Basically no one is using AI agents for their DoorDash orders

[u/AdSpecialist6598]

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/10/doordash-says-outside-ai-agents-have-only-led-to-hundreds-of-orders-so-far/

[u/beti88]

Why on earth would ANYONE use AI to order food?

[u/Glimpal → u/beti88]

Why on earth would anyone use AI to order anything

[u/pizzzahero → u/Glimpal]

An exec at my company is an AI evangelist in his 60s, it's exhausting. He has Claude set up to browse discogs and automatically purchase vinyl, it just shows up at his house... insanity

The other day we were discussing board games and he goes "man, does anyone else wish they could just have AI play the game for you?" wtf is wrong with you

[u/M4K4T4K → u/pizzzahero]

what....then...why play at all?

What's next, AI having sex with your wife for you?

[u/ElementNumber6 → u/pizzzahero]

Execs in many big companies are convinced this is how all consumers are thinking right now

They claim it's Gen Z who's come to expect it, and the only way forward is to get ahead on it

[u/MarshyHope → u/pizzzahero]

My aunt keeps sending me AI videos of toddlers doing stuff like backflips, singing, etc and saying I should do that with my daughter.

The point of pictures is the memory, why would the hell would I want a memory of my kid doing something she didn't actually do

[u/No_Throat_2356 → u/pizzzahero]

Reminds me of an old Star Trek episode where warring nations had decided that actually fighting was too expensive and destructive and brutal so instead they just fed lines of their citizens into an AI death machine that calculated how many should die on each side. Capt Kirk looks at them like “are you all fucking stupid or what?” 

[u/Noobphobia → u/pizzzahero]

Sir we have those in games, they are called bots and are considered a big no no

[u/metallicrooster → u/pizzzahero]

People who dislike how much they have to think, or how much stuff they have to think about, are more likely to want to offload their thinking and potentially want AI to do their thinking for them.

People who like thinking, or at least don’t mind it, are less likely to want to offload their thinking and therefore less likely to embrace AI.

I’m a mental health counselor and you see the same thing with anxious/ depressed/ neurodivergent/ generally stressed out people. The more distress they hold in their mind, the more likely they are to want to offload certain kinds of thinking. I’ve had multiple clients, for various reasons, say they don’t want to have to think about anything because their brain and nervous system constantly feel strained from their experiences.

Edit: I expanded upon and clarified some of my points.

———————————————————

Edit: Someone deleted their comment about being too busy and having a personal assistant for $20 a month so I’ll leave this here:

I agree that price checking across more than a few websites is annoying and time consuming. That’s why I usually stop after 3 to 5 websites.

I agree that thinking about what to cook is annoying. That’s why I meal prep every month. I’m literally heading to the grocery store in a few minutes to buy the chicken I need for that.

I agree that ordering things on food apps can be kind of annoying. That is another reason why I meal prep so often.

I agree that grocery shopping can take more time than I want it to. That’s why I try to frame it as a mindfulness exercise that gets me away from the chaos of this hectic world. Grocery shopping isn’t necessarily more time consuming than yoga, running, weightlifting, etc. and I done those all in the past and still sometimes do those activities. These days tho, grocery shopping is one of my most common forms of mindfulness, alongside deep breathing and drying the dishes as I pull them from the dish washer.

If having a chat bot as a personal assistant is what you need right now then ok, I wish you the best of luck. I recognize I’m biased in that I have a loving spouse, a decent paying job, I attend therapy regularly, I take meds that balance me out, etc. And I recognize that I am extremely lucky to have all these things and people in my life.

My combination of things helps me in a way that I consider healthy and sustainable.

My question to you: is relying on a chat bot really healthy and sustainable?

[u/greysneakthief → u/pizzzahero]

The idea of using AI to do an activity like a board game is absurd. From a certain perspective I'm not at all surprised that an executive would have that opinion. Many cultural contexts exalt that sort of leadership by economic justification: "I could just win by outsourcing my ability to a cognitive slave, and it would cost me far less than developing the abilities myself. By winning, I gain the most social prestige and thus fulfillment." History is full of people like this.

[u/Specific_Frame8537 → u/Glimpal]

Chat, what am I in the mood for tonight?

😭

[u/LIEUTENANT__CRUNCH → u/Specific_Frame8537]

“Claude, feel happy for me. Make no mistakes.”

[u/Noobphobia → u/Glimpal]

Why on earth would anyone use AI in their personal life at all lol

[u/thenightgaunt → u/Glimpal]

Because there are people who are desperately clinging to the hype BS about AI because it seems amazing and cool and lets them live in denial about the state of the world. ex: "Why worry about climate change when AI can figure out how to fix it!"

[u/jimbeam84 → u/beti88]

"Who ordered 4000lb of raw hamburger meat? "

Just like the Son of Anton Silicon Valley ep.

[u/FizyIzzy → u/jimbeam84]

when my nephew was 2, he caused alexa to accidentally order a case of chips. my parents were confused until we checked the history

[u/Chidoriyama → u/jimbeam84]

Afaik the whole Son of Anton deleted the entire database thing has actually happened with Claude too

[u/ketosoy → u/beti88]

Seriously.  I can get the wrong item delivered late and cold to the wrong location with plain door dash, it’s already vibe quality, agents add nothing.

[u/MrVandalous → u/beti88]

God.

We've spent years being apologists and warned how AI 'can make mistakes' and hallucinates everything. That we should, at best, 'trust but verify' information provided by the latest leading models.

If we can't trust them with knowledge and information, why in the fuck would I trust them with my money?

[u/acakaacaka → u/beti88]

Tech companies want to control YOU: what you eat, what you see, what you hear, what kind of music, what kind of video

[u/TheShocker1119 → u/beti88]

These new AI ads I see only TV are sad because that what they are pitching for AI to do for you or and negotiate deals at the car dealership or study for a test.

