“Just walk out” technology by Amazon • Hacker News Board

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#611

Post by CurrentB » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 3:12 AM UTC

gordon_freeman wrote: post #582

CurrentB wrote: post #543

It it just me or are people massively underestimating this? I feel like the impact of this will be close to the self driving car in terms of a vast rollout of massive new automation. I've been to Amazon Go a few times, the small one in NYC, and the selection is underwhelming but the walk out experience is amazing. And since then I've fantasized about just walking out pretty much every time I'm in a grocery store. The…

I don't want to criticize or undermine this initiative in any way but someone like me who frequently uses Safeway's self-checkout machines at my local grocery store, to me this just feels like overengineering. I never had any problems with self-checkout and am always able to quickly scan-and-pay within a couple of minutes when I visit the store once a week.

So if you close your eyes and visualize a grocery store experience where you put stuff directly into your tote bags or your backpack and walk right out, with 0 time spent on anything after you have everything you need, this doesn't seem like something completely beyond self-checkout to you?

I've used plenty of self checkout lanes too and it's roughly the same satisfaction as going in a cashier lane. It's still X + Y steps where X is the number of items you have an Y is payment related steps.

(It's possible that I just hate lines (and self checkout?) way more than other people)

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#612

Post by Dumblydorr » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

CurrentB wrote: post #566

anewguy9000 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed when i think back to how the self driving car revolutionized.. oh wait what year is it?

What I mean is that people are looking at self-driving as the next huge thing in automation that is "around the corner" for some definition of that time frame. But these stores exist today and make traditional cashiers obsolete in no uncertain terms, potentially across the entire brick and mortar retail industry, and the response is "eh, there's already self checkout lanes". It really feel to me like one of those mom…

SDCs exist today in limited scale as well. This announcement isn't more momentous than Waymo's recent one, it's just less baked into our thinking that retail jobs are on the chopping block like driving jobs.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#613

Post by Animats » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 3:17 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #602

inkaudio wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do any of those companies actually have a live customer? Not a demo store, a real paying customer with more than one location live? Standard.ai apparently has a demo store in SF, although it's been closed due to the coronavirus epidemic. Grabango - one installation in test at a Giant Eagle store. Getzippin - one installation in test at a Lojas Americanas store. Their site gives the impression that it's really about g…

Found a Grabango video.[1] They did a test for NCR.

[1] https://vimeo.com/352588185

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#614

Post by Cogito » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 3:18 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #367

hammock wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In hindsight it seems obvious that the play was to "AWS" the whole thing: make yourself the first/best customer, nail the implementation, then sell it to the world. It's not just about "AWS"-ing the thing. It's about gaining access to all of the transaction data and marrying that to what Amazon already knows about you. A retailer like Walmart would NEVER use this tech, they know their data is one of the most valuabl…

> and marrying that to what Amazon already knows about you. Amazon is always putting up ads for me based on my purchase history, but they're never what I wind up buying. I have no explanation for what is wrong with their algorithm.

It's just about the ROI.

Turns out people who have just purchased something are far more likely to purchase that thing again than a random person.

This makes them the perfect person to advertise to.

Even if the percentage is quite low this can be better than advertising to the general population. Say the numbers were 1 in 10 000 impressions leads to a toilet seat sale, but 1 in 1000 people who have just bought a toilet seat buy another one soon after (first one was broken/distributor/toilet seat collector/remodelling whole home/etc).

If those were the numbers it would be silly to not advertise to recent buyers.

Essentially, the self selection of 'I just bought ' very often puts you in a category that is far more likely to buy again than almost anyone else.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#615

Post by cavisne » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 3:19 AM UTC

milofeynman wrote: post #287

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…

It's interesting that they rolled this out as a thing, but didn't start retrofitting all of their Whole Foods with it. Does it have problems with grocery stores? How does it handle fruits by weight, etc.

