Your Thursday AI briefing…
1: AI drive-thrus are here – Nvidia and Yum Brands are making it happen.
Nvidia is stepping into fast food. The chip giant is teaming up with Yum Brands – owner of Taco Bell, KFC, and Pizza Hut – to bring AI-powered ordering to drive-thrus. It’s the first time Nvidia, better known for gaming and enterprise AI, has partnered with a restaurant group.
What’s happening:
Yum has already tested AI ordering at select Taco Bell and Pizza Hut locations, using automation to answer phones and take drive-thru orders. This partnership will scale AI operations to 500 restaurants later this year. Their Byte by Yum platform uses AI to:
Count cars in line and predict wait times.
Suggest faster-to-make menu items.
Improve order accuracy and cut human errors.
Why it matters:
Fast-food chains want faster service, bigger orders, and fewer screw-ups. AI lets them nudge customers toward high-margin items and speed up bottlenecks.
The challenge? McDonald’s tried AI drive-thrus and hit enough cringey order fails to scrap its pilot last year (though they might try again). Nvidia and Yum think they can get it right.
The bottom line: If Nvidia’s AI can solve long lines, misheard orders, and menu slowdowns, drive-thrus might never go back.
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2: AI is tearing companies in two, and executives don’t see it.
AI is shaking up the workplace – but not in the way execs expected. A new report from AI startup Writer says half of business leaders think AI is splitting their company apart.
The disconnect:
90% of executives say their AI strategy is solid.
But only 57% of employees even know what the strategy is.
Less than half say their company’s AI rollout actually worked.
What’s causing the divide?
💻 Bad tech: AI tools are clunky, biased, or unreliable – so employees ignore them.
😬 Job fears: 41% of Millennials and Gen Z workers admit they secretly avoid AI because they think it’ll replace them.
🚀 Exec hype vs. worker reality: Leaders see AI as the future. Employees see broken chatbots and pink slips.
Companies love talking up AI adoption – but inside, it’s often chaos. Employees are frustrated, leaders are overestimating buy-in, and adoption is messier than boardrooms admit.
The upshot: Writer CEO May Habib says execs need to prove AI won’t kill jobs – just boost efficiency. Until then, expect more pushback from the people actually using these tools.
3: How ChatGPT convinced Moderna to merge IT and HR.
Moderna figured out its employees were using ChatGPT in secret – and it just changed how the company runs.
Last year, execs noticed that every quarter, ChatGPT usage spiked – right when managers were writing performance reviews. Employees were using AI to draft both self-evaluations and feedback for their teams.
So Moderna made it official.
They built a custom ChatGPT tool to write performance reviews using internal data from Workday. Now, AI drafts reports based on past feedback, and employees just tweak the final version. The result?
1.2M ChatGPT messages per month across the company.
Employees averaging 8 AI queries per day.
That’s not all: AI has become so central to HR tasks that Moderna merged its HR and IT teams last year. Chief HR officer Tracey Franklin now oversees AI strategy – a role usually handled by tech leadership.
AI is reshaping HR operations, not just tech teams.
Employees are already using AI – companies can either embrace it or play catch-up.
For Moderna, this isn’t just about efficiency. It’s about restructuring leadership to put AI at the core of how the company runs.