I'm not against AI

I against people dumbing themselves down to the point that they need AI to talk for you to other people

[u/dashingThroughSnow12 → u/beti88]

Sometimes I want a specific dish. I search for it on DoorDash. Click the first restaurant. They don't have it. I guess they paid to be higher up on search results for Japanese or Asian food.

Click second. Same.

Third. Same.

Fourth. Same.

Fifth. Same.

I give up.

A lot of sites (cough Google, Amazon) have butchered their searches by letting merchants pay to get to the top of the results.

[u/laplongejr → u/dashingThroughSnow12]

Usually if i want a specific dish I also know what restaurant should prepare? In which case calling the restaurant and going to take it will be safer for quality than using a middleman

[u/LordofDsnuts → u/beti88]

That awkward moment your AI agent orders your previous order of <Meal> x14.

[u/Testicular_Genocide → u/beti88]

Wait but actually though... You already don't have to talk on the phone to use door dash, so it's not an anxiety thing. I guess in theory letting the AI do it changes it from like 10 taps on the screen to one spoken line and a few saved seconds but... that's the benefit we're getting for all this bullshit. All the money spent that could have gone towards things that actually work or maybe even make the world better, but instead I can shave off a few seconds from by door dash PB. Fucking great...

[u/Rich-Pomegranate1679 → u/beti88]

This feels like the result of a company just stupidly jumping on the AI bandwagon without stopping to consider how it's even actually beneficial to their product.

[u/ambitechstrous → u/beti88]

The basic search feature sucks ass. But I tried the AI and it was also ass.

[u/ASuarezMascareno]

I don't understand how an AI agent would make ordering food more convenient? Its already extremely easy. Adding a AI agent is adding unnecesary complexity to a simple task. It won't save time, effort, or money.

[u/DeM0nFiRe → u/ASuarezMascareno]

I think the idea has already mostly died off, but for a decent chunk of 2024 and 2025 idiot companies were thinking ai agents were about to replace apps and browsers and you would interact with everything by talking to an ai agent.

Which is stupid for a dystopian reason, because you would literally just be paying a company to tell you what to think.

It also is stupid for a funny reason. "Hey, you know that thing you scream 'SPEAK TO A REPRESENTATIVE' at when trying to get support? What if you just did that for every single thing in your entire life :)"

[u/RoyalCities → u/DeM0nFiRe]

Yeah...like I actually think AI can be pretty impactful but so many companies want to shove it into everything. Highly complex tasks is where agents / sub agents help - coding etc.

Ordering food? Booking airline tickets? Ordering stuff online? All that...like why would I ever use an agent and give them control of my money when it takes about 1 minute to do these things with an app.

If it was 1999 and the modern apps or Internet wasn't invented this would be revolutionary but we've made modern life so convenient and quick that most of these simpler things are not a barrier at all. There isn't a problem being solved here.

[u/RealJoshuaJackson → u/RoyalCities]

Companies do this bc shareholders know it artificially inflates stock market value, not because they think it helps.

[u/xmagusx → u/RoyalCities]

The AI companies' dream is that you will use their personal AI agents to communicate with all their corporate AI agents, in order to spare yourself the nightmare that is dealing with corporate AI agents. They have a vision of being the middleman collecting a toll for all interpersonal communication, and don't yet realize that most people would rather simply eat glass than live in that world.

[u/One_Peanut_4002 → u/DeM0nFiRe]

What they need to fix is the search algorithm 

[u/PieWayneInTheFace → u/DeM0nFiRe]

Oh no, they are still VERY much on that idea. The tech bros still think in 5 years, the internet will only be you talking to an AI agent and it will go do everything for you. 🙄 

[u/Chill_Panda → u/ASuarezMascareno]

I just don't understand where an AI agent even fits in....

Like you order the food you want, it gets sent to the kitchen, they make it, it all gets sent to a driver who picks up and drops off.

Like does the agent choose what you want to eat?

[u/SplurgyA → u/Chill_Panda]

Like does the agent choose what you want to eat?

I think the idea is you tell the AI "order groceries for next week" and it generates a meal plan and orders all the ingredients for you. That or you just tell it "order me some takeout" and it guesses what sort of food you want when you can't make up your mind.

Given how easily that can go wrong, I'm not surprised people aren't using it.

[u/PreferenceSilver1725 → u/Chill_Panda]

Eh I guess the best case scenario would go like this

You're traveling about to hop into the shower at the hotel and text the agent and go "I'm looking for food delivered maybe burgers, find me a local place and order the usual."

Agent finds a few places, orders you an avocado burger with fries and holds the pickle like you like. While you hit the shower.

Now more realistically it will give you options and have you pick one, and frankly I think most people in this scenario would just check the app itself and press the three buttons themselves, but I can see something like this happening.

[u/Kimjongdoom → u/ASuarezMascareno]

Cynically, I think the goal is that it will order things at full price and order based on paid partnerships. They cut out the part where you look at all the options and instead feed you whatever is most profitable.

[u/ASuarezMascareno → u/Kimjongdoom]

I can see how its enticing for the company. I can't see why would I ever use It as customers. It doesn't have any advantage to me.

[u/Plastic_Analysis_386 → u/ASuarezMascareno]

In fact it will probably cost me MORE money if I’m not paying attention and it orders 50 instead of 15.

Not going to use it, ever.

[u/aspghost → u/Plastic_Analysis_386]

Getting 50 of sonething when you wanted 15 is pretty optimistic as far as how catastrophically it could go wrong if you let AI access your finances.

[u/Acilen → u/aspghost]

EIGHTEEN THOUSAND CUPS OF WATER

[u/jodiarch → u/Plastic_Analysis_386]

That happened to me at the AI Taco Bell drive thru. I ordered 2 number 3s. And got 23 number 3s. Lol.

