calling privacy a petty issue is an interesting opinion, when
  | data is the underlying lifeblood of most of our businesses.
 
  | gryfft wrote:
  | Every time I see this take, I imagine Lenny saying "Goodbye,
  | dental plan!"
  | 
  | We'll all be toothless sooner or later. Why not abolish dental
  | hygiene and medicine altogether? Think of the savings.
 
  | belter wrote:
  | Please allow me to express my choc that you can even formulate
  | this statement.
  | 
  | Can you not see the dangers that, as you are profiled, and data
  | gets correlated across providers, you will be subject to levels
  | of discrimination you can not foresee ?
  | 
  | Some simple examples:
  | 
  | - You live at a certain location and looking to move ? A
  | certain provider will decide not to show you jobs if you happen
  | to live at a certain neighborhood ( Already happening...)
  | 
  | - You live at a neighborhood somehow less respectable, or
  | respectable but where inhabitants are considered more prone to
  | have car accidents ? -> Your car insurance will be more
  | expensive
  | 
  | - You are deemed to cruise trough McDonalds once in a while ?
  | -> Your health insurance will be more expensive...
  | 
  | - You happen to be correlated to a certain group a people due
  | to data location data ? Even if you do not know these persons ?
  | ->You are likely to be inquired by the police if you know
  | anything or have seen anything ...
  | 
  | -> You know when you have your meals or you consume less meals
  | ? - You will be classified as probably part of a certain
  | religious group
  | 
  | - You spend a certain time in a certain hospital department ?
  | -> Your current health status will be shared with your current
  | employer, dooming your chances of promotion...
  | 
  | -You spend a certain amount time at at certain bars,
  | entertainment venues or restaurants within your town ? -> Your
  | sexual preferences will be inferred...
  | 
  | Privacy guarantees,h liberty and peace, plus societal
  | opportunities are the defining fights of these times. To see a
  | statement like this, frankly inspires both sadness and concern.
 
  | cheschire wrote:
  | Privacy is a 1 dimensional spectrum which runs from living in
  | isolation on one end to living under thought police on the
  | other end.
  | 
  | You cannot move towards the end of privacy without losing
  | control over your thoughts.
  | 
  | In the world you're describing, everything everyone says will
  | be recorded. Neural networking will be used to process tone and
  | read body language to determine your thoughts before you even
  | consciously recognize them. As a child you will be trained to
  | recognize and halt bad thinking subconsciously.
  | 
  | Consider the episode of The Office where Jim is offered the
  | position of branch manager, and he turns it down because he
  | thinks everything's working fine without a branch manager so
  | why have one?
  | 
  | Never pass up the chance to take an active role in sustaining a
  | good thing. If you feel the balance of privacy is good today,
  | take an active role to ensure it slips no further, or else
  | someone with more ambition than you will gladly push that point
  | along the line a little further.
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | throwawayboise wrote:
  | > Ultimately things are moving towards the end of privacy and
  | even (within 50? 100 years?) the end of ownership
  | 
  | Yeah we've actually already tried that a few times. It's never
  | ended well.
 
| amelius wrote:
| Isn't this what Google has been doing? Collecting our data (voice
| and whatnot) and using it to build automated systems?
 
| axus wrote:
| The McDonalds app is pretty good for special orders and large
| orders, which would otherwise be irritating for everyone
| involved. My local restaurant has always correctly removed the
| ketchup, onions, and pickle from the $1 cheeseburger.
| 
| Saving my "Favorites" and the deals giving $3 off makes up for
| the mildly clunky app performance. Being able to take everyone's
| order before leaving the house is also nice.
 
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