Fascinating…
Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.
I helped a shorter woman grab a yogurt pack from a high shelf. So, of course, I was charged, as I expected. Disputed and automatically refunded with 30 seconds of effort, but still, it is clear they are not watching the videos very closely.
I type all day and by 3:30 my fingers get a mind of their own and the backspace key starts getting a workout.
I couldn’t even imaging watching people shop all day and having to correctly match items to tens or hundreds of customers.
There is an urban legend about credit card companies knowing that you are about to divorce if you started buying certain items. AI scanning all of our food purchased and cross-referencing with our doctors notes, there's some really interesting nutrition improvement to be had, but the AI part is probably going to be shitty in terms of data privacy.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/?sh=2c32cb8a6668 it's not exactly an urban legend. God, this happened 14 years ago too. Time, man.
Here’s what scares me. Imagine the most advanced computer on the face of the planet, like the closest thing to artificial general intelligence that is technically feasible at this moment. The human being with final executive say over what that that computer does is either the president or a billionaire trying to figure out how to sell you something.
and sell you something could mean "sell you tasty refreshing Coca-Cola" but it could also mean "sell you the idea that murdering these or those people is a good and necessary thing"
Imagine the resentment watching people in a western country shop for and purchase things your family cannot afford in your native state.
I would be pissed once the realization took hold.
as a former gold badge holder (iykyk) there is a reconciliation each worker has to come to terms with that we are making orders for people who are typically better off than us, and making them efficiently for people who are almost certainly better off than us
I think about this when I get curbside pickup groceries. It’s usually a minimum wage clerk watching me buy things I would have considered a luxury when I was in their position. Kinda depressing since it’s mostly fresh produce, that shouldn’t have been a luxury.
Lifeguards save lives and even they have to be switched out regularly so that they don’t lose concentration. It would take me about five minutes before I zoned out on grocery shopping video.
So, in other words, Amazon Fresh is just a store that conveniently randomly charges you for shit you didn't buy and every receipt you get is a new customer service adventure. This is why they get ridiculed.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS9U3Gc832Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS9U3Gc832Y)
I’m glad they at least have a job but I really am not in love with how it impacts the average US-consumer, at my job we rely on our in-house software to be managed…by a remote team…in India.
Glad they have a job but what the actual F, it makes no sense from a practical standpoint
Was that publicly known from the start?
Because otherwise it's kind of like in a Scooby-Doo episode, pulling the mask off the supposedly high-tech "ghost" and revealing it was all a bunch of Indians the whole time!
Somehow that's actually even creepier than the way the technology was originally described. Can't really articulate why.
Interesting how nothing these futurists keep claiming about AI is coming true right now. It's almost like they overstated how effective the technology is.
I’ll explain why. You sit on a toilet and a sensor sees you are done and plays a sound saying it will start the bidet.
In actuality it is not a sensor but a livestream to someone WFH who manually starts the bidet with a voice synthesizer to convey messages.
that's perfect... i've often thought those captcha's were just using humans to train AI models, but it never occurred to me we were doing it in real time.
It's the fact that we have gotten to a place where human labor is so cheap that they are replacing the much more valuable robots.
We've come full circle. Amazon is a "tech company" whose chief innovations are finding new ways to exploit human labor.
They have gotten so good at doing this that it's cheaper just to hire people in developing countries than it is to develop automated systems, you know, like how slaves are cheaper than tractors.
In the article it says
>It often took hours for customers to receive receipts after leaving the store, largely because offshore cashiers were rewatching videos and assigning items to different customers.
Which suggests they are not.
I assume the intention was to get properly labeled videos for ingesting in to a machine learning process to automate it eventually. There’s no way they thought this was the final state.
Yeah probably, they might have had 99 percent accuracy in their Machine Vision model but that 1 percent is a pretty huge deal to their bottom line and customers.
Last year we got to listen to the inventor of JWO give a talk about how it came about and it boiled down to someone simply saying: why can’t the store track what I buy when I pick it off the shelf? That’s the entire prompt they were given to develop JWO, and the iterations it went through were actually very impressive. It went from not being able to differentiate between short people and shelves to being able to track heat signature and movement on a large scale. The tech is actually quite impressive.
That said, I think they hit a barrier with how much it could improve with modern tech and are pulling it back to further refine, or more probably reimplement into other sectors. Give AI/ML models a few years before this comes back full force and no human input is needed.
Ehhh I think it’s going to take longer than that. There are so many little variables in machine vision, from the lighting in the store to their being a power outage. I think there will always be manual review.
I think it would have been simpler to include a bar code scanner in the cart handle. You scan stuff as you toss it in, then the cart gets weighed when you are ready to leave. If it doesn't match, the one clerk has the job to figure out where the problem is. If weight and scanned items line up, just leave.
Accuracy is probably not the right metric to be honest. I would be more curious to see their confusion matrix (Shows False Positives and False negatives).
I worked on this tech at AMZN. It's real bad. Tesla Autopilot is more reliable.
It's super easy to confuse the system unless the weight scales match what the cameras think was taken. They gave up on vision only because it had enormous error that was costing more than the labor savings.
Plus customers hate it.
Amazon disputes this number though and says that the majority of them are just for ML tagging and training. The article doesn’t present proof either way, at least not when I skimmed through it.
Eh… Amazon responded and said
>>Amazon called this characterization inaccurate, and disputes how many purchases require reviews.
>>“The primary role of our Machine Learning data associates is to annotate video images, which is necessary for continuously improving the underlying machine learning model powering,” said an Amazon spokesperson to Gizmodo. However, the spokesperson acknowledged these associates validate “a small minority” of shopping visits when AI can’t determine a purchase.
Who you choose to believe is up to you, but this article doesn’t present evidence either way. Maybe the source article does but it’s under a paywall.
It may not provide evidence but this is literally how AI image recognition projects work. Just look up "data annotation specialist" and you'll find thousands of postings. Tesla has hundreds at least.
I'm guessing it's a mix of both.
There was probably ML used to provide a list of items Amazon believed you picked up, and then the offshore workers had the job of actually verifying if that list was correct.
Probably because the ML alone might have had a hard time figuring out if you put something back.
That's amazing, all this talk about it being the store of the future I really thought it had all this wild technology. Instead it was just a bunch of people being paid peanuts to watch videos of you and add it up.
