About time. McDonald’s food is so calculated I’m surprised it’s taken this long for automation. Rise robots rise!!
LiberalTheory
I’m from Fort Worth and never seen that shit. Would expected that in Dallas actually, Dallas is cyberpunk af.
CorsairKing
Big McThankies from McSpanky’s!
drrevo74
I remember living in Seattle in 2006 when they were fighting about a $12 minimum wage, and thinking to myself regardless of your opinion on the issue the end result would be accelerating automation. Low paid jobs are generally the most algorithmic and easy to automate. What I didn’t see coming was the advances in ai and the ubiquitousness of mobile commerce. Give it a few more decades and I think this will be the standard for fast food, groceries with delivery, gas stations, logistics, virtually all manufacturing, retail, etc, etc, etc.
As labor continues to become more expensive and difficult to find, and automation continues to become cheaper and more capable, we’re going to start having a very difficult time providing employment opportunities for a growing swath of the population.
Unemployment create civil unrest. Civil unrest leads to constitutional crisis. Constitutional crisis begets rise of corpo states. Tom’s your uncle Fanny’s your aunt; Cyberpunk. w00t!
Viral_Outrage
Can’t wait for that YouTube video that teaches you how to hack them for free big macs!
aL_Quarter
this is a win for shy people
lvlister2023
This would be brilliant in the Uk even just for delivery driver pickups as we don’t have massive McDs and they are always full of pickup drivers
Jannet_Alaska
This will be abused initially… or looted.
xanucia2020
So with no staff the prices must be really cheap at this branch?
B33rNuts
I really want to see what the kitchen looks like.
USSR_Knuckles
So do we get universal basic income when the robots take ALL the jobs?
Swamp_Eyes
Soooo sloooow
shewel_item
just needs some drones to serve people eating in the picnic area until they invent (very legal) flying cars and the hub starts to look more like a 1950s carhop.. ***and*** *the buster in the passenger seat* is finishing up the job on my genetically modified, 100% white ass right arm prosthetic bringing me up to 90% machine once he finishes, after I finish my fries and carbonated penzoili off, because it ain’t going in the main frame anymore **slurp**
Anomalus_satylite
It’s cool, but knowing McDonald’s, they’re probably using that Pink Slime.
Ankyri
And in true cyberpunk fashion, the workers will be pushed out to fend for themselves and/or starve
JamesonWilde
You can literally see people working in the background of the final shots. This is not automated.
sidmakesgames
Not sure how i feel about this. We’re trying to cut human connection from each other in every possible way. It felt so dead to look at such empty building without any sign of life.
mifiamiganja
McD architecture has really gone downhill.
suvarnabumi
Its more contactless McDonalds than automated
Dirk_94
Thats some awesome sh*t!
IHeartBadCode
This is a test setup McDonald’s is testing concepts in. There is in fact a small group of employees inside the building, the difference is that you won’t be interacting with any of them. The group inside are doing various things ranging from kitchen work that hasn’t been automated or is being tested, engineers that are watching the automation or the kitchen work, and various degrees between. You can see the folks working at the 0:51 mark in the video, they are behind glass.
But for the most part this is a test for where McDonald’s and really any major food chain is heading. The cost of automation is always decreasing, so even if wages for employees stagnated at $2.00/hour until the heat death of the universe, the cost of this stuff is ALWAYS in a downward direction. The likelihood that this stuff is going to be fully automated one day is pretty much 100%. So it doesn’t matter at what dollar amount fast food employees work at, their jobs are about to be as relevant as the horse and buggy was at the turn of the 20th century. That is nobody’s fault, technology is just advancing and that’s that. Henry Ford didn’t have a burning hatred of horses.
I know some are a bit conflicted on this kind of stuff costing people jobs, and that is a consequence of anything in terms of progress. Same thing happened at the start of the Industrial Revolution and we had Luddites back then. Which I know that term has become in modern terms pejorative, but that’s where the term comes from, that group.
So yes, everyone who is concerned, **that is the correct emotion that you should be feeling**. We do not have a plan on what to do with the massive amounts of people who no longer have the skills to work at fast food, because ultimately it’s only going to be repairmen and engineers that work at a group of McDonald’s to maintain them, so maybe a 1 employee to 12 or 15 McDonald’s ratio is where we are heading. And all those unemployed, just saying “go back to school”, well I mean ask anyone with a college loan how that’s going. Simply put, that is not a doable answer. Not just for the massive amounts of debt that will be incurred but we just simply cannot pipe that many people through the pipeline of higher studies. We quite literally lack the throughput to do so.
This automation is coming, that is a given. There is a profit motive and the cost of automating continues to decrease every year, you can slash wages all you want, you’re just pushing out further on the time axis where the increasing profit line and the decreasing cost line meet up. But because those wages have human beings behind them, one cannot push that point out forever. This automation will take their jobs one day.
