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Amazon Go

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Re: Amazon Go

#201

Post by CodeSheikh »

Guys this is not good. As much as I love the convenience of pick-and-go, this eventually will prove out to be drastic for a variety of bad socioeconomic reasons, that most of us are already aware of. Small businesses were already suffering at the hands of Amazon Prime. Now Amazon Go wants to not only kick out those businesses out of the block but it also wants to take away jobs of small retail salesperson. Unacceptable. This can perhaps work at Amazon headquarters but I hope, I really hope it does not make its way to major metro cities like NYC and if it does then Amazon should promise to create certain number of jobs and revenue that it intends to displace. Just because an average reader of HN does not do such jobs or had held such jobs for only a brief period in his/her life, this does not mean that lot of people don't rely on such small time jobs for their livelihood.

Places I can see this working are with low footprints such as cafes at hospitals etc.

Amazon Go, please Go away.

Updated: Grammar correction.

Re: Amazon Go

#202

Post by JPKab »

Someone1234 wrote: post #18

Companies have been discussing "checkout-less" stores since forever, but nobody has been brave enough to do it due to the perceived threat of shoplifting. And while shoplifting is a legitimate threat, are non-shoplifters going to be turned into shoplifters without a checkout? Are normal shoplifters stopped by checkouts? These are the core questions, and until it is tested nobody will know for sure. Target is getting…

I own a house in Bentonville, Arkanasas. I now live in Denver, but owning a property in Walmart's company town means I always pay careful attention to retail developments that threaten Walmart.

I know a lot about the various retail companies and how effective they are with technology. Anyone that thinks Target is going to do anything effective in this space doesn't understand how god-awful their entire logistics/supply chain is. It's legendarily bad.

Amazon is another story. And this particular technology is something that can destroy Walmart, eventually. I'll be watching this very closely, because if I see enough headway being made I'll be selling my house before the disaster hits the market there.

Honestly though, groceries and CPG are HARD. I suspect that Amazon has simply thought about cost-savings from having minimal staffing in a store and used it to justify the insane capital costs of an RFID tag on every item and the scanners/camera/compute needed to operate the Go store.

What's always so funny to me is how the millennial generation in general has a hugely negative view of Walmart for paying poorly and destroying small businesses, while having a positive view of Amazon. In this case, Amazon will continue to do what it's been doing (destroying businesses) while paying nothing, because it's automating away a huge segment of work. I'm not saying this is a bad thing, but it's definitely going to happen, and like self-driving vehicles, this is going to disrupt society big time.

Re: Amazon Go

#203

Post by r3bl »

tristanho wrote: post #7

"Our checkout-free shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning." Very interesting choice of comparison ha... I suppose this is Amazon trying to attract the tech crowd? It almost sounds satirical. Not to downplay the tech -- this looks incredible.

From the rest of the text and the video, I have absolutely zero idea how they are using deep learning here. And let me not even mention that they've used the AI word in the video.

So, I highly doubt that attracting the tech crowd will work if they don't explain the damn thing about how they are using it.

Re: Amazon Go

#204

Post by joncrocks »

_wmd wrote: post #155
draw_down wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds great if it's not as unbelievably user-hostile as the self checkout machines. Those things are just total crap, every one I've ever tried.

Tesco's last generation machines are particularly bad, although their newest ones have removed a huge amount of latency from the UI and weighing scales from what I've seen. If you're shopping for a single item, scanning it and dropping it in the bagging area is sufficient to start the flow, then simply wait a second, click finish, then tap your contactless card is all required to complete a transaction, can be done i…

You get what you pay for :-)

The Sainsbury's near me have started to go contactless as well, and it's great.

Re: Amazon Go

#205

Post by sytelus »

Amazon app currently already has barcode scanning. My guess is that they are replacing POS with app. If you think about it no one needs those arcane point of sell machines because smartphones can do scanning as well as payment processing. The only thing left is detecting unscanned items which is fairly well solved problem using RFIDs. May be later can be combined as well with measuring weight of person identified when entering.

This is brilliant as-in how no one else thought about it. Lot of small shops have limit on their open schedule because of staffing issues. I am assuming Amazon will set up few experimental shops and then sell technology to other stores. This can certainly revolutionize retail if they persist on executing right.

Re: Amazon Go

#206

Post by kowdermeister »

RFID alone is not enough. It must have some kind of video tracking component to it, otherwise I could easily fabricate a Faraday cage inside my bag and just leave with the goods.

Re: Amazon Go

#207

Post by agumonkey »

elicash wrote: post #43

I worked at a grocery store for several years, and one thing I recall is customers CONSTANTLY putting items back in a random aisle, rather than where they found it. I wonder how this tech deals with that? Maybe they figured that out, too. But I was amused in the video when I saw the customer putting it back where it belonged, because that's not how I remember that going... All that said, this is fantastic and excitin…

Meh, cheap rfid, or funny barcode positionning to ensure their sensors can always track stuff.

I'm not that thrilled, somehow I'm not in love with todays tech and progress (that's on me). Moreover I wonder what people living on cashier jobs (it's an easy target for unqualified and hurried people) will feel.

Goodbye profession.

Re: Amazon Go

#208

Post by manuelflara »

CodeSheikh wrote: post #201

Guys this is not good. As much as I love the convenience of pick-and-go, this eventually will prove out to be drastic for a variety of bad socioeconomic reasons, that most of us are already aware of. Small businesses were already suffering at the hands of Amazon Prime. Now Amazon Go wants to not only kick out those businesses out of the block but it also wants to take away jobs of small retail salesperson. Unacceptab…

Wether we like it or not, automatization is going to eat many, many millions of jobs over the next few years. Taxi/bus/truck drivers (self driving cars), fast food staff[1] and thanks to tech like Amazon Go's, also regular store employees. Trying to stop this from happening is futile. What we need to figure out is how are we going to prevent society from exploding once most people are out of a job forever.

[1] http://newsexaminer.net/food/mcdonalds-to-open-25000-robot-r...

Re: Amazon Go

#209

Post by zaargy »

CodeSheikh wrote: post #201

Guys this is not good. As much as I love the convenience of pick-and-go, this eventually will prove out to be drastic for a variety of bad socioeconomic reasons, that most of us are already aware of. Small businesses were already suffering at the hands of Amazon Prime. Now Amazon Go wants to not only kick out those businesses out of the block but it also wants to take away jobs of small retail salesperson. Unacceptab…

Like it or not, this is the future. If Amazon don't do it then someone else will. People want cheap goods and this will give them cheaper goods.

The solution to your worries is a universal basic income.

Re: Amazon Go

#210

Post by deelowe »

gech wrote: post #120
jtcond13 wrote: post #100

Your periodic reminder that 'retail salesperson' is the most common job in America (~4.5 million). http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/the-10-m...

It's just a starter job, people shouldn't rely on them as a career, it's their fault, bootstraps, etc. etc.

This isn't a solution. It doesn't matter who's "fault" it is. If 4.5M people lose their jobs very quickly, we're going to have a big freaking problem on our hands.

Retail, fast food, stock pickers, truck drivers, etc.. etc.. Sure you could say "don't make menial jobs your career" all you want, but this is still going to be a huge freaking issue sooner than later.

This is from just last week: https://www.ft.com/content/dec677c0-b7e6-11e6-ba85-95d1533d9...

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