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Walmart employees are out to show its anti-shoplifting AI doesn’t work

arstechnica.com

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Re: Walmart employees are out to show its anti-shoplifting AI doesn’t work

#71

Post by m0zg »

voz_ wrote: post #38
wyck wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a bit strange how the in-house and other competitor is also mentioned, Walmart are big on data warehousing and management, in a lot of cases they are pushing innovation and r&d, in some cases for decades. This article needs to show a more detailed analysis of when it does actually work, a fraud KPI ?, or something else besides some anonymous complaints. You can trick any system, but that's not telling on it's o…

Walmart pushing innovation? Citation needed.

Walmart has been pushing innovation for decades now: https://www.walmartlabs.com/. How do you think they got so huge?

Re: Walmart employees are out to show its anti-shoplifting AI doesn’t work

#72

Post by m0zg »

And that is why such technologies are best deployed with humans in the loop. Tech flags, human checks, human label is fed back into training. Fewer humans will be needed now, even fewer 2-3 years from now. There are literally tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people every day doing nothing but watching security feeds. And 99% of the time nothing is going on.

Re: Walmart employees are out to show its anti-shoplifting AI doesn’t work

#73

Post by ABeeSea »

voz_ wrote: post #38
wyck wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a bit strange how the in-house and other competitor is also mentioned, Walmart are big on data warehousing and management, in a lot of cases they are pushing innovation and r&d, in some cases for decades. This article needs to show a more detailed analysis of when it does actually work, a fraud KPI ?, or something else besides some anonymous complaints. You can trick any system, but that's not telling on it's o…

Walmart pushing innovation? Citation needed.

Tech has been Wal-Mart’s competitive edge for decades. They had an IBM and electronic POS since 75 for inventory management. They had a company wide network in 77. In 87, they installed the largest satellite network at the time. Allowed two-way data (inventory and sales) and voice communication and one way video to all of their properties. They built an enterprise DW in 90 and put EDI through the internet in the mid-90s. There is a reason they could beat every other retailer on cost for decades until Amazon came around.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cio.com/article/2437873/45-...

Re: Walmart employees are out to show its anti-shoplifting AI doesn’t work

#74

Post by crazygringo »

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #52
crazygringo wrote: post #27

I mean, presumably Wal-Mart has excellent statistics on "shrinkage" from regular inventory checks like any store, as well as recording how often shoplifters are caught, and so they have clear data as to whether or not Everseen is an improvement or not. And I don't understand what this has to do with COVID-19 at all in the article. Finally, what do employees care about theft? It's not coming out of their paycheck. Fal…

Employees are often the ones accused of theft?

The article doesn't mention employee theft -- and that's going to happen in the back room anyways, not in aisles, so this system wouldn't even apply.

The article seems to be mainly about theft during self-bagging.

Re: Walmart employees are out to show its anti-shoplifting AI doesn’t work

#75

Post by pscoutou »

birdyrooster wrote: post #67
SkyBelow wrote: post #11

There is a lot of information in the article but little to draw a conclusion from. They bring up examples where the AI failed, but that alone does not indicate it doesn't work. An AI that fails to recognize some thefts but does recognize others can still be considered to work as long as enough thefts are caught. Imperfect, but given the low cost of a failure relative to not using an AI, imperfection seems quite toler…

They must have forgotten the name of the game is loss prevention for the business and not about stopping shoplifting. Cutting payroll on your loss prevention is loss prevention in of itself.

I’m not sure. When self-checkouts were introduced here, they had staff supervising to help and educate customers then significantly scaled back that headcount.

Fast forward several years, there’s more staff stationed with self-checkout due to theft.

I think retailers are going to calculate the cost of headcount and theft and make a decision based on an equilibrium.

Of course, the best outcome for Walmart is to have an automated LP system to reduce staffing cost for the long term.