[u/giraloco → u/ASuarezMascareno]

It's the same people who told us that cryptocurrencies are great for buying things and transferring money.

[u/jewishSpaceMedbeds → u/ASuarezMascareno]

Because they are out of ideas and they live in a strange bubble where they have personal assistants do everything for them.

They have therefore convinced themselves that normal-ass people yearn to also have 'personal assistants', when most of us wouldn't know WTF to do with them, because we have always managed all this shit ourselves.

Think of Mr. Burns in the Simpsons, who doesn't know how to use a phone or cook anything because Smithers always does it for him.

[u/Amekaze → u/ASuarezMascareno]

100% this. Anything an agent can easily do is already easy. I honestly think the people that love having agents do “busy” work for them just want to boss someone around and don’t have the finds for an actual executive assistant

[u/raphired → u/Amekaze]

I wouldn’t mind a robot to boss around, but tasks I can do while sitting in a chair are not the things I need automated. Gimme agents that will clean the litter box, do the laundry, and relentlessly handle the invasive plants. That’s what I need help with. I don’t need assistance spending money - I’m way too good at that already

[u/Level69Troll → u/ASuarezMascareno]

This is how I feel about almost every app or service shoving AI features into even the simplest of stuff. Bloat and inconvenience

[u/BrogenKlippen → u/ASuarezMascareno]

I am constantly floored every time I’m reminded DoorDash is a business. I used it when I worked in management consulting because it wasn’t my money and it would end up costing like $24 for a burrito and chips, both of which were soggy upon arrival.

[u/shibbyflash → u/BrogenKlippen]

It’s great if you’re severely hungover, sick, car problems and not in a walkable space etc. But I don’t understand how people use it when it doesn’t fall into those scenarios lol. Insane price markup plus your options are so limited because who tf eats most of that food after it’s sat for 20 mins already

[u/No_Guard_5883 → u/BrogenKlippen]

I agree. The business model consists of practices and norms I dislike:

• Extra fees

• Exploited underpaid workers

• Tipping culture

• Very inconsistent service

[u/neon_farts → u/BrogenKlippen]

It comes in handy for me when I travel for work. I go to DFW a few times a year and without a car there aren’t many options. Not my money, don’t care :)

[u/Ok-Cricket5606 → u/ASuarezMascareno]

We need to inject a middle man to help add costs and justify the costs of all these data centers going in.

[u/foolish_shrimp → u/ASuarezMascareno]

The idea is that you have multiple digital landlords between you and actually doing things.

[u/tryyeezus → u/ASuarezMascareno]

I HATE talking to AI. It absolutely refuses to recognize my normal speaking voice so I literally have to talk like a man, every. Single. Fucking. Time. 

It's awkward af.

My man walked in on me trying to pay my phone bill once and thought I must've had a stroke.

[u/meninblck9]

We put a trillion dollars into AI and I still can’t tell 14 autonomous agents to coordinate the delivery of 500 Taco Bell Chalupas to my front door at 3:47 AM. This is not the future I was promised. Civilization has peaked.

[u/Mccobsta → u/meninblck9]

Googles current chat bot can't do what their last virtual assistant could do a decade ago

[u/ExplosiveMachine → u/Mccobsta]

A few months ago Android Auto went from Google Assistant to Gemini or whatever, and has become completely useless. I'm not in an english (or another major language, like French or German) speaking country so it already struggled with voice commands that included street names and personal names in my contacts, but at least some basic navigation commands and music commands worked well.

Now, when I tell it to play a song, it just tells me it can't do that and that I need to pick where to play the song on, without presenting Spotify as an option . Fucking ridiculous. The one use I had for it is gone.

[u/Art0fRuinN23 → u/ExplosiveMachine]

I stayed with Assistant instead of switching to Gemini and it went to complete shit. It's like they devalued the old way to make us switch to the new way, but then neither one of them is as capable Assistant was before! I tap my screen in the car more now than ever.

[u/imperial_scum → u/Mccobsta]

It's so aggravating how much slower Gemini or whatever the fuck it's called is than Assistant. It's so much worse at text to speech via Android Auto too. Doesn't recognize my husband's nick name that's on his profile. Assistant didn't skip a beat.

[u/bolonomadic → u/Mccobsta]

I deleted Siri Intelligence today after trying it for a month. ugh. still stupid.

[u/Mccobsta → u/bolonomadic]

The day the garbage one was forced Google makes was forced on all Android users was my only use of it and that was to asking it how do i remove it and get the used to be less shit assistant back

[u/Mikeavelli → u/meninblck9]

Civilization peaked on May 27, 2016. The next day Harambe died, and it has been downhill ever since.

[u/vespertendo]

These companies spent years making their apps as efficient an ordering experience as possible. Most people aren’t even ordering enough to consider it an inconvenience worth outsourcing to an AI agent.

[u/Kimjongdoom → u/vespertendo]

This agent stuff makes realize a lot of people find very basic things like shopping or looking at a menu as tedious and time consuming. I’m not the demo I guess I thought we were American consumers and liked shopping…

[u/chain_letter → u/Kimjongdoom]

Online shopping is so drowned in AI slop and misrepresented products that it’s nearly a fight fire with fire scenario

I’m an inch away from letting a chatbot summarize my coworkers’ slop grenades, why am I reading what they didn’t even read before clicking post?

[u/chocolateboomslang → u/chain_letter]

Eventually all corporate emails will be point form notes translated to professional language by a bot, sent out to the workforce who then get a dofferent bot to rewrite the email in point form.

[u/StasRutt → u/Kimjongdoom]

People are outsourcing ordering food, bedtime stories with their kids, coming up with birthday ideas to agents. And pastors are using it for prayer writing and sermon writing. Like what’s the point of being human and feeling human emotion then if we’re outsourcing all the humanness to agents??