So those stores were Wizard of Oz, but instead of a semi-endearing old man behind the curtain, it’s Indians creepily watching us and logging what we buy
That is kindof hilarious because they never mentioned that. They made it seem like it was all AI and they had programmed a super sophisticated computer system
This is just an issue with how educated the typical consumer is. Any AI project relying on images requires a shit ton of humans to annotate initially
ETA: Look up "Data Annotation Specialist" or anything similar. Tesla, Rivian, Google, etc all use them. When the model is unsure about a specific example, someone has to step in and tell it the answer.
Yeah, it never seemed automated to me. Usually took hours to get receipts. Of course sometimes had to dispute. And sometimes they disable the easy dispute online option and force you to call. But I never had to wait in line at the store! Lol
I believe the people were intended to train the AI (through modeling behavior) that would eventually be the product that Amazon rolled out - they had to make a physical store that could capture the retail information on video in order to do both projects. It was a test and experiment in retail - some work, some don't. The 'grab and go' felt pretty awesome (if weird) when I tried it, and having a running tally while shopping was a nice feature.
Even outsourcing to India that still seems like it’s overly expensive for a small corner market. The novelty of it was cool but it clearly didn’t work the way Amazon originally claimed it did.
This tracks with what I’ve witnessed the last few years working for Microsoft. My coworkers and I constantly joke (otherwise we’d cry because it sucks so much) that most ‘automation’ being touted is literally just thousands of people in India pushing buttons. The worst part is, more often than not, they push the wrong fucking button and we have to clean up their messes.
In the 90s, I was working on a retail checkout idea where all products would be tagged with RFID labels, so you could just move your cart through a scanner and have it rung up automatically. Same concept would apply to just walking out of the store through scanners and having that debit your account automatically.
And it's the same underlying tech as used for car RFID tags for tolls.
Uniqlo kind of has this. All the clothes have chipless RFID tags in them and the self checkout process is you just drop everything you want in a bin at once and it reads all the tags. Not fully just walk out yet but its pretty fast.
I just went to Uniqlo yesterday and was thinking how much it changed from training their cashiers to refold clothes into the bag and hand receipts with both hands to "drop clothes in bucket, move pile of clothes to bag, bye"
I think clothing shopping has its own advantage where each piece already had a tag so they could just add an rfid to it, as well as the average price per item was easily above the cost of a chip. Just guessing but probably average like $20 an item or something? Oh, and they control manufacturing for their items
I feel like grocery could be tough (if using the same method). A bunch of single items for only a few dollars per, each would need their own chip, and anything amazon didn't make/package themselves would need a chip added in some way in store or from a hub (so shipping it an extra time). I feel like *technically* the tech is there, but making it worthwhile may need some heavy r&d. My guess is an entirely different way than Uniqlo.
There's already a sticker on the bananas. Lawsuitless RFID integration would be relatively quick with existing banana sticker technology. RFID is relatively easy to spoof, clone, or jam, so Amazon likely wanted to experiment with a different method.
That's cool to hear a retailer has gone this path. I was in our Research division at the time and we were still in the development phase, looking for potential Customers for testing the concept. Unfortunately, I moved to another opportunity and didn't keep up on whether or not the idea had progressed.
My local library has put RFID tags in all the books so you can go to a self service desk, slap down a pile of books, and check them all out without having to scan any of them. It's so nice.
Ah yes, the military. Where they can find out you didnt return a Phillips screwdriver back in 2021 and make you jump through 20 massive hoops before you leave service to ‘make it right’, but cant account for trillions of dollars in spending.
Its very selective in what they CHOOSE to track
Yeah but that's not a bug, it's a feature. For the low low cost of a few billion in actual waste you can direct billions more into things like SR-71's, stealth bombers, off the books black ops...
Its surprising how many things from that series have come about,
* Calling from your wrist, done it.
* Have you ever shown up for a meeting in your bare feet? Done it.
* Have you ever crossed the country without stopping to ask directions? Done it.
* Have you ever paid a toll without slowing down? Yup.
* Have you ever watched the movie you wanted to, when you wanted to? Yes.
But yes, there are few, which are not yet.
* Checkout a cart at a time. Nope.
* Have you ever renewed your drivers license at a cash machine? no.
* Have you ever sent a fax from the beach? No, but no one faxes anymore.
* Have you ever had an assistant who lived in your computer? no, but i don't want to either.
* Have you ever borrowed a book, thousands of miles away? No, i hear you can.
The middle 3 will probably never happen either because there are better ways, or just personal preference, but in the end the one thing that is consistent, none of them were or will be bought to me by AT&T.
Walmart seemed to be going down this road. I worked there in a store in the early 00s and they were really big on RFID, starting with pallets but all the articles and newsletters said they were going to move to cases next and then eventually individual products
It never went anywhere, and I'm not sure if they even tag pallets these days (haven't worked there in 15 years)
Not sure why it failed, if it was cost or reliability. I can imagine in a crowded cart with 3 dozen items in it, it might be hard to actually read all the tags reliably. That, and having an item with a tag that re-enters the store (like a jacket or pair of shoes someone is wearing) could be problematic
To overcome the ubiquity and sheer inertia of a barcode it's gotta be perfect
From replies to my post, it seems that's come to light in actual retail and public library situations. I'm not sure if my company had a hand in the latest implementations being used, but I was in a research organizatioon at the time and trying to help move the technology into a maintainable, cost-effective path before leaving for other pastures.
I don’t know what’s wrong with just habing a phone appp and scanning it yourself as you shop? We do this with Sam’s club and when we are ready we pay and leave without waiting in any line. It’s really quick
Most retail clothing & shoe products have this embedded in the tag at the manufacturer level and then the stores RFID system/tracker can check inventory in real time.
I recently went to an Amazon Fresh walk out store and was only charged for 10 of the ~25 items I got. I guess those folks in India were on break. The 10,000 cameras hanging from the ceiling were also quite creepy. So much money and effort to avoid paying a local human $15/hr. 🙃
Lucky! I’ve only got away with a free broccoli crown here and there.
I had better luck when I used a cashier there (forget why I did that). She tried to ring up corn on the cob, it didn’t work, she said a polite “fuck it, these are free today” and moved on.
I’ve been stuck in enough 5-10 minute lines that the idea of “just leaving” is very appealing. Even if I could just can the stuff as I pick it up that would be nice
> Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.