Re: Walmart employees are out to show its anti-shoplifting AI doesn’t work

#76

Post by sysadmindotfail »

dkdk8283 wrote: post #44

My local walmart now has cameras getting your face at self checkout. I cover it with a bag before using checkout

IMHO this is smart. They're training ML models using this data (and it feels intrusive to me) and one might assume this is higher quality than the cameras scattered about the store at odd angles.

Re: Walmart employees are out to show its anti-shoplifting AI doesn’t work

#77

Post by acheron9383 »

jjoonathan wrote: post #39
voz_ wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart pushing innovation? Citation needed.

Their new kiosks are so infernally slow that I like to imagine they're electron apps running on a raspberry pi, which would make them the very peak of innovation.

You may not like it, but this is what peak tech looks like.

Re: Walmart employees are out to show its anti-shoplifting AI doesn’t work

#78

Post by vonmoltke »

logfromblammo wrote: post #54
sergiosgc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preventing scanning one item and placing two on the bag? It's an easy problem. Just have scanned items be placed on a scale. People will be bagging stuff to take home, so just have bags placed on a scale and observe the weight increase as items are placed in the bag. You probably know the weight of one jug of milk, but even if you don't, it's easy to "learn" the weights of new SKUs statistically.

This has already been tried. I, personally, hated it so much that I just stopped using the self-checkouts whenever possible, because employee checkout was faster, even with the wait for customers queued before me. The weight check always brought the checkout process to a screeching halt, requiring an employee to come along and restart it, even with the smallest baskets in the best of conditions.

This was exacerbated if I wanted to use my own bags instead of the provided ones.

Re: Walmart employees are out to show its anti-shoplifting AI doesn’t work

#79

Post by Melting_Harps »

crazygringo wrote: post #27

I mean, presumably Wal-Mart has excellent statistics on "shrinkage" from regular inventory checks like any store, as well as recording how often shoplifters are caught, and so they have clear data as to whether or not Everseen is an improvement or not. And I don't understand what this has to do with COVID-19 at all in the article. Finally, what do employees care about theft? It's not coming out of their paycheck. Fal…

> Finally, what do employees care about theft? It's not coming out of their paycheck. False positives from an anti-theft system seems like a small job nuisance at best -- not something to whistleblow with a "slickly produced video".

I think their is a massive divide from Walmart's Corporate/Tech branch and that of the typical store employee. I overheard one employee saying back in December as we were days away from NYE that she had to remain at work despite having been approved for leave weeks earlier as most of her coworkers simply just didn't show up to work and demanded a raise from her manager. I now always wear earbuds when I go inside of one.

Whereas for the tech employee or risk management office drones they don't face those concerns and instead have to justify a growing budget for their department, perhaps even their jobs in this environment, with these kind of antics.

I inadvertently noticed how easy it is to use their buggy and slow check-out kiosks against them, but since I only ever buy motor oil at Walmart anymore I don't see this being a useful risk. I actually went back and paid for the item when I noticed it made the noise that it scanned but didn't include the item to my checkout price, which was a total pain in the ass that meant standing in line at the nearly always understaffed customer service/return area.

Bobby Lee, the ex-owner of massive Bitcoin exchange in China and the brother of Charlie Lee creator of Litecoin, was ex-Walmart tech. In a recent podcast outlining his previous history in the Bitcoin ecosystem he made it clear they have no shortage of talent there. To what end, is another matter entirely.

Re: Walmart employees are out to show its anti-shoplifting AI doesn’t work

#80

Post by alkonaut »

birdyrooster wrote: post #67
SkyBelow wrote: post #11

There is a lot of information in the article but little to draw a conclusion from. They bring up examples where the AI failed, but that alone does not indicate it doesn't work. An AI that fails to recognize some thefts but does recognize others can still be considered to work as long as enough thefts are caught. Imperfect, but given the low cost of a failure relative to not using an AI, imperfection seems quite toler…

They must have forgotten the name of the game is loss prevention for the business and not about stopping shoplifting. Cutting payroll on your loss prevention is loss prevention in of itself.

Loss is hard to estimate though. What are the losses from a false positive?
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