The newly opened Go Grocery charges per item for things like avocado's, so i guess it does not handle fruit by weight.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#616

Post by WWLink » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 3:19 AM UTC

odensc wrote: post #555

TheGoddessInari wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They stopped free returns on Prime a long time ago. Now only a few select items offer it. This was about the same time they stopped shipping things in cardboard boxes and went with bubble packs, and most recently, paper wrap with no padding whatsoever.

Source? Literally everything I've returned on Amazon over the last couple years has had at least one free return option (usually via UPS / Amazon Hub dropoff).

Clothing comes to mind, that's also the only case I've ever received something in just a white plastic bag.

Basically, you choose why you're returning. In some cases if you say something other than "the item was defective", it'll only have options that cost money.

It's super rare, but I've seen it before.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#617

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 3:20 AM UTC

mkolodny wrote: post #610

derefr wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surprising to me that Whole Foods still doesn't have this tech integrated. You'd think that'd be the "beta" step after the Amazon Store's "alpha" step.

Maybe they don't want to draw attention to how many people are going to lose their jobs because of this yet. Cashier is the #2 job in the US (by number of people employed) [0]. If they released this at Whole Foods, I'd guess they'd fire all the cashiers there. That would make this rollout a lot less exciting for a lot of people. I hope Amazon comes up with an awesome way to help the cashiers this technology replaces.…

> If they released this at Whole Foods, I'd guess they'd fire all the cashiers there

Since Whole Foods sells alcohol, I doubt that. There are things that lots of governments won't let you have customers “just walk out” with.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#618

Post by WWLink » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

aniham wrote: post #488

UweSchmidt wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe their real algorithm is so scary good that they can only use it for internal use. Didn't they also show pregnancy-related items to women who didn't even know they were pregnant yet? Or maybe showing a wild selection of weird products results in people "brainstorm" other shopping needs, as a kind of anchoring. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring#Anchoring_in_negotia...

I believe you’re referring to a story about Target from a few years back: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

Yesterday I walked into target with my brother and said something along the lines of "I'd rather go to jury duty than shop at target."

I wonder if their creepy surveillance tech knows I said it. I was going there to pick up my brother's medicine from the pharmacy. It's a real shame. I used to LOVE shopping at Target. But the dang store has gotten greedier and super obnoxious over the years.

I was positive they used to use their tracking data to design store layouts with minimal clashing, such that they distribute the shoppers across the store. It seemed to really work, too.

In their newer layouts, I dunno what it is, but everything seems crammed together all in the same spot. They replaced the popcorn, icees, and hot dogs, with food I don't like that costs too much. They got rid of the handbasket things that were handy and all over the store, and got rid of the benches too. Then they sold their pharmacy to CVS.. which immediately threw out the kickass containers Target used to use and added a super obnoxious phone system.

Just overall, I hate shopping at Target now.

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#619

Post by rapind » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 3:26 AM UTC

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #422

zhoujianfu wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, for me it was hammocks.. for years! Just call me The Hammock Man!

Matter of fact, they're all in the same complex; it's the hammock complex on third.

That's over by Spatula City right?

Re: “Just walk out” technology by Amazon

#620

Post by WWLink » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 3:27 AM UTC

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #342

filoleg wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon probably doesn't want to radically rock the boat when it comes to Whole Foods at the moment. It is an established well-working business, and they don't want another wave of "WF went to shit after Amazon bought it out, just look at all those changes they've implemented!", given that Amazon's reputation has already been kinda questionable in the public eye recently.

Last Thanksgiving, I visited my parents in the town where I lived before college, and we went to the Whole Foods where we used to shop at all the time. It looked basically the same, except that there were these huge, bright blue Amazon Prime ads everywhere . It felt vaguely dystopian—a store of my youth invaded by the giant tech monolith. If Amazon is trying to not noticeably change Whole Foods, they're doing a prett…

What? You don't want to buy an Alexa smart microphone device?! But we'll give you one for free! Here! FREE ECHO MINI DOT THING! -aggressively hands over- LET US SPY ON YOU AT HOME!!!one!