The company compiled information from franchisees and guests on how to measure friendliness, resulting in the fast food chain training its AI system to recognize certain words and phrases, such as “welcome to Burger King,” “please,” and “thank you.” Managers can then ask the AI assistant how their location is performing on friendliness.
This is the worst timeline. 1984 was a warning not an instruction manual.
And Idiocracy was a comedy not a documentary
I’m currently watching Handmaid’s Tale for the first time (the show, not the movie. I haven’t seen the movie). I’ve never read the book either so no spoilers please. Anyway, it’s eerie how many things are lining up. Like you said, supposed to be a warning, not a guidebook.
I feel like I’d have an existential crisis if I started watching that show these days. Good luck.
I went to Wendy’s the other day, and they have this automatic pre-recorded English-fluent woman cheerfully ask for your order. While an actual person didn’t indicate that they were ready, I know they won’t do a second intro message either way, so I started to order. A heavy spanish accent comes over the speaker “Fucking wait, god.” My only thought was “Fair enough” and I waited.
Whoever implements these systems is crazy. We don’t pay people enough to be policed that heavily.
That’s a very generous reaction to being cussed at for following instructions. I have no problem being asked to wait. I actually appreciate having someone acknowledge that I’m there by telling me to wait. But damn. Keep it classy.
Clutch those pearls harder m8
So…instead of AI doing the work…AI is going to be the Boss?
Fuck. That.
And middle managers everywhere don’t see the writing on the wall somehow.
Thing is, I’m sure they do. But they’re middle management so they can’t do shit about it. Executives that think this stupid shit up have their heads so far up their ass they don’t understand how incredibly dumb their ideas for what AI does actually are.
Idk, one of my co-workers on another team specifically brought up to their manager that what it’s currently being trained to do is basically a majority of the managers job and he didn’t get it.
Maybe he does and was just playing it off though 🤷
Well some people are just stupid too lol. I bet most of them see that threat. Some also want to try and be the one that stays behind because they did all the AI stuff not realizing it’s all going to fail lol.
I don’t think it’ll completely fail, you are overestimating the average middle manager ;)
Sure. Some of it does work. I use AI all the time which is why I know how bad it is at a lot of things. x)
It’s going to fail to provide the absurd gains these idiots executives keep claiming. Of course I suspect all the layoffs and stuff they’re doing, they’re just using “AI” as a cover for their own incompetence (over hiring during COVID among other things).
My joke was less about how good AI is and more about how bad most middle managers are :p
This is going to be the boring dystopia we all experience.
The Fallout style corporate dystopia isn’t coming in the future. It’s today. It’s right now.
The Outer Worlds is more an active corporate dystopia of our flavor.
Jesus Christ. I don’t trust any syrupy cheerful, fake happy, overly polite, “I’m sooo sooorry you had the slightest inconvenience” type customer service. No, I’ve done that job. You know you don’t give a shit. I know you don’t give a shit. You know I know you don’t give a shit. We both know you can barely afford to live. The world is spiraling. Pretending otherwise is insufferable. Just be honest and give it to me jaded, bitter, and cynical like we both deserve.
Pro tip to BK: I probably wouldn’t even notice the lack of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. I would, however, be significantly happier if you stopped making them say “You Rule”. Seems like they have to say it as both greeting and a “your order is finished”. It’s just unpleasantly cringey.
If they want to lean more into the branding, they should do something like make the BK uniforms more regal. I’m thinking flowing robes, little plastic crowns, that sort of thing.
plastic crowns, I’ll settle for nothing short of genuine gold and gems, thank you very much.
Please do not, that’s disgusting, thank you.
Does “thanks, mother fucker, have shit ass day, and please go fuck yourself” bring up my numbers?
The AI says you have a 120% compliance rate.
Damn, beat me to it. As a former cook, I support this message.
I used to work for a consultancy that tried to bill themselves as experts in VR/AR. This is back in 2017 or so. We helped a client make a 3D tracking system with VR/AR applications, and this client let us kind of run with it.
Anyway, I was sort of head of this AR/VR thing, and we were always desperate for free advertising, so I somehow got pulled to provide my thoughts on the impact of VR/AR on the grocery store industry for an article in “The Grocer” or some other industry mag.
