“Just walk out” technology by Amazon

Post by femiagbabiaka » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 11:50 PM UTC

ar_lan wrote: post #179

vessenes wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of the Aberhart quote recommending airports be built with spoons and forks, not modern machines, if a jobs program is what's required. Perhaps we could add more jobs by having people hand total receipts and the computers could just check them for accuracy :) My own perspective is that it is basic reality that a large number of low-skill jobs will be automated over the next 10 to 20 years. Rather than…

I don't understand the notion of moving backward in order to keep jobs for people. I get why people say they want that (fear of losing their jobs), but I don't really understand the logical progression to getting there and I believe its influenced by: a) Practically, this imposes a big problem to future society if low-skill jobs are gone. b) I'm definitely privileged to have a "high-skill" job so my fear factor here…

Post by Polylactic_acid » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 11:52 PM UTC

AllanHoustonSt wrote: post #467

ndelage wrote: post #352

The last few times I've gone to my local pharmacy (Rite Aid) I've watched a single cashier operate more than one checkout registers at a time. She did this because it took so long to process payment and print a receipt -- e.g. while she waited for my payment to go through (via credit card) she'd ring up the next customer on another register. She's trying to ring up the most customers per minute possible and using a s…

I feel like self checkout kiosks already solve this. Commodotized Amazon Go tech is a minute improvement in convenience compared to traditional cashier -> self checkout.

Post by Polylactic_acid » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 11:53 PM UTC

thu2111 wrote: post #364

ndelage wrote: post #352

The last few times I've gone to my local pharmacy (Rite Aid) I've watched a single cashier operate more than one checkout registers at a time. She did this because it took so long to process payment and print a receipt -- e.g. while she waited for my payment to go through (via credit card) she'd ring up the next customer on another register. She's trying to ring up the most customers per minute possible and using a s…

Whilst Amazon Go is cool, that's not an argument in its favour. That's purely a US specific screwup. In the rest of the world you can clear contactless transactions in a few hundred milliseconds with competent retailers; that's why it's possible to tap your way through the gates at busy London Underground stations. And retailers love contactless exactly because it's so fast and it lets them reduce staffing/handle mor…

Post by jessriedel » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

julienb_sea wrote: post #319

jessriedel wrote: post #265

It is amazing to me that this is the technological solution to eliminating scanning barcodes at check-out lines. The obvious alternative is RFIDs, i.e., just push your cart through a scanner like airport security and all your items appear on the display. (The "automatically bill your Amazon account or credit card" part is optional either way.) From talking to a couple supply chain people, the best explanation I have…

RFID are not good enough for this application. In the end you'd still need to take the items out of the bag to scan them, as RFID blocking tech is real, and RFID at a distance doesn't work that well - especially with a lot of different RFID chips involved. It's also very wasteful and time consuming. You'd need to chip every item in the store, which is a LOT of human labor (expensive), plus those chips are essentially…

Post by jeffleft » Mon, Mar 09, 2020, 11:56 PM UTC

inkaudio wrote: post #425

boublepop wrote: post #246

Aaaand there’s the play. Amazon wasn’t trying to compete with other retails stores by leveraging their tech edge, they were positioning themselves to becoming the single provider of retail checkout solutions for the future. You either opt-in to giving Amazon all your retail data, or you become the only old fashioned “wait in line to get served” store on the street. And where is the competition? Is there anyone at all…

There are number of tech companies directly competing in this space: https://standard.ai/ https://grabango.com/ https://www.getzippin.com/ https://www.v7labs.com/retail https://www.getzippin.com/ There are competitive options, if you’re in retail you do not have to give Amazon all your “retail data” or use their tech.