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Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

gizmodo.com

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Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#281

Post by saynay »

rwbt wrote: post #256
wyager wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thousands of poor souls doing terrible pointless menial work just so that a few entitled customers can avoid the clunky self checkout Wanting to make your life more convenient and pleasant isn't "entitled". 99% of jobs are things people would rather not be doing (otherwise you wouldn't be getting paid for it). The point is that we can allocate this work in a way that minimizes the amount of time everyone has to spe…

If you don't like going to the grocery store pay someone to go get them for you. Thousands of people remotely "following" you around and scanning things for you, just so that you can avoid using self checkout sounds ridiculous and excessive.

Is it more ridiculous than having someone standing at a cash register in the store doing the same task, while also having to bag for you and pretend to smile?

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#282

Post by kadoban »

alsodumb wrote: post #273
madeofpalk wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped. Wow - I did not know this. This makes it all a whole lot less impressive and interesting that it was just people off shore watching you.

It's just a tech-illiterate journalist who can't seem to understand the difference between "annotators watching and labeling videos to validate the model" vs "people watching the videos live to remotely decide the cost of every user's purchase". Or maybe they do know the difference, but wanted to bait audience.

Or it's a tech-literate journalist who knows that usually it's the latter and they have vague plans to transition to the former later.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#283

Post by xp84 »

bombcar wrote: post #250
themadturk wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shopping there always felt supremely weird to me. Scanning in, getting stuff, and walking out, but I always felt incomplete without a receipt being right there in my email, wondering if I'd done something wrong and had just inadvertently shoplifted. I shop more often at Walmart, which has recently increased the number of manned checkout lanes and restricted their self-checkout to 15 items or less.

The local Walmart expanded self-checkout and it works surprisingly well (the bag scale seems to be very loosely calibrated or off). I wonder if they're doing things differently depending on how much product walks out the door.

Just in the past month or two, in my (low-crime suburban) area, Walmart appears to have closed the two large self-checkout areas entirely and replaced them with a (relative to before) army of cashiers. I have always found their machines to be very hassle-free, but the shockingly-adequate level of cashier staffing made my last visit surprisingly quick and convenient. I could live with this.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#284

Post by soerxpso »

rwbt wrote: post #256
wyager wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thousands of poor souls doing terrible pointless menial work just so that a few entitled customers can avoid the clunky self checkout Wanting to make your life more convenient and pleasant isn't "entitled". 99% of jobs are things people would rather not be doing (otherwise you wouldn't be getting paid for it). The point is that we can allocate this work in a way that minimizes the amount of time everyone has to spe…

If you don't like going to the grocery store pay someone to go get them for you. Thousands of people remotely "following" you around and scanning things for you, just so that you can avoid using self checkout sounds ridiculous and excessive.

I don't see where you're getting the impression that 1,000 workers are monitoring every single individual that walks into the store. The figure used was the total amount for the whole program (many locations), only one person was reviewing each case, and they were only even reviewing 70% of cases. Your argument is no different than saying that every time you go to McDonald's, you're entitled for expecting the hundreds of thousands of McDonald's employees globally to band together to make you your burger.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#285

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

sunshowers wrote: post #245
bilalq wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not manual. This is a case of mistaken journalism. The labeling is for training data of the models. Before covid, the hours were much better too.

> 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022 That's manual by any reasonable description.

I think it depends on how much each human reviewer did.

If they manually reviewed most of the items on each shopping trip, then it's mostly manual.

If they only manually reviewed an item or few per trip, I'd consider it to be mostly automated.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#286

Post by thejohnconway »

kevingadd wrote: post #266
bombcar wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really tunable and some stores are tuned to "Fort Knox" where even a fly landing UNKNOWN ITEM IN BAGGING AREA. Others are so loose that you don't even have to take things out of your cart, scan and pay and go.

The Whole Foods location nearest to me has self-checkout stations that don't even have a scale under the bagging area. You just scan, put it in your bag and go. I assume they can afford to tank the shrinkage that results from this due to their high profit margins, or they just don't consider the costs associated with the scales to be worth it.

All the local self-checkouts where I am in London are just scan and go, no scales.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#287

Post by ssl-3 »

CharlieDigital wrote: post #222
ssl-3 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At Meijer stores I've shopped at, there are fancy scales in the produce section. They work like this: Scan the barcode on the produce if it has one (or pick it from a picture-list, or search by name, or just key in the 4-digit PLU if you're cool like that), put it on the scale, and it spits out a barcode label that identifies the product and the weight. At self-checkout, one just scans the generated barcode label and…

They have the same at my local Wegman's but there's really no incentive to use it. I'm not any faster than the cashier so there's no time savings. And it has several problems as well with respect to loss (e.g. adding more items to the bag). To deal with that, you'd have to weigh it or count again to verify.

The advantage comes during shopping trips when one is not planning to use a cashier to check out, wherein: You're going to have the weigh the produce yourself, anyway, so you might as well get that done in advance.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#288

Post by kjkjadksj »

parhamn wrote: post #260
awelxtr wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self checkout systems based on RFID are very convenient, quick and quite accurate compared to self checkout on grocery stores'l. The main problem on groceries is that the tags are expensive compared to the product (tags prices are in the order of tens of cents depending on manufacturer and size) Disclaimer: I work on a RFID reader manufacturing company

Any ideas whats stopping it from becoming much cheaper? RFIDs on everything seem like a good move in the robotics age.

Seems like a lot of ewaste to me for marginal convenience otoh

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#289

Post by b112 »

parhamn wrote: post #260
awelxtr wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self checkout systems based on RFID are very convenient, quick and quite accurate compared to self checkout on grocery stores'l. The main problem on groceries is that the tags are expensive compared to the product (tags prices are in the order of tens of cents depending on manufacturer and size) Disclaimer: I work on a RFID reader manufacturing company

Any ideas whats stopping it from becoming much cheaper? RFIDs on everything seem like a good move in the robotics age.

I don't want rfid tags in my apples, and putting them on the outside of each one seems costly.

And things like onions have a loose outer skin, which falls off. And grocery store clerks peel the outside (wilting) leaves off of things like local lettuce daily.

Seems like rfid on groceries would be hard for fresh produce, and we don't need everything wrapped in plastic.

Re: Amazon ditches 'just walk out' checkouts at its grocery stores

#290

Post by anthony__j »

kadoban wrote: post #282
alsodumb wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a tech-illiterate journalist who can't seem to understand the difference between "annotators watching and labeling videos to validate the model" vs "people watching the videos live to remotely decide the cost of every user's purchase". Or maybe they do know the difference, but wanted to bait audience.

Or it's a tech-literate journalist who knows that usually it's the latter and they have vague plans to transition to the former later.

always mturk all the way down
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