Leading up to the call, I was trying to think of what I’d say. My thoughts were on building out virtual grocery stores to test customer reactions before building them for real. Bring in some test subjects, see how they plan their route, how they react to different placements of goods. Track their eye movements to see if the new end-cap design is working. Time how long they spend in the store, etc. Are the aisles too narrow and claustrophobic. I got the idea from another client who was using VR to test out new detergent bottle concepts (apparently a one-off of a blow-molded bleach bottle is crazy expensive).
Well my consultancy had been purchased by a multinational conglomerate a year or so prior, so I got a phone call from some C-suite ass who wanted to brief me on what they wanted me to say to the magazine.
His idea was a service where you could have a store employee wear some kind of camera rig so the customer could sit at home in VR and pilot the employee around the store. This would essentially replace curbside pickup, but with the added benefit of “allowing the customer to pick which apple they want out of the bunch.”
I resolved to ignore that advice, but the whole magazine thing ended up falling through anyway. I quit within the year.
Not at all dystopian. Orwell would approve!
Orwell was a British police officer in Myanmar, breaking up labor organizations and suppressing an independence movement, so…
Probably he would
He joined the Imperial Police at 19 years old at the urging of his family because they couldn’t afford to send him to university and his poor grades meant that he would likely not be able to get a scholarship. He hated his time with the police force, hated the British empire, and called imperialism “an evil thing.”
So no, probably he wouldn’t.
He hated his time with the police force, hated the British empire, and called imperialism “an evil thing.”
Incredibly, the man once accused of communist tendencies and the creator of Big Brother, was by 1949 surreptitiously working for British intelligence. He drew up a list of names of crypto-communists for Britain’s Foreign Office Information Research Department, the spies who led the UK propaganda war.
Orwell’s contact was Celia Kirwan, a former flame who visited the author while he battled tuberculosis at a sanatorium in England. Orwell had proposed to her years earlier but they were simply friends at that point - friends in high places. During her visit, Celia and Orwell discussed the secretive projects the IRD was doing “in great confidence, and he was delighted to learn of them, and expressed his wholehearted and enthusiastic approval of our aims,” according to Britain’s National Archives and Foreign Office records.
Orwell listed the names of suspected communists who might betray Britain if they were hired to work as writers in the propaganda unit. In his now-famous letter dated April 6, 1949, Orwell writes: “I could also, if it is of value, give you a list of crypto-communists, fellow-travelers or inclined that way and should not be trusted as propagandists.”
Orwell wanted his list to be ‘strictly confidential’. It includes dozens of literary luminaries of the ‘40s including J. B. Priestley, the novelist and playwright, and Manchester Guardian industrial correspondent John Anderson, described by Orwell as: “Probably sympathizer only. Good reporter. Stupid.”
…
Orwell collapsed with tuberculosis after writing the first draft of Nineteen Eighty-Four and typed the second version of his novel while recovering in bed. He collapsed again when he had finished and died on January 21, 1950. The CIA, US Army, and British spies began courting his young widow, his second wife Celia, almost immediately hoping to buy the firm rights to Animal Farm. The CIA closed the deal with a promise of cash and an introduction to Hollywood movie star Clarke Gable. The Brits settled for the rights to turn Animal Farm into a comic strip.
Not sure how any of that discounts his anti-imperialist and anti-authoritarian beliefs.
Read it again. Think harder.
Why don’t you actually make your own point instead of copying your thoughts wholesale from other writers? Ironic that the person railing against Orwell can’t think for themself.
make your own point
copying your thoughts
Brother. This is Orwell’s biography. It’s not a “point”. It’s how he lived his life.
That sounds like a big steaming violation of workers rights.
Is surveiling workers fine where this is planned to be executed?
McDonald’s really isn’t much better, and really there’s not much stopping them from recording everything and deleting it after it’s seen review. Basically just more reasons to try and fire people then not pay for unemployment insurance it appears.
So AI is your boss. And he’s there solely to snitch on you.
“Please, go fuck yourself. Thank you.”
“Im sorry Sylvia we’re going to have to let you go. You didn’t say ‘thank you’ enough.
It says here you were obsessed with someone named ‘Hank Ewe’. Absolutely deplorable. “
I already wasn’t eating BK. And this makes me want to even less. The fake/forced “friendliness” I personally find off-putting. It’s like Chick-fil-a they have to say “my pleasure”. Just some force creepy cult vibes (for some very mediocre food). Idk, maybe it’s me, but knowing someone is being micro-enslaved (sorry, “managed”) just rubs me the very wrong way.
Plus side, my hatred for AI and all these places forcing it on customers, I’ve spent WAY less money eating out and have been eating way better. So silver lining I suppose.
