Best of times / Worst of times for voice AI
Hospitable voice startups abound, but big restaurants are scaling back. What gives?
After taking more than two million orders using voice AI, Taco Bell is pumping the breaks. Last week, Dane Mathews, Taco Bell’s chief digital and technology officer, admitted that AI in the drive-thru is not always the answer.
“We’re learning a lot, I’m going to be honest with you,” Mathews told the Wall Street Journal. “I think like everybody, sometimes it lets me down, but sometimes it really surprises me,” he said.
In other words: voice AI is still inconsistent — even though it’s considered the fastest-adopted technology in history.
Mathews’s words echo prevailing sentiment around AI in business right now. Last month, a report from MIT found that only about 5 percent of corporate investments in AI are paying off. It’s an alarming statistic about technology that’s promised to transform the way we work and live (the headline of the article I linked to above references a “spooked” Wall Street), though it doesn’t spell the end of AI that helps us at work. Instead, the author of the study said, it’s a call to reconsider where artificial intelligence should step in.
Regardless, startups aren’t slowing down.