AI — when you find your servant is your master

When I was 17 and fresh out of high school, I spent a couple of months with friends in Charlottetown, P.E.I., and landed a summer job at an A&W drive-in.

Nowadays the drive-in is an endangered species in Canada. Consumers want their fast food in a hurry, putting their foot on the brake long enough to have their order handed to them in their car at a drive-thru window. But back in early 1980s, folks were still willing to park and relax in their vehicles while servers like me brought them their burgers and onion rings, along with foamy root beer in tall glass mugs that sat on a heavy plastic tray clipped to the driver’s side window.

In my first few days on the job, I found it nerve-wracking to approach cars full of families, take all the orders, then try to hurry back as quickly as possible with a heavy tray of food and drinks as noisy seagulls squabbled in the parking lot over dropped fries. My coworkers would nudge me out the door whenever a car pulled up sporting Newfoundland plates, figuring I’d have the best chance of getting a good tip.

While I ended up as a carhop, A&W had us newbies take a turn at all the jobs in the restaurant — flipping burgers, dishing up fries from their big metal baskets, making shakes and whistle dogs.

Things were simpler then. We didn’t have headsets, touch screens, digitally programmed machines, apps or delivery drivers to contend with, and I can only imagine how fast-paced today’s fast-food workplaces are. So it was with interest that I read the Feb. 27 article in the Free Press about Burger King’s plans to roll out its artificial intelligence-driven coach, “Patty,” in Canadian restaurants later this year.

“Patty is a voice-based assistant which will be piped through the headsets Burger King staff wear, listening to their conversations and prodding them toward more attentive customer service and efficiency,” reporter Tara Deschamps noted. “The tool will be able to remind employees how to make food orders and help them upsell customers. Patty can also prompt staff to remove items from digital menus or app ordering when products are unavailable, and alert them to washrooms that need cleaning or a drink machine that’s out of a certain flavour.”

Imagine this frazzling scenario: you’re trying to listen to someone’s order through your headset over the scratchy drive-thru audio when Patty interrupts to say the orange soda canister is empty, you didn’t say “welcome!”, there have been complaints about the state of the bathroom and you forgot to pitch the upsized combo.

Patrick Doyle, executive chairman of Burger King parent company Restaurant Brands International, told investors in Miami that Patty will be “a game changer in terms of how you run restaurants.”

It’d change my game all right — I’d be looking for another job.

Will Patty also be monitoring employee interactions with each other and reporting back to HQ? It’s all too Big Brotherish for me; a real-life rise of the machine. Like York University marketing instructor David Pullara, who was interviewed for the article, I can see how an AI voice coach could be beneficial as a training tool, but as an on-the-job, in-your-ear robo-boss? I’d give Patty a pass.

Patty is already being tested at locations in the United States. Burger King told USA Today that it’s not going to be used to rate employees, but rather is “about reinforcing great hospitality and giving managers helpful, real-time insights… The role of this technology is to support our teams so they can stay present with guests.”

Let’s see how that goes.

In other AI news, the Free Press ran a story from Los Angeles on March 6 about a guy named Charlie Snodgrass, who used to be a fast-food delivery driver before he and many others were replaced by fleets of robots who trundle through the city carrying food orders in high-tech storage bins.

Now Snodgrass is working as a robot wrangler, keeping the bots who took his job charged up, clean and running smoothly.

Robot wranglers are often also expected to rescue robots who get delayed by uneven sidewalks, unexpected obstacles or intersections where a human hand is needed to press the button to activate the pedestrian crossing signal.

It must surely be disheartening to have to rush to the aid of a piece of technology that is seen as offering a better return on investment as a service-delivery model than you and your human colleagues were.

But then this is the weird new world we live in, where self-driving cars colliding with AI delivery robots on the streets of Los Angeles is no longer news and where, soon, fast-food employees will feel the sting of the tiny whip of an AI coach in their ears.

Pam Frampton lives in St. John’s. Email pamelajframpton@gmail.com | X: @Pam_Frampton | Bluesky: @pamframpton.bsky.social