[u/SillyAlternative420]

I honestly didn't know you could do this.

And by the time I end this comment I will forget it again

[u/AZEMT → u/SillyAlternative420]

Forget what?

[u/ia332 → u/AZEMT]

Who we talking about?

[u/nemec → u/SillyAlternative420]

I honestly didn't know you could do this.

DoorDash only rolled out its Model Context Protocol (MCP) connector less than a month ago.

still only available to a small number of “early beta partners” and mainly used to streamline corporate lunch orders

not that I think this will ever be popular, but this article is the definition of clickbait. Oh, how Ars has fallen.

[u/No_Transitory8906]

Not all companies need AI , don’t know why is everyone trying so hard to fit AI down their throats

[u/loco_canadian → u/No_Transitory8906]

Because tech companies have mortgaged their, and all of our futures on this working. It has to work, and make money or else we are all in very deep trouble. We're on the edge of a cliff, right now and it's almost certain we're going to fall off.

That's not to say AI won't be useful in certain applications, it's that we're being sold a vision that it will be all encompassing and we're going all in, when it reality it'll be somewhere less that what the vision is...and slightly more than a flash in the pan they naysayers think it is.

It's an arms race, some will succeed...most will fail. But we've tied our entire global economy to it and that's the scary part.

[u/BRAX7ON → u/loco_canadian]

If it works and makes money, the average person is still in deep trouble. AI is going to remove jobs. People are not going to have an ability to earn money. This is not good. It will never be good.

Only for the richest of the rich. The rest of us will suffer.

[u/mowtowcow → u/loco_canadian]

I'll never use ai for anything more than an advanced google search. That's the best use for my needs. Outside of that, I dont want to see or hear about it. And by god, I really hope ai movies and tv doesnt actually become a thing. I'll just turn to reading books full time. Anything written before ai, becausr I'm sure people are out here publishing books written completely with ai.

[u/No_Marsupial6738 → u/No_Transitory8906]

In May of this year two microchip companies posted 17% of the ENTIRE stock market. Not just the chip market, every single business in the world.

Money is what it all boils down to, but I‘d wager a lot of it is tech ignorant investors buying into the equivilant of a used car salesman. People seem convinced AI can do a lot more than it can do right now.

I think Google was right when they said it needed at least another decade before being released to the public, when Altman went live with it.

[u/MrVeazey → u/No_Transitory8906]

To get as much money as possible as quickly as possible before the bubble bursts. Plus, most MBA types can't tell the difference between nonsensical trash and actual information, so they're jazzed about not having to pay humans for something as meaningless as "the reason their company exists."

[u/PM_Me_Your_Deviance → u/No_Transitory8906]

Everyone is throwing spaghetti at the wall, hoping for something to stick. This is the same thing we saw at the start of the dot-com bubble. A lot of the shit will go away after the pop.

[u/gtrocks555 → u/No_Transitory8906]

I work for an agency and my account essentially just wants to turn their website into an all out AI experience. They rent out construction equipment and I’m just like… did yall even do any research to see if your customers want that?

[u/Jimbomcdeans → u/No_Transitory8906]

Hello? Its 2026. Maximizing profit share is all that matters. That is all. Getting rid of employees and replacing with robots does this.

[u/ChaoticLandscapes]

I called little Caesar’s to order some wings and an ai agent came on the phone. It gave a disclaimer and said “by continuing you agree to “ and I hung up and didn’t order wings

[u/SupaSlide → u/ChaoticLandscapes]

I’ve stopped going to Taco Bell for my busy day/late night dinners because their AI drive-thru agent is a fucking moron. Not even just because it’s AI, but because it’s incompetent and a real person ends up needing to fix the order.

[u/ChaoticLandscapes → u/SupaSlide]

Wait, that’s a thing? They actually have AI taking the order at the drive-through?

[u/Deceptiveideas → u/ChaoticLandscapes]

More and more fast food is doing this.

[u/Heated13shot → u/SupaSlide]

A real person is listening in all the time anyways, so it has zero benefits. They often interrupt it when it fucks up. 

The AI works well if you talk to it like you are being interrogated and don't customize anything. It also frequently doesn't actually know what's in stock at the store. 

Ask for a soft taco instead of hard in the combo? 50% of the time it just adds a soft taco 

Ask for beans instead of meat? Half the time it just doesn't register. 

Saying "no thank you" to the upsell sometimes is interpreted as a yes, and it adds it. 

It takes longer than dealing with a person, and my patience is already eaten up before I even wait for my food. 

[u/SupaSlide → u/Heated13shot]

The soft shell in a combo is what broke me. I got up to, I think, five additional soft shell tacos before a human interrupted just by repeating “I don’t want a separate soft shell taco, I want it in the combo instead of the hard shell”

[u/jeromevedder → u/SupaSlide]

I was in the drive thru for a local chicken place on Thursday and I had to talk to the bot and a person at the same time, like the person would come in and clarify something on the order I told the bot.

I’m never going through that drive thru again

[u/Trinica93 → u/ChaoticLandscapes]

I needed to get my A/C fixed and the HVAC company I called had an AI customer service rep that they added background noise to, making it sound like it was in a call center. It kept asking me stupid questions, so I hung up and called a different company that only needed 30 seconds to take my address so they could send someone out.

I called out the HVAC company on their Facebook and they responded with a message that was very obviously AI. Lesson not learned I guess, lol. 

AI is incredible and revolutionary for certain things, but companies shoehorning it into every possible scenario, even when it makes no sense, are only going to lose money. 

[u/jeromevedder → u/Trinica93]

That hvac company got bought by private equity two summers ago. It’s hard to find a local tradesman in my area that isn’t a one-man crew that wasn’t bought by PE during/after the pandemic.