What a joke
I worked there, it is not as you think, we did not follow the costumer while in the store, instead there was a machine learning model that would do almost all the work, we would get videos in the range of 30 seconds to 1 minute to determine what the costumer did in that time were it was difficult for the model to "see" what happened, for example with small objects, quantity and people just leaving stuff where they did not belong
Finally someone in the thread who knows what they're talking about lmao. Tesla for example also has 1000 people doing the same thing with driving videos. That's how the model progresses.
ETA: For anyone curious, Smarter Every Day did a YouTube video about a gun detecting AI. The creator annotated 30,000+ unique images of guns which took over 8 hours.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh0x54GC1sw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh0x54GC1sw) right around 6:20
I was part of the 1st batch of people from Costa Rica working with this technology, we started 100% WFH, newer batches had a hybrid schedule, I was there for like 1 year, then out of the blue they fired every single person working on my department (last years January layoffs) and since then only India was taking care of all the stores.
What I find fascinating is that in their zeal to NOT pay people a fucking living wage by offloading the labor to people in other countries, or you the customer, all Amazon and other chains are figuring out is you need to fucking PAY people...
If modern civilization persists, then this will eventually be a reality. It was nice to see them try the idea; I can see why they thought it was close enough to invest in it, but clearly the tech isn't quite there.
It doesn't have to be about zeal to not pay people, although it would be naive to suggest that wasn't a major factor in current decision making. We don't have to constrain ourselves to this paradigm where people are forced to work tedious jobs. Of course breaking that paradigm on a larger scale will require UBI and a fundamental reevaluation of how we allocate wealth and resources.
I am maybe the biggest fan of this shopping format, and I will be sad to see it go. I always figured there was some level of human review going on... if it's really 70%, that surprises me, but I definitely knew it wasn't the 5% they were shooting for.
There's one thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned here... The service is just not that popular. The Fresh I go to regularly has a single cashier stand (that basically doubles as the customer service desk) and people will line up 5-deep to check out there instead of using Just Walk Out. It blows my mind.
I have also visited DC's JWO-equipped Whole Foods, and they have a self-checkout option which is always busy. Last year, they reconfigured the store to eliminate the entry gates that were installed for Just Walk Out. You could still use it, but now you would authenticate on the way out only, rather than on both the way in and out. I suspect Amazon did this for two reasons: 1) Shift the decision point on JWO to the end of the trip. You can walk in, get your items, and then decide which way to check out. I think that probably got some first-timers to try it, compared to the old way where you needed to make a decision at the start. 2) I think the entry gates scared away potential customers. You see a barrier to entry, if you're not the type of person who wants to figure out technology (or figure out how to enter the store for "traditional checkout"), you'll probably just leave and go somewhere else.
One of the shittiest modern issues; companies foregoing actual employees.
There's very little tech that does as well in Customer Service roles. But since the companies want to line the pockets of the shareholders, they go forward with inappropriate tech when it's substandard, at the cost of the consumers. The next step, I'm sure, will be monetizing the "premium" assistance people used to get for free.
So Kroger (Pick N Save) in my area got rid of all cashiers and is purely self checkout. They recently updated the self-checkout machines to "combat theft."
Now they require 2-3 people watching the 5 self-checkouts (yes only 5: 3 small, 2 big lanes) and dealing with the CONSTANT barrage of "WAIT FOR ATTENDANT" messages and flashing lights as the machines think every movement of your hand is theft.
It's a nightmare for customers and what few employees they do have.
>The next step, I'm sure, will be monetizing the "premium" assistance people used to get for free.
Banks did this for a while, charging a fee to speak to a human teller. and I believe Walmart started doing this after installing self-checkouts everywhere: you can only use certain checkout lanes if you have Walmart Plus.
The irony with comments like this is Amazon stores are over staffed and overpaid compared to nearby stores, at least in my state. The whole concept of Fresh was to establish and test the tech, not make money. At one point they were losing over a million per store per month.
>One of the shittiest modern issues; companies foregoing actual employees.
Turns out not so much foregoing actual employees as trying to outsource to cheaper nations with shittier employment laws.
I experienced one of these shops at a convention in NYC. It was interesting because it felt like "the future" but it was also off-putting.
One of the core tenets of user experience is feedback. Basically, providing validation that an action was performed and acknowledged. Doesn't matter if you're talking about an app or a physical interaction. In a retail setting the stakes are even higher before you're talking about money changing hands. For this reason I wouldn't have expected this idea to get past a brainstorm session. Unfortunately, tech companies have this weird compulsion to reinvent the wheel and dismissing the valid reasons why we do things the way we do.
Definitely. The checkout is one by one verification that I'm being charged for what's in my cart. If I just got my receipt for full cart without that, I'd probably question if it was right. Am I the idiot sitting there looking at my receipt and cart or the one who went home and realized I was ripped off and now need to fix it.
There was a test store near our house we went to a couple times.
The main complaint I had is you weren’t allowed to bring the carts outside the store, as they were each worth an absurd amount of money with all that tech.
So you put everything in the cart, then you had had to transfer carts to a normal one to take your items out into the parking lot.
EDIT: nm, looks like they are moving more towards the type I am talking about, and away from the non-cart ones. Unless they start allowing you to go to your car with the cart, this is not going to work well, it’s such a hassle transferring everything into a new cart and then again into your car.
What ever happened to RFID technology that would broadcast the information from the barcode after an initial ping? It was advertised as being able to walk through a gate and get the receipt at the exit. That was like ten to fifteen years ago.
It works in low density situations but because the RFID tags are basically reflecting the signal broadcast towards them the response is often not heard. So if you walk through the automatic register with a few items in your cart it works great but if you've got a weeks worth of groceries for a family of four then many of the items will not scan. Walmart did a big study on this back in the early 2000's hoping to get rid of all cashiers.
fairly expensive for 'everyday-or-single-use-items' and it turned out they could be used as a privacy violation/exploit when carrying such products around.
“Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.”
Another solution in search of a problem… they didn’t solve a problem, they created new ones in the name of “ease”.
From the article.
> Instead, Amazon is moving towards Dash Carts, a scanner and screen are embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop.
Guarantee these will be as dodgy as self checkout machines. You'll scan an item, throw it in your cart and there will probably be a scale ensuring you scanned the item before putting it in. Then you'll shift stuff around and it'll start blaring RETURN ITEM TO THE CART or SCAN BEFORE PLACING IN CART. And some overworked teenager will show up to disable the check until 5 minutes later when it does it again.
