Would you visit a partially or completely automated fast food restaurant?

I think that would be a bit scary.

I'd prefer to go to 'real' restaurants. But it would be cool to have such an option at 2am... when most other stuff is closed...

great, we can replace human error with machine error, or human error once removed so there's no ease of correcting it. Seriously, anyone who thinks that replacing humans with machines will eliminate human error hasn't worked with machines very much. Even assembly lines tend to be surrounded by people. There are plenty of unsanitary conditions that can exist in a purely machine operated environment as well.

I would visit such a place only if I was very very hungry and it was my best option. That's got more to do with the the quality I would expect of the food rather than it being operated without humans.

romkey: would you say that Krispy Kreme counts as food prepared by humans?

hmmmmm... well there are humans involved in the process at some point... but you do have a point, although it certainly falls in the category of food that's terrible for you.

Didn't any of these peopel see The Terminator? The smarter we make our machines, the more likely we are to get fudgeed up in the long run!

cool, will it chew my food for me too?

I doubt I would go to such a place, but as romkey said, it would be more about the quality of the food than about the machine operation. I might be kind of curious to see how/if it worked.

I'm having flashbacks of Modern Times

Kool! The Automat 2000. I'm there!

Ya know, the fast food workers I've been in contact with lately, weren't "all there" anyway. No big loss if they were canned so machines could take their places.

Having spent 4 years working in a fast food restauraunt, I know that quality control goes down when the crew is working above capacity. I worked in the same restaurant a decade later, just to prove to myself I hadn't got too soft & jaded. Failed. Employees were sad to hear that in the old day's it was close comeraderie, deciding who's house we would go to for brew's and a game of Risk at 3am, and making constant jokes; each week we had a new theme; during pope week it was things like "and could you bless those water's for us", or "gosh darnmit pope, where's my bacon-cheeseburger". It was mostly college students my first time, and latino's a decade later. Employees were worked so much harder in the later regime; The equipment & product hadn't changed and yet times were reduced from 4 min to 3 min max.; SPMH (sales per man hour, used every half hour to calculate if crew should be sent home) had increased 200%, but prices only 20%. Even in the old days it was tough. On busy understaffed nights we had to throw cardboard on the floor because we didn't have time for mopping and were running. I often had to summon a kamikaze berserker attitude to keep up. I woke up with charlie horses all the time, and had a schedule that necessitated sleeping only 6 times per week. (come to think of it that's what I do naturally now 16 years later.) Having also been a master vintage automotive craftsman, and a computer system integrator, I think wages should be the other way around. $5/hr for programming & $30/hr for fast-food. Actually I think all wages & benefits should be equalized, & college should be another job. I've written a very comprehensive system for achieving this through meta-corporate contracting pools in which a fictitious money determines competitive bidding for who does a project under who's budget (big budgets can buy more valuable effort), but everyone who fulfills minimum labor units, brings home the same check. Pride, skill growth, responsibility, and social standing would be the prime motivators.
Jack-in-the-box makes absurdly painstaking efforts at being sanitary to avoid another e-coli outbreak. They pour bottles of genetically modified e-coli to break down the grease traps. I bet they still don't have a clue what happened. 'The Sheep look up.' (a novel by john brunner foretelling such tragedies.)

machines make mistakes too, so i'd go with, automated ordering, but people preparing my food....

Brian: It's already happened. Most 'trades' in 1970 were a subset of engineer or craftsman. A person always had to think on their feet. Now most of these jobs have changed to tech positions. A television repairman could always learn more; now a photocopy machine repairman replaces the component there machine tells them to replace. I knew more about telephone installation when I was a kid than the last line installer I talked to. On the other hand people were stuck in careers back then. Last I heard the average job lasted 3.x years and it's probably half that by now. 'The time machine' illustrated the same thing: the Ilois were free to frolic in the sun with all there care's attended to, caring not even about life or death; The Morlock lived below running the machinery, and occasionally dining on an Ilois.
I figured that I had job security as a programmer, particularly one who designs programming tools. But unlike my prior career restoring cars, all my work was designed to put numerous people out of work.

Way back, I developed a system for making custom burgers. With or without computers. A punch card like the ones used at polling booths would list each ingredient available with columns for raw or grilled. The customer would fill it out. The card for the burger would be submitted to the grill where a red LED would light under each ingredient that needed grilled ie as the calamari patty or the pineapple, next the cook would throw on the green LED items ie the crapake mushrooms and cranberry-mustard. 'ZooBurger' was the name I had in mind. The current computer monitor systems aren't really meant to handle special orders. For fun, I told our assistant manager how our new computer system could be modified for embezzling. I was a poor judge of character back then. Years later he was busted for implementing my plan over three years.

Probably, not very often though. I usually don't have the appetite to eat out though.

I have food allergies that must be carefully attended to. I vastly prefer that people take my order.

Romkey's first point was quite valid.

For the experience, absolutely. Would I support it as a standard? Absolutely not.

I think it would be fun, never knowing what I was going to get for lunch.

If it was something like a microwave dinner, then I don't see why not let a robot do it. Anything more complicated than that I would want human intervention in.

It would probobly be safer to eat at one.

I'm repairing my 'Rocket-Deco' style waffle iron at the moment.

jen - but I guess we could build a robot which would forget to wash its hands after scratching its ass, right? That would probably bring a lot more people into the restaurant because they'd have that warm and fuzzy feeling.

Aren't there already automated pancake machines at some diners?

That warm and fuzzy feeling; from scratching ones...?

KR I don't know about yours but my ass is both warm and fuzzy.

Well, let's compare.

Actually now that I think about it a little more, my ass is more like cold and fuzzy must of the time. I mean, it's fuzzy all the time... ok, that's enough tequila for me.