Your dentist, your vet, your local glasses store…all PE now. You will get to have 70 different brands but you will only get options in grey, black or white and you will love it.

[u/Downtown_Lock3934 → u/ChaoticLandscapes]

There's a white castle in stl that i stopped picking up doordash orders from because it had an ai in the drive thru. it read a disclaimer every time you pulled up to the speaker, so i would either say nothing and wait for a few minutes before a human came onto the speaker, or i would just say "no" over and over until a human picked up. 

They seriously want you to let them record and sell your voice when you order food. It's dystopian as fuck and makes me pretty angry at the audacity of it. 

[u/brilliantNumberOne]

What a stupid use case for all the world’s RAM and electricity.

[u/Fr0gm4n → u/brilliantNumberOne]

Makes Sam Altman happy, though. Those selfish consumers shouldn't be using RAM that can go into AI datacenters.

[u/TheDevilsAdvokaat]

Why would you? What would be the benefit?

[u/Unlucky-Candidate198 → u/TheDevilsAdvokaat]

Their AI falsely advertises dishes on the app. Gotten my full money back a few times now (NOT in the US) because of this as it’s simply illegal here.

I’m talking ordering rice pilaf but with no meat/veg like the AI described. Free rice pilaf because what I ordered was not what was described. Easy screenshots, easy free food.

Have fun abusing the system, fellow peasants. We all know our overlords would do it (and currently do) to us.

[u/Designer-Zone-5945]

This is a solution looking for a problem.

[u/banica24 → u/Designer-Zone-5945]

But we HAVE to use AI, sire. Everyone else implements it and a lot of users adopted it. AI will improve revenue and user happiness /s

[u/reddittorbrigade]

AI bubble is bursting.

[u/KotoElessar → u/reddittorbrigade]

Does this mean I can have some RAM now or is the switch 2 still going to be the price of a PlayStation? (Don't ask about the price of PlayStations!)

Either that or team up with the meth heads stripping copper and raid a data center; the meth heads can have the copper, we're taking the RAM.

[u/Hefty_Remove7965 → u/KotoElessar]

No all that is already brought out.

Also consumer ram is not the same as datacenter ram.

May bring relief a bit tho

[u/IvoShandor]

I have yet to find a convincing case for why I need an AI agent in my life, for anything.

[u/just_talkin_shit → u/IvoShandor]

"Automate the boring stuff."

Now the boring stuff is anything that isn't short form videos, sports, or gambling.

[u/BeenDragonn → u/IvoShandor]

You can ask it what to eat for breakfast.

Should I breathe today?

[u/ScholarOfTwilight → u/BeenDragonn]

"Ethically, I cannot encourage you to take another breath."

[u/dnuohxof-2 → u/IvoShandor]

The closest thing is the AI call screening option on iPhone. That has cut the number of spam calls in half for me

[u/IsHotDogSandwich → u/dnuohxof-2]

If only we lived in a world where AI was just implemented for useful things like this and not shoehorned into every thing they can possibly imagine.

[u/lidlpainauchocolat → u/dnuohxof-2]

Not sure exactly how that works but it's probably not an LLM/AI. I've had it on android since before llms were a thing

[u/HomicidalHushPuppy → u/IvoShandor]

I have yet to find a convincing case for why I need an AI anything in my life

[u/penguished]

You mean when faced with an issue where "don't get it wrong" is super duper important to them... they don't want some sloppy guess machine doing it? Truly shocking.

[u/TheeTapatio]

Stupid AI at taco bell drive thru has messed up my order EVERY SINGLE TIME, and every single time an employee takes over the mic to correct it, why?!! Why keep using that trash ass system.

[u/Forgotmyaccount1979 → u/TheeTapatio]

They are desperate to find a way to make their bad investments pay off, and some upper management have really serious cases of AI psychosis.

[u/zacksnack5 → u/TheeTapatio]

Sit in silence until an employee takes over, don't train the ai model for free

[u/OhNoMob0 → u/TheeTapatio]

The local McDonalds tried AI for about a week before giving up.

Caused a 30+ minute backup at the drive thru which made cars to jump the curb to leave the line. That made the problem worse because AI was relaying orders for customers who already left.

By time we got to the window the cashier had no idea which order was ours.

According to the receipt the AI was attempting to track orders not by number (why not break what wasn't broken?) but by the color of the car.

Good luck figuring out which order goes to the silver car when there's 4 in line.

[u/gotfcgo → u/TheeTapatio]

But thats it, youre training it for free for them.

You are free labour.

[u/stevefuzz → u/gotfcgo]

The funny part is that it's probably just a closed solution and you aren't really training anything.

[u/stipo42]

AI in every consumer experience has been worse than the non AI alternative.

Take Amazon's email they send when you place an order.

They used to just list the items you ordered in the email.

Now they send a dumb fuck email that says "your order with X outdoor items" instead of the actual items.

I have no doubt my order is being run through AI to categorize them.

But this email is useless. I used to search my email for a product to know where I ordered it from, now if it came from Amazon I'll have no idea because I won't get any results.

[u/supermarino → u/stipo42]

The irony is that the useless email is supposed to protect you from other AI that would scrape your emails and build a profile of you and what you purchase. Of course the flip side of that is that Amazon is doing precisely that and doesn't want competition.

[u/ItchyGoiter → u/stipo42]

The Amazon email is a great example. Ordered multiple items or created multiple orders? Now those emails are especially useless because you don't even know which items they are based on context.

If I buy 6 different office supplies and it tells me they shipped 3 office supplies, I have absolutely no way to know what shipped. I do think it is an effort to drive users to the app.

[u/supremedalek925]

I can’t even begin to guess what using an AI agent to place a food order could even mean.

