Pol Roca

🦔This one happened yesterday but is still worth flagging. Starbucks killed its AI-powered inventory counting tool after nine months in North American stores. The system used LiDAR sensors and cameras to count syrups and milks, routinely confused similar products, and missed items entirely. A Starbucks promotional video from the launch literally captured the malfunction, with the system scanning around a peppermint syrup bottle on the shelf without registering it. Stores are returning to manual counting. My Take I love that the failure mode showed up in the promotional video meant to advertise the product. Starbucks did not pilot this in 50 stores and measure error rates against manual counting before deploying it. The company pushed it across the entire North American network because the CEO wanted to show technology leadership, and the syrup bottle the system could not see was right there in the launch materials. Pizza Hut Dragontail, Glendale Community College, and now Starbucks all ran the same script. AI sales pitches demo well in controlled environments and break down in actual operations. CEOs sign these contracts because the alternative looks like falling behind, and the costs of the failure land on the franchisees, store employees, and customers. The vendors get paid for nine months of being someone else's QA team. Nobody in the chain of executives signing these contracts is the one absorbing the cost, and until that incentive flips, the rollouts continue. Hedgie🤗

¡Nunca me había puesto a pensar en esto! Y es verdad, analícele y verá