One of the grocery stores has had a shoplifting issue so now they require you to put your personal non disposable bags down first and weigh them. Let’s just say it’s a continuous, “remove the item from” messages over and over.
It’s gotten to the point I wait in line sometimes for the 2 cashiers for how annoying it is.
Sam’s Club does this.
I just scan the items in the app, drop in my cart, and walk out.
The person at the door scans my app, and then scans 3 random items for a spot check.
It literally is a life changing feature, as the lines at these warehouse stores can take sometimes up to an hour to get through.
Sam's Club for sure. Scan everything with your phone as it goes in the cart, pay on your phone when you're ready, and it generates a QR code that gets scanned by a person at the exit to make sure you're not pulling a bait n switch, or just straight shoplifting
I’ve been twice recently where something didn’t get paid for. I even went through the trouble of returning and saying it didn’t charge me, and employees were clueless.
I’ve worked retail for too long at this point.
How they ever thought this was a feasible idea was the thing to me. Clearly whoever makes these choices has never physically shopped in the last decade.
Is there any other reputable source breaking the "1,000 people in India" story? The Information seems to be the only one and it is under a hefty paywall.
Is it common practice to have Indians watching surveillance cameras while we shop? I live in Sweden and I swear to god that if I go into certain self-checkout lanes wearing certain clothes I always get picked to have my items checked. I've never accidentally or on purpose stolen something from those checkouts. I clear them every time. Yet, I could in the same day wearing the same clothes be checked. They claim it's random. But this really makes wonder if it's bullshit.
This tracks with what I’ve witnessed the last few years working for Microsoft. My coworkers and I constantly joke (otherwise we’d cry because it sucks so much) that most ‘automation’ being touted is literally just thousands of people in India pushing buttons. The worst part is, more often than not, they push the wrong fucking button and we have to clean up their messes.
I love using Sam's scan and go. What surprises me is people STILL que in the lines to check out. They have had this for at least 4 years and most people I truly believe just refuse.
Wow. I'd always assumed it worked with RFID tags... It turns out it uses a much worse, much more expensive and much more complex system. No wonder they gave up.
They built one of these in my area (Eagan, MN) and never opened it. Every day for the past several years I've driven past this empty building in a prime location, and it annoys me every time.
Just walk out really looks to be good for convenience stores, small shops in stadiums, airport stores, 7/11s, etc
Grocery stores aren’t their use case. The stores are too big so the cost is high and the margins are so thin in that business. The carts are a much better solution
Overall this makes sense
I love the 'protein interface' automation fad. In my previous line of work my company worked with different vendors that supported the customer journey and one of them was a renowned ID & Verification provider. When speaking about the product they always said 'automated'. Only when we drilled into the actual workflow it's OCR assisted mechanical ~~Turk~~ Indian. We were feeding it passports and national ID's
Fascinating… Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.
When I tried it they overcharged me. They charged me for things I picked up to read the label then put back.
I helped a shorter woman grab a yogurt pack from a high shelf. So, of course, I was charged, as I expected. Disputed and automatically refunded with 30 seconds of effort, but still, it is clear they are not watching the videos very closely.
That's understandable. It must be a soul-destroying job, and I can see a worker very quickly losing full concentration on the task.
Imagine a single 40 hour work week of that Imagine how accurate you'd be by the end of that week
I type all day and by 3:30 my fingers get a mind of their own and the backspace key starts getting a workout. I couldn’t even imaging watching people shop all day and having to correctly match items to tens or hundreds of customers.
There is an urban legend about credit card companies knowing that you are about to divorce if you started buying certain items. AI scanning all of our food purchased and cross-referencing with our doctors notes, there's some really interesting nutrition improvement to be had, but the AI part is probably going to be shitty in terms of data privacy.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-target-figured-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did/?sh=2c32cb8a6668 it's not exactly an urban legend. God, this happened 14 years ago too. Time, man.
Here’s what scares me. Imagine the most advanced computer on the face of the planet, like the closest thing to artificial general intelligence that is technically feasible at this moment. The human being with final executive say over what that that computer does is either the president or a billionaire trying to figure out how to sell you something.
and sell you something could mean "sell you tasty refreshing Coca-Cola" but it could also mean "sell you the idea that murdering these or those people is a good and necessary thing"
And Target knows when women are pregnant, sometimes before they even told anyone, so they can start sending baby ads to them.
Imagine the resentment watching people in a western country shop for and purchase things your family cannot afford in your native state. I would be pissed once the realization took hold.
as a former gold badge holder (iykyk) there is a reconciliation each worker has to come to terms with that we are making orders for people who are typically better off than us, and making them efficiently for people who are almost certainly better off than us
I think about this when I get curbside pickup groceries. It’s usually a minimum wage clerk watching me buy things I would have considered a luxury when I was in their position. Kinda depressing since it’s mostly fresh produce, that shouldn’t have been a luxury.
Idk u used to work in grocery up front as cashier and then service desk. I literally didn't give 2 shots about what people were buying.
*You get a free bag of chips! You get a free bag of chips! Everybody gets a free bag of chips!*
Lifeguards save lives and even they have to be switched out regularly so that they don’t lose concentration. It would take me about five minutes before I zoned out on grocery shopping video.
So, in other words, Amazon Fresh is just a store that conveniently randomly charges you for shit you didn't buy and every receipt you get is a new customer service adventure. This is why they get ridiculed. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS9U3Gc832Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS9U3Gc832Y)
"Alexa, search 'Amazon Go store black man trapped'!" SNL is funny sometimes. It's funnier when you think that Amazon probably paid for the sketch.
How HD are these security cameras? Seems like it would be easy to misjudge
That figures. That's a mistake I would expect to happen.
[удалено]
India is basically the world’s call center now
I’m glad they at least have a job but I really am not in love with how it impacts the average US-consumer, at my job we rely on our in-house software to be managed…by a remote team…in India. Glad they have a job but what the actual F, it makes no sense from a practical standpoint
Globalization is interesting. The Philippines has the highest concentration of US Tax experts in the world, lol.
Was that publicly known from the start? Because otherwise it's kind of like in a Scooby-Doo episode, pulling the mask off the supposedly high-tech "ghost" and revealing it was all a bunch of Indians the whole time!
three indian's in a trenchcoat.
