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

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

#291

Post by BytesAndGears »

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.

That’s how the popular grocery chains in the Netherlands all work. You just scan a few things, put it in your bag, and leave. I almost never interact with anyone.

It uses your rewards card to determine your “risk”, I think. Just a theory. But whenever I’ve gotten a new card, they come check my bag a lot. Then after a dozen successes or so, they stop checking so often. Then hardly at all.

One of my friends forgot to scan an item once when they checked, and he had someone come to check his bag way more often for a while.

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

#292

Post by xp84 »

jhbadger wrote: post #128
graemep wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the supermarkets where I live (English Midlands) have scan as you shop. I stopped using it after they required using their loyalty cards/apps to use it.

I'm not a fan of the data tracking that I know those loyalty programs are for, but at least in the US most stores overcharge you if you don't use them (they present it as giving a "discount" if you use them but really you are just getting the fair price denied to non-members) so you would need to have deep pockets to resist them out of principle.

The latest evolution in these are really devious: A shelf tag advertises a price in large print: $7.99 with smaller print "with digital coupon" And then underneath, in the color usually used to show the "non-sale price," you see "$12.99." A lot of people just glance at the tag which looks a lot like the normal 'sale price' tag and thinks they're paying $8. Of course, you have to get in the sluggish, stupid app, and best case scenario scan the tag or the item and get to the right part of the app to "Clip" the coupon. Assuming you can get a good enough signal in that part of the store, and that you haven't become logged out of the app... etc. etc. And assuming you don't make a mental note to clip it in a minute when you get out of this crowded aisle and then forget.

I think they just really want to display one price and charge a much higher one to most people.

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

#293

Post by someotherperson »

winter-day wrote: post #105
jonnycat wrote: post #89

Can we start a list of technological magic that is actually "1000 people in India watching and labeling videos" (or functional equivalent)?

while I agree with the sentiment, as an Indian, I hope this doesn't happen in India. countries which typically do this mechanical turk-like work typically don't raise themselves out of poverty (esp. Philippines, Indonesia, etc.). If anyone wants a specific example, I lead an aspect of web crawling for a FAANG and then other public companies. Over the last 10 years we heavily used those offshore teams, aforementioned,…

That's just exploitative business.

I know companies that operate in that space and they pay incredibly well, between $20 to $50/hour.

> GPT APIs which perform just as well

That's because they were also trained by exploiting third world groups, paying about $2/hour.

The problem here isn't offering work to developing countries, the problem here is major corporations squeezing them for every cent and not allowing it to be used as a means of getting out of poverty. And that's also why the workers end up performing half-assed work by using automated classifiers and faking their credentials. It's not hard to see where this goes for both.

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

#294

Post by op00to »

akira2501 wrote: post #208
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #188

I wish Target would add computers to their carts. For most people, it'd be a nice alternative towards the self checkout area with limited space to place things. For the more unsavory customers, it could offer video evidence that they're stealing stuff, lock the wheels at the door if more than $X isn't paid for, and create GPS reports of where all the stolen carts end up.

They already have good videos of thefts. Wheel locks have been around forever. I can just _tell_ you where all the stolen carts "end up." None of this has an impact on theft; however, it does a great job of making me feel like I live in a prison.

Target allegedly has such good video capabilities they can recognize repeat thieves, keep a record of what they steal, and wait until it reaches felony level after multiple trips before they flag a person to be detained. All in super duper high definition.

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

#295

Post by kjkjadksj »

strgcmc wrote: post #255
dangerwill wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well from the article it's clear that this camera+ai based detection of purchases never worked for Amazon. They had to rely on Indian contractors watching people remotely. It never technically worked, and even if it did, then yeah I agree that it wouldn't make economic sense. Cameras with that level of fidelity and with 100% coverage, tracking N customers at once, are probably a huge capital expense. And all for slig…

> And all for slightly faster shopping. Wanted to comment on this part -- Prime itself was nothing more than faster shipping, though yes the difference between 4-6 weeks standard vs 2-days was massive (not just slightly faster). But the point is, Amazon excels at identifying friction points that others have just accepted as industry norms, but which, if unblocked, could actually meaningfully shift consumer behaviors.…

> But the point is, Amazon excels at identifying friction points that others have just accepted as industry norms, but which, if unblocked, could actually meaningfully shift consumer behaviors

Someone remind the aws team about this

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

#296

Post by CodeWriter23 »

pierrec wrote: post #262

Say goodbye to the future! The one that IBM promised us 18 years ago in this advertisement: https://vimeo.com/29120357 In fact, that ad also shows how awkward the concept is (or maybe the fact that we're still not ready for it). It's a really fun well-made video but a thoroughly unconvincing advertisement.

Still waiting for my flying car that folds up into a briefcase.

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

#297

Post by Animats »

Retric wrote: post #251
rwbt wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad it's gone for good, if the process really works like how it's described in the article. Thousands of poor souls doing terrible pointless menial work just so that a few entitled customers can avoid the clunky self checkout (eww- the horror!). The entitlement of the west has no bounds really.

It wasn’t pointless, they were training an AI that never fully worked. It’s ultimately the same kind of thing as people monitoring self driving cars, a boring task that may be pointless or possibly remove a lot of drudgery longer term. According to The Information, 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022. This widely missed Amazon’s internal goals of reaching less than 50 reviews per…

That sort of thing seems to improve over time. The USPS has had automatic sorting machines for a long time. At first they could only read pre-barcoded mail. Humans had to key in zip codes. Then character recognition got good enough that printed and typed addresses could be read automatically. Some items were still rejected, and they went through manual stations that added a bar-code sticker.

Then manual reading was made remote. There were about 20 USPS remote envelope reading centers at peak. As the vision systems got good enough to read handwriting, then bad handwriting, those were cut back. Now there's only one remote envelope reading center in the US, and what gets there is really bad.

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

#298

Post by CodeWriter23 »

ska wrote: post #220
CSMastermind wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self checkout is a better customer experience for me personally.

I've never experienced one reliable enough for this to be true (for me).

Try the ones at Home Depot. Pretty sure they developed it in-house.

It may not prevent loss but from a customer experience, a good barcode scanning gun and legible barcodes is about as friction free as it gets.

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

#299

Post by hot_gril »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #259
hot_gril wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weigh each customer/cart going in and going out. Make sure the weight of each item is a prime number. And... remove any restrooms from the store.

2+3=5. In general, the weight idea is impossible. For any two items, you can find the LCM in units of the precision of the scale, and then you won't know if they got LCM/a of one or LCM/b of the other.

Oh yeah, I mixed up addition and multiplication.

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

#300

Post by allan_s »

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.

So does having somebody sitting next to the checkout machine watching me (directly or through security camera) while I finish my groceries ? I fail to see the major difference with somebody working physically in the shop that makes it ridiculous and excessive. One may even argue that remotely it could opens the job to more people (one could do that from home in their wheelchair while their baby is taking a nap )
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