I know I should be happy.
I know I should be loving this idea as a sign of human progress.
Why, then, am I a little concerned?
Please forgive this apparently tangential meandering, but when you've been used to something being done a certain way, it's often hard to imagine a successful alternative.
Yet here we are -- or, more precisely, here are a lot of people in Chicago -- about to face one of the more severe inevitabilities of our modern world: McDonald's[1] is removing humans from taking your order at the drive-thru, in favor of a machine.
I've always been filled with anticipation at how cheery a greeting I'll get when I ride up to the drive-thru speaker. Now, were I in Chicago, I may be greeted by one of Siri's distant cousins, artificial and allegedly intelligent.
This very fact, the very knowledge that it won't be some high schooler with a penchant for Aristotle, fills me with sadness.
Still, CNBC reports[2] that the burger chain has installed these AI robots in 10 Chicago McDonald's so that it doesn't have to employ so many humans.
No, that's not exactly what McDonald's says, of course. The company insists it's just experimenting with technology from its acquisition of Apprente[3], whose alleged skill is creating AI to take voice orders.
I know that you've already enjoyed so many fine conversations via phone with artificially intelligent customer service beings that you'll be looking forward to repeating yourself three times before you get your Big Mac and fries.
McDonald's, though, would like you to know that its tests have thus far shown that the robots get orders right 85% of the