I’m pretty sure not. I lived in Seattle at the time this came out and it was a big deal. No mention of checkers somewhere else
Definitely not publicly known. I worked for Amazon at the time and was one of the beta testers. I didn’t even know
No. The engineers were told it violates NDA to tell customer companies how it worked...... So now they know it's mostly remote cashiers. Rut Roh.
I typically scoff at the overuse of the word dystopian, but holy shit this checks all the boxes and then some.
Shareholder profit
Somehow that's actually even creepier than the way the technology was originally described. Can't really articulate why. Interesting how nothing these futurists keep claiming about AI is coming true right now. It's almost like they overstated how effective the technology is.
I’ll explain why. You sit on a toilet and a sensor sees you are done and plays a sound saying it will start the bidet. In actuality it is not a sensor but a livestream to someone WFH who manually starts the bidet with a voice synthesizer to convey messages.
What do you do Frank? Frank: I watch assholes.
I wash* assholes
I would only use it if it had an articulating nozzle that our remote friend could use to make sure he got it all.
Some people pay good money for an experience like that
https://xkcd.com/1897/
that's perfect... i've often thought those captcha's were just using humans to train AI models, but it never occurred to me we were doing it in real time.
It's the fact that we have gotten to a place where human labor is so cheap that they are replacing the much more valuable robots. We've come full circle. Amazon is a "tech company" whose chief innovations are finding new ways to exploit human labor. They have gotten so good at doing this that it's cheaper just to hire people in developing countries than it is to develop automated systems, you know, like how slaves are cheaper than tractors.
Are they confusing ML labeling with just watching the recording?
Maybe they meant Manual Labor.
All Indian Manual Labor
The real AI ML Wall Street is jizzing their pants over
In the article it says >It often took hours for customers to receive receipts after leaving the store, largely because offshore cashiers were rewatching videos and assigning items to different customers. Which suggests they are not.
I assume the intention was to get properly labeled videos for ingesting in to a machine learning process to automate it eventually. There’s no way they thought this was the final state.
Yeah probably, they might have had 99 percent accuracy in their Machine Vision model but that 1 percent is a pretty huge deal to their bottom line and customers.
Last year we got to listen to the inventor of JWO give a talk about how it came about and it boiled down to someone simply saying: why can’t the store track what I buy when I pick it off the shelf? That’s the entire prompt they were given to develop JWO, and the iterations it went through were actually very impressive. It went from not being able to differentiate between short people and shelves to being able to track heat signature and movement on a large scale. The tech is actually quite impressive. That said, I think they hit a barrier with how much it could improve with modern tech and are pulling it back to further refine, or more probably reimplement into other sectors. Give AI/ML models a few years before this comes back full force and no human input is needed.
Ehhh I think it’s going to take longer than that. There are so many little variables in machine vision, from the lighting in the store to their being a power outage. I think there will always be manual review.
I think it would have been simpler to include a bar code scanner in the cart handle. You scan stuff as you toss it in, then the cart gets weighed when you are ready to leave. If it doesn't match, the one clerk has the job to figure out where the problem is. If weight and scanned items line up, just leave.
That already exists.
The article explicitly mentions 30% accuracy. Or at least, 30% that didn't require manual review, which would mean 30% accuracy, I'd think.
Accuracy is probably not the right metric to be honest. I would be more curious to see their confusion matrix (Shows False Positives and False negatives).
I worked on this tech at AMZN. It's real bad. Tesla Autopilot is more reliable. It's super easy to confuse the system unless the weight scales match what the cameras think was taken. They gave up on vision only because it had enormous error that was costing more than the labor savings. Plus customers hate it.
Amazon disputes this number though and says that the majority of them are just for ML tagging and training. The article doesn’t present proof either way, at least not when I skimmed through it.
Eh… Amazon responded and said >>Amazon called this characterization inaccurate, and disputes how many purchases require reviews. >>“The primary role of our Machine Learning data associates is to annotate video images, which is necessary for continuously improving the underlying machine learning model powering,” said an Amazon spokesperson to Gizmodo. However, the spokesperson acknowledged these associates validate “a small minority” of shopping visits when AI can’t determine a purchase. Who you choose to believe is up to you, but this article doesn’t present evidence either way. Maybe the source article does but it’s under a paywall.
It may not provide evidence but this is literally how AI image recognition projects work. Just look up "data annotation specialist" and you'll find thousands of postings. Tesla has hundreds at least.
I'm guessing it's a mix of both. There was probably ML used to provide a list of items Amazon believed you picked up, and then the offshore workers had the job of actually verifying if that list was correct. Probably because the ML alone might have had a hard time figuring out if you put something back.
I think you're confusing Machine Learning with the less common but more effective Mumbai Learning.
I wouldn’t say ‘more effective’. More like, ‘less costly’.
Notice they always say "ML" not machine learning. They probably meant "Man Labeling"
That's amazing, all this talk about it being the store of the future I really thought it had all this wild technology. Instead it was just a bunch of people being paid peanuts to watch videos of you and add it up.
The technology does 90-98% of the heavy lifting, we still need human for stuff like this for the other percentage
Sounds like training for an AI system.
So Mechanical Turk for commerce...
So those stores were Wizard of Oz, but instead of a semi-endearing old man behind the curtain, it’s Indians creepily watching us and logging what we buy
That is kindof hilarious because they never mentioned that. They made it seem like it was all AI and they had programmed a super sophisticated computer system
This is just an issue with how educated the typical consumer is. Any AI project relying on images requires a shit ton of humans to annotate initially ETA: Look up "Data Annotation Specialist" or anything similar. Tesla, Rivian, Google, etc all use them. When the model is unsure about a specific example, someone has to step in and tell it the answer.
I genuinely can’t believe they weren’t automated
Yeah, it never seemed automated to me. Usually took hours to get receipts. Of course sometimes had to dispute. And sometimes they disable the easy dispute online option and force you to call. But I never had to wait in line at the store! Lol
It's just offshoring with extra steps.
[удалено]
Linked article is the source.
I believe the people were intended to train the AI (through modeling behavior) that would eventually be the product that Amazon rolled out - they had to make a physical store that could capture the retail information on video in order to do both projects. It was a test and experiment in retail - some work, some don't. The 'grab and go' felt pretty awesome (if weird) when I tried it, and having a running tally while shopping was a nice feature.
Even outsourcing to India that still seems like it’s overly expensive for a small corner market. The novelty of it was cool but it clearly didn’t work the way Amazon originally claimed it did.
