📡 High Tech example

If I wanted to praise Yandex as a truly high-tech company, I’d simply say this: back in 2018, they were already doing neural-network-powered integration of visual and audio inputs, plus interaction through tactile and voice interfaces.

But instead, let me tell you the story of how I actually found out they were doing all that.

Once upon a time — when the dollar was still 80 rubles and I still lived in Moscow — Anya and I decided we wanted a McDonald’s breakfast. We loved the toasties. Going to McDonald’s ourselves wasn’t an option — but Yandex.Eda let you order it! At 9:45, fifteen minutes before breakfast hours ended, we placed the order… and at around 10:30 we received a cancellation: “The purchase cannot be completed on the partner’s side.”

You’d think: we placed the order at 9:45, what’s the problem with preparing it and handing it to the courier when he arrives?

Well, the problem — obviously — is that McDonald’s never receives the order. The courier does. And he is the one who then goes into McDonald’s and orders it.

And that’s where the “magic of service integration” happens:

• a neural network processes my order (and whoever’s brain isn’t a neural network — feel free to throw the first stone)

• the same neural network reads the menu from the screen and either voices the order to the cashier or presses the buttons on the self-service terminal — voilà, tactile input, audio input, multimodal interfaces!

Of course, they could have just… I don’t know… actually integrated with McDonald’s directly. But hey — a true technology giant must lead by example!