So what’s the answer to automation taking all of our jobs? Excellent question, nobody has an answer and a lot of the people who we depend on to have those answers are shying away from really addressing all of this. So, right now at least, nobody is talking about the massive amount of job loss automation poses. And it’s highly likely, we just won’t address the issue. I know that just seems like that’s the vogue answer for the times we live in, but that was the answer at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
> Ah man you lost your job? That sucks. Try not to starve.
— The Captains of Industry (circa middle 1700s)
There is likely not going to be any answer on “what to do”. It’s literally the thoughts and prayers of technology. A lot of people are going to be losing a lot of jobs and it’s going to happen because there’s a lot of very rich people who want it to happen. And unlike the industrial revolution, we’re not building factories for people to leave the fields, the trades, and the craft shops to go work in. We are literally moving industries into domains that humans are just simply no longer needed.
Perhaps the answer is akin to the answer on what to do with the horses and buggies when the car came around. Simply have fewer horses and buggies on the planet, except in this case the horses are human beings. I couldn’t tell you if that IS THE ANSWER, but it is one answer that’s been kicked around a few times. So you might want to rethink that “sanctity of life” thing that gets pranced around when the masters of industry of our time are thinking that maybe there should just be less of yous. But less of yous later, not right now, we need more of yous now. We just need less of yous later.
westcoast5556
Creepy af. 1984 etc…
Sulissthea
oh no he had to unbuckle what an inconvenience
Administratr
Bet the ice cream
Machine is still busted
Mail540
Can’t wait for it to be even more impossible for people to get low skilled jobs. What’s the over under on company towns in 10 years?
ZoeIsAwake
KFC were doing this delivery method in the 90’s where I grew up in rural Australia.
Trays of the food came from the kitchen out via a tunnel on horizontal and vertical conveyors, didn’t last due to constant equipment failures.
Guess we were living in the future back then….???
lilhoodrat
But how can people fight, harass and throw fries at the window workers like this?
pizza_lover_234
I’m a ok with full automation of mayor of these jobs, means, and I know that isn’t a good thing in most eyes but that means in theory, jobs will be more valuable, and that the age for retirement should be lower as time progresses/ funded easier. Idk it’s clearly the future we don’t need to keep making more jobs, shoot I’m working two right now, some out there are working 3
DeliciousCitron415
I’m not a shareholder but I still think this is amazing. The sooner people don’t have to do lousy jobs anymore the better. It could be another small step to a universal basic income.
gacman47
This is creepy. No I hate this.
Importantlyfun
Public interaction is a major source of workplace violence. Anything we can do to limit direct interaction with the public will save lives.
Fallen_Walrus
Cool now how will it handle someone at 4 am who loses their shit at the machine and go ape shit on em when it runs out of nuggets
DaniDanielsSanchez
This is so liminal
DaniDanielsSanchez
r/liminalspace
internetlad
This smells like an ad
El_Psy_Congroo4477
Wait, are there people inside making the food, or is the cooking all automated too?
37 Comments
Where in FW is this?
About time. McDonald’s food is so calculated I’m surprised it’s taken this long for automation. Rise robots rise!!
I’m from Fort Worth and never seen that shit. Would expected that in Dallas actually, Dallas is cyberpunk af.
Big McThankies from McSpanky’s!
I remember living in Seattle in 2006 when they were fighting about a $12 minimum wage, and thinking to myself regardless of your opinion on the issue the end result would be accelerating automation. Low paid jobs are generally the most algorithmic and easy to automate. What I didn’t see coming was the advances in ai and the ubiquitousness of mobile commerce. Give it a few more decades and I think this will be the standard for fast food, groceries with delivery, gas stations, logistics, virtually all manufacturing, retail, etc, etc, etc.
As labor continues to become more expensive and difficult to find, and automation continues to become cheaper and more capable, we’re going to start having a very difficult time providing employment opportunities for a growing swath of the population.
Unemployment create civil unrest. Civil unrest leads to constitutional crisis. Constitutional crisis begets rise of corpo states. Tom’s your uncle Fanny’s your aunt; Cyberpunk. w00t!
Can’t wait for that YouTube video that teaches you how to hack them for free big macs!
this is a win for shy people
This would be brilliant in the Uk even just for delivery driver pickups as we don’t have massive McDs and they are always full of pickup drivers
This will be abused initially… or looted.
So with no staff the prices must be really cheap at this branch?
I really want to see what the kitchen looks like.
So do we get universal basic income when the robots take ALL the jobs?
Soooo sloooow
just needs some drones to serve people eating in the picnic area until they invent (very legal) flying cars and the hub starts to look more like a 1950s carhop.. ***and*** *the buster in the passenger seat* is finishing up the job on my genetically modified, 100% white ass right arm prosthetic bringing me up to 90% machine once he finishes, after I finish my fries and carbonated penzoili off, because it ain’t going in the main frame anymore **slurp**
It’s cool, but knowing McDonald’s, they’re probably using that Pink Slime.
And in true cyberpunk fashion, the workers will be pushed out to fend for themselves and/or starve
You can literally see people working in the background of the final shots. This is not automated.