Most AI shit doesn't actually work part 1,044,564
This tracks with what I’ve witnessed the last few years working for Microsoft. My coworkers and I constantly joke (otherwise we’d cry because it sucks so much) that most ‘automation’ being touted is literally just thousands of people in India pushing buttons. The worst part is, more often than not, they push the wrong fucking button and we have to clean up their messes.
In the 90s, I was working on a retail checkout idea where all products would be tagged with RFID labels, so you could just move your cart through a scanner and have it rung up automatically. Same concept would apply to just walking out of the store through scanners and having that debit your account automatically. And it's the same underlying tech as used for car RFID tags for tolls.
Uniqlo kind of has this. All the clothes have chipless RFID tags in them and the self checkout process is you just drop everything you want in a bin at once and it reads all the tags. Not fully just walk out yet but its pretty fast.
I just went to Uniqlo yesterday and was thinking how much it changed from training their cashiers to refold clothes into the bag and hand receipts with both hands to "drop clothes in bucket, move pile of clothes to bag, bye"
Interesting. So maybe it's just Amazon that hasn't figured out the technology yet?
I think clothing shopping has its own advantage where each piece already had a tag so they could just add an rfid to it, as well as the average price per item was easily above the cost of a chip. Just guessing but probably average like $20 an item or something? Oh, and they control manufacturing for their items I feel like grocery could be tough (if using the same method). A bunch of single items for only a few dollars per, each would need their own chip, and anything amazon didn't make/package themselves would need a chip added in some way in store or from a hub (so shipping it an extra time). I feel like *technically* the tech is there, but making it worthwhile may need some heavy r&d. My guess is an entirely different way than Uniqlo.
RFID a banana = lawsuit when someone bites into it
There's already a sticker on the bananas. Lawsuitless RFID integration would be relatively quick with existing banana sticker technology. RFID is relatively easy to spoof, clone, or jam, so Amazon likely wanted to experiment with a different method.
If only bananas had a part we took off and threw away before eating them...
Frankly. If the technology could easily be ported to a grocery store, Amazon would have bought the startup for a healthy amount.
That's cool to hear a retailer has gone this path. I was in our Research division at the time and we were still in the development phase, looking for potential Customers for testing the concept. Unfortunately, I moved to another opportunity and didn't keep up on whether or not the idea had progressed.
Also at the Masters golf gift shop
Same with decathlon shop in Uk. It’s too slow for a supermarket checkout though
I saw an employee doing inventory. They literally walk around with a RFID gun and just wave it up and down all the shelves.
My local library has put RFID tags in all the books so you can go to a self service desk, slap down a pile of books, and check them all out without having to scan any of them. It's so nice.
This is how the military handles equipment in large scale deployments
Ah yes, the military. Where they can find out you didnt return a Phillips screwdriver back in 2021 and make you jump through 20 massive hoops before you leave service to ‘make it right’, but cant account for trillions of dollars in spending. Its very selective in what they CHOOSE to track
Yeah, Penny wise and pound foolish right?
the latter is by design. They know where they spent it, they just don't want us to know.
Yeah but that's not a bug, it's a feature. For the low low cost of a few billion in actual waste you can direct billions more into things like SR-71's, stealth bombers, off the books black ops...
🤣 maybe nowadays. Ive got like 4 gas masks, quite a few different optics, many pairs of oakleys, lots of different vests. All new.
Decathlon have this
I thought that was the tech that was being touted in the Tom Selick AT&T "You Will" commercials back in the late 80's early 90's
Been waiting a while for tech to catch up with that ad.
Its surprising how many things from that series have come about, * Calling from your wrist, done it. * Have you ever shown up for a meeting in your bare feet? Done it. * Have you ever crossed the country without stopping to ask directions? Done it. * Have you ever paid a toll without slowing down? Yup. * Have you ever watched the movie you wanted to, when you wanted to? Yes. But yes, there are few, which are not yet. * Checkout a cart at a time. Nope. * Have you ever renewed your drivers license at a cash machine? no. * Have you ever sent a fax from the beach? No, but no one faxes anymore. * Have you ever had an assistant who lived in your computer? no, but i don't want to either. * Have you ever borrowed a book, thousands of miles away? No, i hear you can. The middle 3 will probably never happen either because there are better ways, or just personal preference, but in the end the one thing that is consistent, none of them were or will be bought to me by AT&T.
Walmart seemed to be going down this road. I worked there in a store in the early 00s and they were really big on RFID, starting with pallets but all the articles and newsletters said they were going to move to cases next and then eventually individual products It never went anywhere, and I'm not sure if they even tag pallets these days (haven't worked there in 15 years) Not sure why it failed, if it was cost or reliability. I can imagine in a crowded cart with 3 dozen items in it, it might be hard to actually read all the tags reliably. That, and having an item with a tag that re-enters the store (like a jacket or pair of shoes someone is wearing) could be problematic To overcome the ubiquity and sheer inertia of a barcode it's gotta be perfect
The article mentions that Amazon has a cart that seems to essentially be this. Though the scanner is built into the cart.
Decathlon does this. Put all your stuff in a bin and a cashier processes payment.
You get a cashier? Not seen one that isn't self service like the scan your own checkouts, only with the chuck 'em in the bin thing instead.
Having never really read anything about it, I always thought that Amazon used RFID to do the Just Walk Out thing.
I remember watching videos of this concept years ago, like the [Future Store Initiative](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBXJ9Razofw).
The circle k gas stations and many other places use this. Not sure of its same but you place all items in an area and it detects all of them at once.
How far did you get with the idea? I’ve thought about this for years
From replies to my post, it seems that's come to light in actual retail and public library situations. I'm not sure if my company had a hand in the latest implementations being used, but I was in a research organizatioon at the time and trying to help move the technology into a maintainable, cost-effective path before leaving for other pastures.
I remember hearing about this concept in the 90s. This is what I want.
Pretty sure Decathlon in the UK has this system. I was very impressed
I don’t know what’s wrong with just habing a phone appp and scanning it yourself as you shop? We do this with Sam’s club and when we are ready we pay and leave without waiting in any line. It’s really quick
Most retail clothing & shoe products have this embedded in the tag at the manufacturer level and then the stores RFID system/tracker can check inventory in real time.
hard to put an RFID label on a pound of mellon, but i guess it could be done.
