<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20240421095115&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theatlantic.com&#x2F;technology&#x2F;archive&#x2F;2024&#x2F;04&#x2F;kernel-robot-fast-food-automation&#x2F;678107&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20240421095115&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theat...</a>

Instead of a McDonald&#x27;s order taking about 20s at some cashier it is now multiple minutes at a kiosk.The work is offloaded to the customer.It is quite sad since the initial kiosk app was like as fast as the cashier since it didn&#x27;t try to uppsell you 15 times.I guess it is a power problem. The employer does not have enough power over the staff to enforce BS procedures that makes them and the customers waste time while programmers happely complies since they are not the &#x27;victims&#x27;.

&gt; But replacing a customer service member with a touch screen and a pay terminal is also a form of automation and I can&#x27;t imagine maintaining it is more expensive than the salary of the persons it replaces 24&#x2F;7.Even then, the economics of such terminal isn&#x27;t clear: for start you need multiple times more such machines than cashiers since everything is much slower on it (for self cash out machines in supermarket the ratio is up to 1 to 6 !) and the kiosks are also insanely expensive (6 figures). And as a result at the end of the day it has not gained that much traction over the past ten years (if you compare it to the deployment of things that were massive successes like credit card, you&#x27;ll see that the success is much more limited here)

The complexity is that to save money, you have to automate enough that you can reduce the staffing level. Go from say, 5 people to 4.When I worked at a radiology firm, they thought having patients fill out forms on an iPad would cost them money. They did it anyways to seem more modern.

Full automation certainly is. But replacing a customer service member with a touch screen and a pay terminal is also a form of automation and I can&#x27;t imagine maintaining it is more expensive than the salary of the persons it replaces 24&#x2F;7.Automation can also be every minor improvement that allows the employees to suddenly going from focusing on one thing to juggling multiple responsibilities.In a world where more profit for shareholders is the most important value, everything will be sacrificed on its altar — including quality, humanity and environment. That is why automation will replace more and more jobs and the fruits of automation will land in few, big baskets. And the owners of those will not share even if everybody around them is starving.We are entering the phase in monopoly where hotels are on every field.

Are you saying the _cost_ of manufacturing is 17x (50&#x2F;3) what it should be, or are you saying that the selling price is 17x the manufacture cost and the market isn&#x27;t operating to reduce the price?Are you referring to a McDo ordering machine, or a generic [supermarket] self-checkout machine?

The main reason why it&#x27;s expensive is that it&#x27;s almost always outsourced, which drive the cost up a lot. For instance IIRC a self cash-out machine costs around $50k, for something that should cost less than $3k to manufacture with a trivial software stack. And many things are like that.

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Automation is expensive to acquire, operate and maintain. It is better to hire employees...unless employees become much more expensive.

cf <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39808071">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39808071</a>I got paywalled pretty early in, but I think I agree with the thesis as from what I&#x27;ve seen of the back of the house in a McDo: the humans are universal effectors who can read screens, while the scheduling (and associated decision-taking) is automated.

At least fix it to &quot;Is Fast Food Already Automated?&quot; so it doesn&#x27;t sound like a sarcastic quip.

The title of the article is &#x27;Your Fast Food Is Already Automated&#x27;, not &#x27;Fast food is already automated?&#x27;.