Show Notes
On today’s episode, Wendy’s product manager Will Croushorn joins Sam to share how FreshAi, the fast-food restaurant’s voice-based AI ordering system, is reinventing the drive-through experience for millions of customers. From handling 200 billion ways to order a Dave’s Double burger to making fast food more accessible for guests in multiple languages, Will reveals how empathy and innovation will positively impact the future of convenience. Learn how his team turns speech data into insight, builds trust in automation, and can even hide a few Easter eggs in your next order. Read the episode transcript here. That's a wrap on Season 12!
We'll back in January with a bonus episode.
*Please take our listener survey: mitsmr.com/podcastsurvey
It's short — we promise! — and all respondents will receive a free MIT SMR article collection, "Maximizing the Value of Generative AI."
Guest bio:
Will Croushorn is a product leader at Wendy’s and cocreator of its drive-through voice agent, FreshAi, which handles more than 150,000 orders each day across hundreds of stores throughout the U.S. Recognized by Fast Company as one of the “Next Big Things in Tech,” the artificial intelligence platform shows that AI can deliver measurable impact at enterprise scale. Croushorn’s career has been shaped by relentless curiosity: He started a school in northern Iraq, became fluent in Behdini Kurdish, and now advances vision and multimodal AI serve customers in entirely new ways.
Me, Myself, and AI is a podcast produced by MIT Sloan Management Review and hosted by Sam Ransbotham. It is engineered by David Lishansky and produced by Allison Ryder.
We encourage you to rate and review our show. Your comments may be used in Me, Myself, and AI materials.
ME, MYSELF, AND AI® is a federally registered trademark of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All rights reserved.
More from Me, Myself, and AI
What if artificial intelligence could connect the scattered knowledge across your organization and help you actually use it? Dropbox CTO Ali Dasdan joins Me, Myself, and AI to explain how the company is using AI to bring together information across files, apps, and platforms while navigating the challenges of security, permissions, and “context rot.” He also shares how Dropbox drove the adoption of AI coding tools to nearly 100% of its developers and why human review and guardrails still matter.
A time of crisis often requires the need for ongoing assistance, but many of us struggle with requesting help from others. GoFundMe CEO Tim Cadogan joins us to explain how the fundraising company is using artificial intelligence to make such times easier, drawing on lessons from tens of millions of fundraisers to help people tell their stories and mobilize their communities.
With the acquisition of the Caper cart, a technology-enabled shopping cart, grocery-delivery company Instacart began bridging the gap between online and in-person shopping. On today’s episode, David McIntosh, the company’s former chief connected stores officer, joins host Sam Ransbotham to share how physical AI is helping shoppers track their purchases, retailers manage inventory, and product manufacturers stock the right items at the right times.
Erik Brynjolfsson has a challenge for anyone worried about artificial intelligence: Stop asking what AI will do to us, and start asking what we will do with AI.
Today’s episode, the final one of Season 13, explores how Bank of America is preparing a massive global workforce for an AI future through upskilling and reskilling. Bernard Hampton, head of the financial institution’s Academy, explains how the learning and development organization focuses on workforce agility and a building combination of technical and soft skills.