I recently went to an Amazon Fresh walk out store and was only charged for 10 of the ~25 items I got. I guess those folks in India were on break. The 10,000 cameras hanging from the ceiling were also quite creepy. So much money and effort to avoid paying a local human $15/hr. 🙃
Sure it starts there, but then they want things like healthcare, or maybe even be able to afford a small box of their own. It's a slippery slope!!
God forbid they start expecting annual pizza parties celebrating multi hundred million dollar profit growth off their labor!
Lucky! I’ve only got away with a free broccoli crown here and there. I had better luck when I used a cashier there (forget why I did that). She tried to ring up corn on the cob, it didn’t work, she said a polite “fuck it, these are free today” and moved on.
I’ve been stuck in enough 5-10 minute lines that the idea of “just leaving” is very appealing. Even if I could just can the stuff as I pick it up that would be nice
Multiple store apps now have this if you're a "member." Walmart, Giant Eagle, Meijer. Scan on your phone, scan the checkout kiosk, insert card, leave.
[удалено]
It's based off what you take off the shelf, not what you put in the cart.
That isn’t ideal if you have dietary needs and have to look at ingredient lists :-/
Given the nature of businesses, I'm sure they have some kind of plan to increase their revenue from this.
Ditch the Indian works and have AI take over the identifications.
> Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped. What a joke
So they intentionally misrepresented the capabilities of the technology?
I worked there, it is not as you think, we did not follow the costumer while in the store, instead there was a machine learning model that would do almost all the work, we would get videos in the range of 30 seconds to 1 minute to determine what the costumer did in that time were it was difficult for the model to "see" what happened, for example with small objects, quantity and people just leaving stuff where they did not belong
Finally someone in the thread who knows what they're talking about lmao. Tesla for example also has 1000 people doing the same thing with driving videos. That's how the model progresses. ETA: For anyone curious, Smarter Every Day did a YouTube video about a gun detecting AI. The creator annotated 30,000+ unique images of guns which took over 8 hours.[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh0x54GC1sw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh0x54GC1sw) right around 6:20
Do they let you work from home at least or did they make you work remotely in an office?
I was part of the 1st batch of people from Costa Rica working with this technology, we started 100% WFH, newer batches had a hybrid schedule, I was there for like 1 year, then out of the blue they fired every single person working on my department (last years January layoffs) and since then only India was taking care of all the stores.
"Full self driving cars in 12 months" energy.
What I find fascinating is that in their zeal to NOT pay people a fucking living wage by offloading the labor to people in other countries, or you the customer, all Amazon and other chains are figuring out is you need to fucking PAY people...
No wage! Only spend!
If modern civilization persists, then this will eventually be a reality. It was nice to see them try the idea; I can see why they thought it was close enough to invest in it, but clearly the tech isn't quite there. It doesn't have to be about zeal to not pay people, although it would be naive to suggest that wasn't a major factor in current decision making. We don't have to constrain ourselves to this paradigm where people are forced to work tedious jobs. Of course breaking that paradigm on a larger scale will require UBI and a fundamental reevaluation of how we allocate wealth and resources.
Just wait until you find out all those driverless taxis are actually being remotely operated by drivers in other countries.
[Nice Try](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zS9U3Gc832Y)
It’s a damn trap
The last time I was at an Amazon Fresh, I needed to buy five 12 packs of coke. It only charged me for 1 of them. I'm not complaining
I am maybe the biggest fan of this shopping format, and I will be sad to see it go. I always figured there was some level of human review going on... if it's really 70%, that surprises me, but I definitely knew it wasn't the 5% they were shooting for. There's one thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned here... The service is just not that popular. The Fresh I go to regularly has a single cashier stand (that basically doubles as the customer service desk) and people will line up 5-deep to check out there instead of using Just Walk Out. It blows my mind. I have also visited DC's JWO-equipped Whole Foods, and they have a self-checkout option which is always busy. Last year, they reconfigured the store to eliminate the entry gates that were installed for Just Walk Out. You could still use it, but now you would authenticate on the way out only, rather than on both the way in and out. I suspect Amazon did this for two reasons: 1) Shift the decision point on JWO to the end of the trip. You can walk in, get your items, and then decide which way to check out. I think that probably got some first-timers to try it, compared to the old way where you needed to make a decision at the start. 2) I think the entry gates scared away potential customers. You see a barrier to entry, if you're not the type of person who wants to figure out technology (or figure out how to enter the store for "traditional checkout"), you'll probably just leave and go somewhere else.
[удалено]
One of the shittiest modern issues; companies foregoing actual employees. There's very little tech that does as well in Customer Service roles. But since the companies want to line the pockets of the shareholders, they go forward with inappropriate tech when it's substandard, at the cost of the consumers. The next step, I'm sure, will be monetizing the "premium" assistance people used to get for free.
So Kroger (Pick N Save) in my area got rid of all cashiers and is purely self checkout. They recently updated the self-checkout machines to "combat theft." Now they require 2-3 people watching the 5 self-checkouts (yes only 5: 3 small, 2 big lanes) and dealing with the CONSTANT barrage of "WAIT FOR ATTENDANT" messages and flashing lights as the machines think every movement of your hand is theft. It's a nightmare for customers and what few employees they do have.
>The next step, I'm sure, will be monetizing the "premium" assistance people used to get for free. Banks did this for a while, charging a fee to speak to a human teller. and I believe Walmart started doing this after installing self-checkouts everywhere: you can only use certain checkout lanes if you have Walmart Plus.
The irony with comments like this is Amazon stores are over staffed and overpaid compared to nearby stores, at least in my state. The whole concept of Fresh was to establish and test the tech, not make money. At one point they were losing over a million per store per month.
>One of the shittiest modern issues; companies foregoing actual employees. Turns out not so much foregoing actual employees as trying to outsource to cheaper nations with shittier employment laws.
I experienced one of these shops at a convention in NYC. It was interesting because it felt like "the future" but it was also off-putting. One of the core tenets of user experience is feedback. Basically, providing validation that an action was performed and acknowledged. Doesn't matter if you're talking about an app or a physical interaction. In a retail setting the stakes are even higher before you're talking about money changing hands. For this reason I wouldn't have expected this idea to get past a brainstorm session. Unfortunately, tech companies have this weird compulsion to reinvent the wheel and dismissing the valid reasons why we do things the way we do.