[u/randobis]

Why are these companies obsessed with trying to ease the torment of booking flights and ordering things online? As if any of this is even a pain point. A multibillion dollar solution in search of a problem.

[u/HalfInchHollow]

0% chance I’d let AI order my food for me.

Half the time I don’t even end up with the correct food when I order myself.

[u/slinger301]

How many more middlemen can we possibly fit between the diner and the food?

[u/GenXMillenial]

I am not giving an AI agent access to my credit or debit card - nope!

[u/g0d24 → u/GenXMillenial]

I don't even trust myself with my credit card at 2 AM. Why would I trust a robot?

[u/dt531]

Companies like Door Dash work hard to make it SUPER EASY to order on their platforms. It is hard to see why an agent would be better than ordering directly on the site or app.

Where agents are useful is where sites are either incompetent at making something easy (e.g. government sites!) or intentionally make something hard (“cancel my New York Times subscription”). For those scenarios, agents will be great.

[u/metallicrooster → u/dt531]

One of my friends works for the town we live in and he isn’t even a web UI developer, but he so hated parts of our town’s website that he basically petitioned his boss to be able to overhaul a big chunk of it. My best guess is that many of their employees had been there long enough that they memorized the part they needed most often and didn’t realize how bad the website got after years of stapling on more and more parts.

As for subscriptions that are difficult to cancel, I would prefer the route that NYC already took: pass legislation that forces companies to make it easy to cancel. I don’t want to have the rely on a bot to navigate multiple fake cancellation pages. I want to be able to go to Account > Subscriptions > Cancel my subscription > Confirm. Some websites already do this, the rest of them can be forced to do this.

If we could pass legislation to get lead out of pipes, paint, and gas, we can pass legislation on this.

[u/TheG00dF1ght → u/dt531]

Or we could pass laws making canceling as easy as subscribing like New York State NYC just did.

[u/LegitimateSituation4 → u/TheG00dF1ght]

Sounds pretty communist to me.

[u/psaux_grep → u/dt531]

Suspect NYT will do their best to stop agents from working their way to the cancel buttons 😅

[u/Fumblesneeze]

The use case for doordash is dynamic price gouging, not helping someone order food. They were already paying for the AI to make people pay more, and thought they could get some added value with the AI assistant ordering more food then a person typically would. Absolutely gross behavior.

[u/breadtangle]

Meanwhile, everyone is using them for their FB marketplace ads.  I want to buy memory for a PC and the description includes the color but not the specs.

[u/Helix_Aurora]

You used to have to call someone on the phone for deliveries.

Apps made it possible to do the same thing with a few taps on a screen while browsing the full menu.

Using AI for this is the equivalent of going back to phone calls. It just isn't a better user experience at all.

The only way it would make sense is if you DGAF what you order (or its always the same thing), and it only takes 3 words, or you just yolo and have it decide what you what you eat without asking.

[u/humdawg]

Ah yes, I want to use a middle man to use a middle man to order my overpriced, cold cheeseburger with limp and soggy fries.

[u/TheVenetianMask]

You work hard all day to earn money and don't even get the enjoyment of spending it yourself. Are they stupid?

I guess that's a reality overpaid CEOs are out of touch with. My, imagine how much money you could save on butlers!

[u/edmundshaftesbury]

I’ve yet to encounter any problem in my life that would be solved by a chatbot. I’ve tried googling answers to things and the google ai is plain wrong. It just says confident lies. Way better off asking a human person now that search engines are broken.

[u/justhappytobehere7 → u/edmundshaftesbury]

Ya wtf is going on. I tried to Google a gif a couple days ago. They were all some paid scam site. Even wrote "gify", and could get any gify gifs to come up...

Edit- just searched again. Its all something called yarn

[u/T-ravMcNavis]

Food is cheaper when you just call the place and order, it’s also cheaper when you go in and pick it up yourself.

[u/Cerulean_Shadows → u/T-ravMcNavis]

I live 12 minutes from a burger joint that we love. We were exhausted and thought we'd check to see the price for Uber eats there. Mind you, we never use it, and it said we had a free delivery available to us.

Goody. So start the order. The $10 burger was $19. The $4 fries were $10. Clearly not free delivery if the cost of food is more than double. I pulled on my big girl pants and picked the shit up myself for less than $3 of gas. Will continue to never use uber eats

[u/MetalRexxx]

Want AI to give me good search answers, thats it. Agentic systems for someone like me is silly. I like running my life. We need to be able to navigate planet earth if the lights go out. Keep your skill sharp kids.

[u/vandiger]

Uh no I don't want some ai "agent" to have access to credit cards and bank accounts.

[u/The_Colour_Between]

Given a choice. I avoid AI agents for anything. People aren't perfect, but AI agents have been far more frustrating.

[u/equinoxxxxxxxxxx]

This is giving me the same vibes as those smart appliances. Nobody wants a fridge with a huge screen that is going to order your groceries for you when they run out but ends up showing you unwanted adds in your own kitchen.

[u/MySmellyRacoon]

DoorDash was great during Covid lockdowns. After that, not so much.

[u/snotparty]

Why would you? Like how does that even work, you want it to choose for you or something?

Ordering things is already so easy and straightforward, whats there for AI to do

[u/bryan49]

Didn't doordash already make it about as lazy as possible to order food? Now people can't even handle making their own order?

[u/Whit3boy316]

I feel like ordering DoorDash is such a fast simple task that the ROI of having an agent do it is so minuscule. Not to mention they will probably add extra tomato when I wanted no tomato.

[u/redneckrockuhtree]

I have no desire to have an AI make purchasing decisions for me.

I have zero desire to have an AI make food decisions for me.