Not sure how i feel about this. We’re trying to cut human connection from each other in every possible way. It felt so dead to look at such empty building without any sign of life.
McD architecture has really gone downhill.
Its more contactless McDonalds than automated
Thats some awesome sh*t!
This is a test setup McDonald’s is testing concepts in. There is in fact a small group of employees inside the building, the difference is that you won’t be interacting with any of them. The group inside are doing various things ranging from kitchen work that hasn’t been automated or is being tested, engineers that are watching the automation or the kitchen work, and various degrees between. You can see the folks working at the 0:51 mark in the video, they are behind glass.
But for the most part this is a test for where McDonald’s and really any major food chain is heading. The cost of automation is always decreasing, so even if wages for employees stagnated at $2.00/hour until the heat death of the universe, the cost of this stuff is ALWAYS in a downward direction. The likelihood that this stuff is going to be fully automated one day is pretty much 100%. So it doesn’t matter at what dollar amount fast food employees work at, their jobs are about to be as relevant as the horse and buggy was at the turn of the 20th century. That is nobody’s fault, technology is just advancing and that’s that. Henry Ford didn’t have a burning hatred of horses.
I know some are a bit conflicted on this kind of stuff costing people jobs, and that is a consequence of anything in terms of progress. Same thing happened at the start of the Industrial Revolution and we had Luddites back then. Which I know that term has become in modern terms pejorative, but that’s where the term comes from, that group.
So yes, everyone who is concerned, **that is the correct emotion that you should be feeling**. We do not have a plan on what to do with the massive amounts of people who no longer have the skills to work at fast food, because ultimately it’s only going to be repairmen and engineers that work at a group of McDonald’s to maintain them, so maybe a 1 employee to 12 or 15 McDonald’s ratio is where we are heading. And all those unemployed, just saying “go back to school”, well I mean ask anyone with a college loan how that’s going. Simply put, that is not a doable answer. Not just for the massive amounts of debt that will be incurred but we just simply cannot pipe that many people through the pipeline of higher studies. We quite literally lack the throughput to do so.
This automation is coming, that is a given. There is a profit motive and the cost of automating continues to decrease every year, you can slash wages all you want, you’re just pushing out further on the time axis where the increasing profit line and the decreasing cost line meet up. But because those wages have human beings behind them, one cannot push that point out forever. This automation will take their jobs one day.
So what’s the answer to automation taking all of our jobs? Excellent question, nobody has an answer and a lot of the people who we depend on to have those answers are shying away from really addressing all of this. So, right now at least, nobody is talking about the massive amount of job loss automation poses. And it’s highly likely, we just won’t address the issue. I know that just seems like that’s the vogue answer for the times we live in, but that was the answer at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
> Ah man you lost your job? That sucks. Try not to starve.
— The Captains of Industry (circa middle 1700s)
There is likely not going to be any answer on “what to do”. It’s literally the thoughts and prayers of technology. A lot of people are going to be losing a lot of jobs and it’s going to happen because there’s a lot of very rich people who want it to happen. And unlike the industrial revolution, we’re not building factories for people to leave the fields, the trades, and the craft shops to go work in. We are literally moving industries into domains that humans are just simply no longer needed.
Perhaps the answer is akin to the answer on what to do with the horses and buggies when the car came around. Simply have fewer horses and buggies on the planet, except in this case the horses are human beings. I couldn’t tell you if that IS THE ANSWER, but it is one answer that’s been kicked around a few times. So you might want to rethink that “sanctity of life” thing that gets pranced around when the masters of industry of our time are thinking that maybe there should just be less of yous. But less of yous later, not right now, we need more of yous now. We just need less of yous later.
Creepy af. 1984 etc…
oh no he had to unbuckle what an inconvenience
Bet the ice cream
Machine is still busted
Can’t wait for it to be even more impossible for people to get low skilled jobs. What’s the over under on company towns in 10 years?
KFC were doing this delivery method in the 90’s where I grew up in rural Australia.
Trays of the food came from the kitchen out via a tunnel on horizontal and vertical conveyors, didn’t last due to constant equipment failures.
Guess we were living in the future back then….???
But how can people fight, harass and throw fries at the window workers like this?
I’m a ok with full automation of mayor of these jobs, means, and I know that isn’t a good thing in most eyes but that means in theory, jobs will be more valuable, and that the age for retirement should be lower as time progresses/ funded easier. Idk it’s clearly the future we don’t need to keep making more jobs, shoot I’m working two right now, some out there are working 3
I’m not a shareholder but I still think this is amazing. The sooner people don’t have to do lousy jobs anymore the better. It could be another small step to a universal basic income.
This is creepy. No I hate this.
Public interaction is a major source of workplace violence. Anything we can do to limit direct interaction with the public will save lives.
Cool now how will it handle someone at 4 am who loses their shit at the machine and go ape shit on em when it runs out of nuggets
This is so liminal
r/liminalspace
This smells like an ad
Wait, are there people inside making the food, or is the cooking all automated too?