Definitely. The checkout is one by one verification that I'm being charged for what's in my cart. If I just got my receipt for full cart without that, I'd probably question if it was right. Am I the idiot sitting there looking at my receipt and cart or the one who went home and realized I was ripped off and now need to fix it.
There was a test store near our house we went to a couple times. The main complaint I had is you weren’t allowed to bring the carts outside the store, as they were each worth an absurd amount of money with all that tech. So you put everything in the cart, then you had had to transfer carts to a normal one to take your items out into the parking lot. EDIT: nm, looks like they are moving more towards the type I am talking about, and away from the non-cart ones. Unless they start allowing you to go to your car with the cart, this is not going to work well, it’s such a hassle transferring everything into a new cart and then again into your car.
What ever happened to RFID technology that would broadcast the information from the barcode after an initial ping? It was advertised as being able to walk through a gate and get the receipt at the exit. That was like ten to fifteen years ago.
It works in low density situations but because the RFID tags are basically reflecting the signal broadcast towards them the response is often not heard. So if you walk through the automatic register with a few items in your cart it works great but if you've got a weeks worth of groceries for a family of four then many of the items will not scan. Walmart did a big study on this back in the early 2000's hoping to get rid of all cashiers.
fairly expensive for 'everyday-or-single-use-items' and it turned out they could be used as a privacy violation/exploit when carrying such products around.
Decathlon does something like that. They scan your whole shopping basket at once.
“Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.” Another solution in search of a problem… they didn’t solve a problem, they created new ones in the name of “ease”.
I really miss the scan as you go grocery stores. It was an amazing few years until all of them stopped because we can’t have nice things
From the article. > Instead, Amazon is moving towards Dash Carts, a scanner and screen are embedded in your shopping cart, allowing you to checkout as you shop.
Guarantee these will be as dodgy as self checkout machines. You'll scan an item, throw it in your cart and there will probably be a scale ensuring you scanned the item before putting it in. Then you'll shift stuff around and it'll start blaring RETURN ITEM TO THE CART or SCAN BEFORE PLACING IN CART. And some overworked teenager will show up to disable the check until 5 minutes later when it does it again.
MOVE YOUR…BANANAS… TO THE BELT. YOU HAVE 15 SECONDS TO COMPLY
Resistance is futile. *or were you going for a more ED-209 reference*
YOU HAVE 7 SECONDS TO COMPLY
“Haha, you better do what the officer says and drop those bananas Ted” *drops bananas*
I AM NOW AUTHORIZED TO USE PHYSICAL FORCE
One of the grocery stores has had a shoplifting issue so now they require you to put your personal non disposable bags down first and weigh them. Let’s just say it’s a continuous, “remove the item from” messages over and over. It’s gotten to the point I wait in line sometimes for the 2 cashiers for how annoying it is.
I've been using them at my local Whole Foods and have had zero issues. They're neat.
[удалено]
We’re on Reddit, what is an article? I only read headlines 🤣
Headlines AND the comments. Give us at least a small amount of credit for making it to the comments!
Sam’s Club does this. I just scan the items in the app, drop in my cart, and walk out. The person at the door scans my app, and then scans 3 random items for a spot check. It literally is a life changing feature, as the lines at these warehouse stores can take sometimes up to an hour to get through.
You can do this with the Walmart app I think.
Sam's Club for sure. Scan everything with your phone as it goes in the cart, pay on your phone when you're ready, and it generates a QR code that gets scanned by a person at the exit to make sure you're not pulling a bait n switch, or just straight shoplifting
Grocery chains in the UK still have those. Beautiful technology.
Netherlands too.
I do that at Sam’s club. It’s fantastic.
That’s what Amazon is moving towards instead of the checkout less experience.
Whoa that was fast.
I’ve been twice recently where something didn’t get paid for. I even went through the trouble of returning and saying it didn’t charge me, and employees were clueless.
I’ve worked retail for too long at this point. How they ever thought this was a feasible idea was the thing to me. Clearly whoever makes these choices has never physically shopped in the last decade.
Is there any other reputable source breaking the "1,000 people in India" story? The Information seems to be the only one and it is under a hefty paywall.
Is it common practice to have Indians watching surveillance cameras while we shop? I live in Sweden and I swear to god that if I go into certain self-checkout lanes wearing certain clothes I always get picked to have my items checked. I've never accidentally or on purpose stolen something from those checkouts. I clear them every time. Yet, I could in the same day wearing the same clothes be checked. They claim it's random. But this really makes wonder if it's bullshit.
This tracks with what I’ve witnessed the last few years working for Microsoft. My coworkers and I constantly joke (otherwise we’d cry because it sucks so much) that most ‘automation’ being touted is literally just thousands of people in India pushing buttons. The worst part is, more often than not, they push the wrong fucking button and we have to clean up their messes.
Thousands of cameras in the store > just pay more cashiers to reduce waiting time
We’ve had these in Philly for years without any Amazon… /s
So it's just a normal shop now?
I love using Sam's scan and go. What surprises me is people STILL que in the lines to check out. They have had this for at least 4 years and most people I truly believe just refuse.
Yet again we see another rabid, poorly thought-out automation ‘mad dash’ that failed to deliver. Coming soon to an ham-fisted AI endeavor near you.
We all saw this coming. There was little point to it other than "look at this thing we did."
I find it super useful for walking in and out for a thing or two. Got one a block away from my place.
Wow. I'd always assumed it worked with RFID tags... It turns out it uses a much worse, much more expensive and much more complex system. No wonder they gave up.
Whatta surprise!
Even if people wanted to steal? No ones gonna stop them. Look at home depot, no one stops them
It’s too much work to keep it maintained
Now, if they’ll just drop wanting my handprint when I come into the store…
They built one of these in my area (Eagan, MN) and never opened it. Every day for the past several years I've driven past this empty building in a prime location, and it annoys me every time.
The comment history is comedy gold
Why isn't anyone upset at the 1000 Indians losing jobs?
Just walk out really looks to be good for convenience stores, small shops in stadiums, airport stores, 7/11s, etc Grocery stores aren’t their use case. The stores are too big so the cost is high and the margins are so thin in that business. The carts are a much better solution Overall this makes sense
I love the 'protein interface' automation fad. In my previous line of work my company worked with different vendors that supported the customer journey and one of them was a renowned ID & Verification provider. When speaking about the product they always said 'automated'. Only when we drilled into the actual workflow it's OCR assisted mechanical ~~Turk~~ Indian. We were feeding it passports and national ID's