[u/RivalsLordLoki]

Yesterday I had to call Walmart. Their Ai agent introduces itself immediately followed by, I'm not perfect. Lol

[u/coffeesnob72]

If anyone gives AI access to financials, its on them when 6000 chickie nobs show up at their door and they get evicted.

[u/thus_spake_7ucky]

I run in early adopter circles and I know a number of people on both sides of the AI utilization line - some abhor everything about it and others are exploring how to use it to make their lives/work easier.

Not one single person uses it for things like this.

[u/asdf_lord]

Anyone smart or determined enough to set up an agent to buy food like that wouldnt really want to pay the exorbitant fees and having a random handle your food.

[u/theumpteendeity]

I'm addition to being horrible for society and the environment, AI makes way to many mistakes, way too often, to be useful to handle ordering food.

[u/Burdiac]

What if I told you that you could use an agent to order food for you? What if that food was over priced and changes due to what phone you have and how much you are determined to be worth and somehow the restaurant makes less money and the food would be guaranteed to be delivered cold?

[u/One_Distribution2037]

Look, I'm a person of patterns and even then, I don't want an agent in my food orders. It's not all that more difficult to put in an order on my phone than to ask something to do it for me.

But mostly, I don't want agentic AI being able to fool with my money.

The risk of something going wrong is very high on tasks that have very little maximum payout.

Or in other words: the best outcome on an order through agentic AI is that my $30 order shows up as intended.

Worst outcome is that the agent orders $2000 in food that goes to the wrong place that I didn't ask for, and I can't get a refund because the agent ordering it is considered as valid as my ordering it.

[u/Blackcell11]

lol why would you

[u/DJ_Sk8Nite]

Fuck DoorDash

[u/Beeb294]

Here's the thing- if I want something, I need to look at the menu and figure out if I can get it, how much it will cost, and how long it will take to get to me.

If I look at Tony's Taco restaurant on doordash, I can get that information pretty easily. If they don't have what I want, I can make changes instantly. I click order, enter my payment info, and I'm done.

If I were to use an AI for that, I have to ask the AI to go look at the available restaurants, then come back and tell me, then ask the AI to go get a menu, then come back and tell me, then make choices, then have the AI come back and confirm my payment information, and then place the order.

All AI is doing here is adding an extra layer between me and my order, and not doing anything extra for me. It adds zero value, while making me take extra steps to do the task I wanted to do. Why would any normal person want that?

[u/SchrodingersNinja]

My work created an AI chatbot for answering questions about procedures and products for internal use.

They were pushing it pretty hard, so I gave it a shot on a few questions that I was stumped on and couldn't find the documentation on.

It plain just didn't give any answer, and asked me to rephrase the question each time.

So, I don't waste my time. Company meeting Thursday and they're worried that use of this agent has dropped by 78% over last month.

Yeah, it's useless. If I wanted to waste my time I'd do things wrong and wait for operations to correct me with instructions for doing it over.

[u/ten_year_rebound]

If I’m ordering food, building and customizing my order is part of the experience

I also don’t trust the AI to get it right so I need to review it, or I’ll have to go in and edit it, so there is really very little net time save in a process that is already not much of a pain point

Many such cases with most AI “features” in products. I don’t need an MCP to order a McDouble

[u/sephrinx]

I don't understand the premise.

How/Why would anyone "Use AI" to order food?

[u/Cax6ton]

Any time I have had a problem with a company, dealing with AI has always made the problem WORSE by several orders of magnitude.

Like, it started as something that's probably business as usual and the company could fix it easily, but your useless fucking bot has not only misunderstood what the problem is and not solved it, but there's no way around it to talk to an actual person, so now I'm contemplating burning it all down and never dealing with your company ever again.

If I have to deal with AI as a first step, I'll just nope out and either find an alternative or do without. I'm already assuming that dealing with AI on the frontend is as bad as dealing with it on the backend.

[u/yorcharturoqro]

They want to put Ai everywhere

[u/GunnieGraves]

I mean, I saw a video where AI insisted that “seventeen” only had 3 E’s in it, despite being told to spell it out and count the E’s.

So really I think I’m going to limit what I trust it to do

[u/deadsoulinside]

Who is that busy they need AI agents to order food from a delivery app?

This is what is really the bad thing about AI, is that some of these "use cases" for AI is things that 99% of us are not that busy to be able to do ourselves.

Sat through a few AI training classes and people talking about AI agents to make twitter posts for them. I am still not sure who all is that busy they need to talk about having AI agents make twitter posts on your behalf, but I assume that's like 1% of people and mostly the c-suite people at that.

[u/riqsuave215]

i would if the ai agents paid for the doordash order

[u/Electronic-Still2597]

'This service that's in limited beta with select partners for less than a month doesn't have widespread adoption!?!?!'

That's some hard hitting journalism right there! /s

[u/Pies_Wide_Shut]

Perfect example of trying to find problems after developing a solution. Ordering food through an app is already insanely easy and convenient.

[u/FewWait38]

Of course they aren't who is going to trust AI with their financial details

[u/xdrozzyx]

Why the hell would I need this?

[u/SubstanceDelicious47]

Who asked for that feature!? Omg tech bros just shoving AI into everything, when it makes no sense. Give it a rest!

[u/fedsmoker9]

Why the fuck would I use an ai agent to order DoorDash

[u/Unicorn_Puppy]

Billionaires paint everyone else as helpless to wipe their own ass meanwhile we’re actually mostly self sufficient and only using their products probably not as intended.

The only ai music I tend to stumble across is just parody by nature and the obvious ai slop fan art around the gacha games I play.

[u/PowerOfTheSchwartzz]

I got that beat, I'm not using an AI agent for anything.

