Ever get your McDonald's order mixed up at an AI-powered drive-through? The experiment behind the fast food giant's current automated order taker will soon be coming to a close. McDonald's confirmed Monday that it decided to end a global partnership with IBM, which has been testing this artificial intelligence technology at select McDonald's drive-throughs since 2021. That doesn't mean you'll never encounter some sort of chatbot while picking up fries on your car ride home again. While the IBM partnership for McDonald's current automated order taker test is winding down, the Chicago-based company suggested that it wasn't ruling other any other potential AI drive-throughs plans down the road -- pointing to "an opportunity to explore voice ordering solutions more broadly."

In Forrester's US B2B eCommerce Forecast: 2015 to 2020 they quote that "74% of B2B buyers research, at least one-half of their work purchases online. With that percentage nearly doubling to 56% by 2017, B2B sellers will see a significant volume of offline business move online in the next few years." Taking those facts further, at the Forrester Sales Enablement Forum, a study by Andy Hoar, Principal Analyst at Forrester, revealed that he expected 22% of B2B Sales jobs go by 2020. With Enterprise purchases taking place more and more online This means the traditional B2B sales person is being replaced by Search Engines, YouTube, websites etc. The Diagram above is Forester's view on what will replace the B2B Salesperson.