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Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

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Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#381

Post by bombcar »

saurik wrote: post #66
ghaff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grocery stores and others absolutely still need cashier checkout. If I have a handful of items I can barcode swipe and even a couple pieces of produce that's fine. But they simply aren't designed for a full shopping cart which includes a ton of non-barcoded items. Ditto with home repair stores. Scan a new smoke detector? Sure. Check out a bunch of lumber etc. That would be no. In my experience, most stores are findin…

This "balance" still cuts out a lot of employees and still removes the social interaction for most use cases. My local Home Depot, FWIW, still has a person to do checkout... but I think it is only one person, not even two: the rest of the checkout opportunities are self-checkout. Also, btw: it isn't so bad to do self-checkout of large items as they have a wireless handheld barcode scanner at each self-checkout stand;…

Target and Home Depot have some of the best, but that may be because the anti-theft is tuned all the way down because they're in high-trust areas. Neither seems to complain much about the weights on the scale.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#382

Post by bombcar »

gnufied wrote: post #60
ghaff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grocery stores and others absolutely still need cashier checkout. If I have a handful of items I can barcode swipe and even a couple pieces of produce that's fine. But they simply aren't designed for a full shopping cart which includes a ton of non-barcoded items. Ditto with home repair stores. Scan a new smoke detector? Sure. Check out a bunch of lumber etc. That would be no. In my experience, most stores are findin…

I would say it is getting harder. Walmart for example I think has switched to largely self-checkout with some helpers thrown in. Other stores where had more than 3 or 4 human manned lanes, now have just 1 most of the time.

My local Walmart often has a line waiting for the ocean of self-checkouts whilst they have two or three humanned checkouts empty.

I prefer the human ones because they have the bag carousel which is faster.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#383

Post by bombcar »

function_seven wrote: post #137
rcme wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Order groceries online. It's much more convenient for large orders.

I used to to this when my Vons operated it’s own fleet. Then they switched to instacart and it went dramatically downhill. Cold items sitting in their hot trunk, 4-hour delivery windows, and an order that just never arrived. The Teamsters did a good job. The underpaid gig workers don’t. (And frankly, I’m not sure I blame them.)

I split the difference and order for pickup - the local store holds them in the proper equipment until I arrive (at least at Walmart).

The convenience store, however, puts milk on a shelf so you better be there when they say it's ready (ordering when I leave from home works perfectly, and they throw free Doritos in for some reason).

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#384

Post by bombcar »

klyrs wrote: post #129
rcme wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Order groceries online. It's much more convenient for large orders.

I got a cake delivered upside down. So convenient.

Free upside down cake! Sounds like a winner.

(I only trust grocery delivery for things in impervious packaging or impossible to screw up).

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#385

Post by bombcar »

jacquesm wrote: post #280
gnufied wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same goes for almost all grocery shops here - Publix, Kroger, target etc replacing checkout with self-checkout kiosks completely. I absolute hate using self-checkout for non-packaged groceries items. Especially if I have lots of stuff. Freaking "unintended item in baggage area". Not to mention, I feel like Publix etc in particular employed lots of folks with disability. It warmed my heart to talk to them. I don't kno…

I boycott the self checkout, and always go through the cashier, even if that means waiting a bit longer. The way I look at it that's at least a token towards keeping people employed that make substantially less money than I do and even if my time is valuable it isn't nearly as valuable to me as their employment is to them. I hoped more people would join me this but it looks like it is a losing battle.

You're fighting the wrong battle. The real galaxy brain move is to use a self-checkout and fuck up horribly so they have to send the staffer over anyway, and take ten times as long.

Then it appears on the balance sheet as a negative.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#386

Post by rchaud »

cm2012 wrote: post #35

This is good for society just like any productivity enhancing invention. You'd think a place like HN would know that the only way the world has ever gotten better has been innovation improving per-human output.

And here I am thinking that a place like HN can appreciate that Econ 101 axioms don't translate perfectly to the real world.

Moving call centre jobs to India and Philippines 20 years ago didn't exactly make those that lost their jobs more productive over the long run. The textbook says it should have, as American comparative advantage should be in higher value-added activities.

The only problem is that the textbook also thinks re-skilling is free, everyone has alternate options for employment, and the labour market re-balances instantly.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#387

Post by bombcar »

jonwest wrote: post #136
phpisthebest wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I resisted using online ordering at Kroger for a long time, then in 2021 I started using the mobile app, and just picking up my groceries... now I have not be inside a Kroger in almost 2 years and have no plans on going back in. The Kroger App is great, and having them bring the stuff out, load me up, and I drive away... even if they actually go back to charging $5 for the service I am paying. >>I don't know what hum…

I feel like the lowest earning employees on the totem pole is a bit of an easy scapegoat for high costs when executives make an exponential amount in comparison. I understand that if they weren’t in grocery they could be making similar amounts in another industry—my argument is more that the disparity between employee and executive is too great, regardless of industry.

> Walmart Inc.'s chief executive earned $24.1 million in fiscal 2023, according to a government filing.

Even if we assume only 3 cashiers (x3 for daily shifts) at the 4,630 Walmarts in the USA, and they make only $10 an hour, that's still $150 million a year.

Automating the CEO would save more money per person replaced, but the cashiers still are a total larger dollar group.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#388

Post by gnicholas »

sharts wrote: post #340

Anyone that has ever interacted with a customer service chat bot knows this is pretty stupid. I’m not sure why people (esp. those in the tech community) think we have evolved the technology in any meaningful enough way to replace people yet. How do we know this? Those same people would be against AI chatbots replacing their children’s teachers.

I've tried Amazon's chat function and it's put me in an infinite loop on several occasions. I don't know why they didn't have an agent available (it was business hours). I was surprised that a company with Amazon's resources doesn't have a better handle on this, until I remembered that this is the company that doesn't let you say the reason is "wrong size" when returning clothing items. They're not stupid — they're trying to make things difficult for you.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#389

Post by sokoloff »

carapace wrote: post #351
ghaff wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't really have problems interacting with most people. If I wanted a pizza right now I'd have no problem with calling my local pizza place and heading over there to pick it up. But at some point the idea that we should maintain low-paying, pretty boring (although there are lots of customer interactions) "bullshit" jobs so we can eschew automation pretty much falls apart. (And different businesses will draw…

I'm in favor of letting the machines do the shit work to free us up to do things like parenting, gardening, local politics, etc. My point is that a corp or org that thinks of dealing with it's customers as a bullshit job is probably not one you want to patronize. If I were running a company the folks that talk directly to the customers would be pretty high status.

If you’re running a high gross margin business, that totally makes sense. That also leaves an opening for a competitor to come in and treat your high margin as their opportunity, maybe by going cheaper on CS.

In a low gross margin business, I think the days of having excellent and high status customer service are already gone (and may have never been).

To the operator example above, a 5 minute long-distance call in 1980 cost the equivalent of about $7.50 in today’s money. It’s probably not that hard to figure out the conclusion of squeezing those costs and margins out of telecom companies, but I also think we’ve all been made better off for it, except perhaps people whose dream it was to be a telephone operator for 45 years.

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