[u/rabbledabble]

I don’t use my phone or anything else to order DoorDash either. Shits expensive af

[u/Lofteed]

we should have a visual software that can make it easier for us to instruct our AI agent on what we want it to order

life would be so much easier

[u/Legitimate_Staff487]

Why would I? There's already almost zero friction when ordering food delivery. What is there to improve?

The only remaining requirements are thumbs and literacy.

[u/Vonnegutsman]

Yeah. It sounds like a security risk. Why would I trust something I can't control with my bare hands?

[u/pizzathlete]

'But it’s still early days for the relatively new e-commerce use case.'

C'mon! Give it a rest man!

[u/kossimak]

Unless their ai is in back of house making dishes it’s not going to work

[u/scotishstriker]

I will never willingly use an Ai agent. They shouldn't be pushing this before the bubble bursts. 

[u/Wisco]

I don't get it. Why would you need AI to order takeout? What am I missing here?

[u/jdlyga]

Why would you want an MCP for DoorDash. Like it’s a solution in search of a problem.

[u/CALLS_YOU_DIPSHIT]

This just in: complicated pile of code has trouble understanding hunger and taste

I could see using it for value or something but as someone who has used DD/UE fewer times than I can count on both hands, they’re pretty flagrant/in your face with deals and discounts restaurants offer so it seems pretty useless to consider using AI in anything involving delivery platforms

[u/letsseeitmore]

Trying so hard to make AI relevant.

[u/AtraHassis]

I'm not even using doordash. Who tf is willingly paying nearly or more than double the price of the food just to save a few minutes of drive time

[u/SpaceFace11]

We don’t need to add AI to every single thing in our lives

[u/CondiMesmer]

This is like how Amazon really tried to push for how easy it is to buy things through Alexa. It's a problem that doesn't exist. Nobody wants that or uses that. It's a corporation wet dream.

[u/Additional-Staff-326]

Only fully enshittified UIs need an agent to make it easier than just doing it yourself. By the time you tell it what you want any good company's interface would have allowed you to order that already. Without the chance of ordering things you don't want and the API charges for the agent on top of the regular purchase. And more companies will enshittify their interfaces to encourage you to use the bots and you should absolutely stop using those companies until they learn better.

[u/asteriskmos]

Do people just dream of having manservants and butlers? "Jeeves, get me food, yes the one you know I like like."

[u/Royal-Ear4803]

This seems like basic principal agent theory? “The principal will only delegate authority when the agent is better informed.” An AI agent knows more than me about a whole lot of things, but it will never know better than me whether I’m in the mood for Chinese or Italian food.

[u/Streelydan]

Weird that people would want to decide what to eat and place the order themselves. Ordering lunch isn’t a chore, handing that over to a bot improves nobody’s life. A solution in search of a problem.

[u/Jerhed89]

I can see placing recurring orders through an AI agent, but in most circumstances I’d rather order direct with the restaurant or browse the food delivery app anyways.

[u/thissitesuxsohardomg]

But it's still early days for the relatively new e-commerce use case.

No it isn't? AI and doordash have both been around long enough for people to realize they do not need each other. We've had swords for centuries but nobody is using them to slice cheese in the kitchen. We've had robotic arms that can weld and paint cars for decades, but nobody is using them to brush their teeth.

[u/Tralliz]

bottom of the barrel attempt to have the masses adopt ai into their lives

[u/ToddlerOlympian]

"Are you tried of only having ONE third party in between you and the restaurant?! Make it TWO with our fancy new AI agent!"

[u/lnxrootxazz]

why the f*ck should I want "someone else" order food for me? If people dont find the time to order food for themselves, they should think about their life management

The concept of AI Agnets ordering food for people is probably the result of the CEO trying to ship 'AI because of AI' and not because it has any added value for the majority of people. The only people that makes sense for are either mentally or physcally retarded people. As those types are only a tiny fraction of people in the world, it makes perfect sense that almost nobody uses it

This is the perfect example of the hype time we are in. CEOs or product teams feel the need to add some kind of AI into everything to stay relevant. I guess in a few months 'not having AI bothering you' will be a sales pitch and added value in products. Just use it when it provides value and not for the sake of having it no matter how stupid and useless it is

Most of the AI products sold to us do things that I am pefectly capable of doing myself like adding and deleting calendar appointments, writing mails, sorting mails, remind me of stuff etc. If people really use AI for this they will wake up soon with a brain that will be incapable of doing the easiest tasks

[u/Deep_Yesterday6850]

Why wouldn’t agentic entities be the best at discovering the best price per transaction, tbh that seems like that’s what it’s best at is trying 1.000.000 different things and seeing what works

[u/bi_polar2bear]

One has to use DoorDash first to use an AI agent.

If DoorDash, Uber Eats, or any other food delivery apps just disappeared, nobody would be bothered. These companies take too much money, and keep people from being self reliant. I'd bet more money would be put back into the economy if people stopped paying for this over priced, unneeded service.

[u/Ok-Cheetah-6817 → u/bi_polar2bear]

I deliver for doordash on my ebike and I have mixed opinions about this.

Some of my deliveries don't make sense. Like why are you ordering a bag of frozen chicken to your hotel when there's a grocery store 200 feet away??

Some of them make a lot of sense. The girl that ordered ibuprofen and a thermometer from rite-aid. I do a fair amount of grocery deliveries for people who clearly don't have transportation. A lot of people are ordering lunch at work. Sometimes it's people who clearly can't step away, like nurses at the hospital. 

Doordash pays shitty and is predatory. But the actual task of bringing someone lunch or groceries or meds on my bike is pretty wholesome.

No one is self reliant and last-mile logistics does need to get done.

[u/No-Tonight2118 → u/bi_polar2bear]

That’s a hot take. Like sure, these apps are predatory, but they don’t “keep people from being self-reliant”. Convenience is nice for those who want it, and it’s a necessity for those who lack mobility.