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When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone

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Re: When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone

#31

Post by mattgreenrocks »

m463 wrote: post #26
Someone1234 wrote: post #5

I was recently at an events center, that has replaced all of their vending machines with machines that require me to install an app(!) to purchase a product. Literally, didn't take cash or credit - just via app. Per the marketing on the side, this is meant to be for my benefit in order to earn "points" and get offered "deals." I don't think I have to tell you that I did NOT install the app, and just walked further to…

I think of a friend who worked at a bank, and a colleage decided to show him "how the world really worked" He got out a big printout and started showing the different demographics and their habits. " woman, with a little bit of college" - she will get a credit card, charge it up to the limit, then make the minimum payment... forever. " man, no college" - he will get a credit card, charge it up to the limit, might mak…

Nothing against sports fans, but your comment made me wonder if all the grocery stores hopping on the “game day” wave for advertising campaigns are doing so bc their data shows that sports fans are easier to sell to.

Re: When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone

#32

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

AlexandrB wrote: post #4

Isn't this the purpose of a lot of AI? To provide "good enough" alternatives to human labor. Why would anyone expect AI to make things better rather than cheaper or more profitable ?

Except there's still a human that has to confirm everything the computer did

Re: When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone

#33

Post by s17n »

TSUTiger wrote: post #24
s17n wrote: post #2

The article starts by blaming AI for the reduced food menu, a speculative claim which the author made no attempt to validate and which is almost certainly incorrect. I stopped reading right there.

You should've read further. In reality, when getting out first to market, it might be difficult for "AI" to decipher if a user added 1 of 5 available sauces to their chicken wings, so to reduce the likelihood of this error, you remove it until the technology is more mature. Speculative sure, but a strong assumption, and I doubt Mashgin would confirm this.

Its definitely wrong - I've used these exact checkout systems at places with way longer menus than any stadium has ever or will ever have. Even if that wasn't the case, it would still be way too speculative of premise to be worth seriously discussing, especially when the Occam's Razor "they reduced the menu size because its easier, they have a captive market, and why try to make good food when you can just charge $20 for a beer" explanation is right there in front of you.

Re: When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone

#34

Post by potato3732842 »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #19
svachalek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly. It's like how modern bridges can be built with less materials than old ones, now that we can calculate precisely the minimum we use pretty much exactly that. Things have gone exactly the same way with consumers over the past 30 years, businesses have learned exactly how badly they can treat you and step up to that line at every opportunity.

Bridges are public goods. If the public spends less on material they can afford to build additional bridges and create value for more people.

>If the public spends less on material they can afford to build additional bridges

Except what happens is that now that we can build them cheaply they waste the same amount of money by turning what could have been simple I beams into a mirror finish exercise in "art" nobody asks for and was bike-shed into oblivion until the whole budget and more was used up. So the public doesn't actually reap any benefit. It just makes work for more parties on the dole. We don't actually get more bridges. We get a bigger racket.

Re: When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone

#35

Post by sleazebreeze »

influx wrote: post #14
Someone1234 wrote: post #5

I was recently at an events center, that has replaced all of their vending machines with machines that require me to install an app(!) to purchase a product. Literally, didn't take cash or credit - just via app. Per the marketing on the side, this is meant to be for my benefit in order to earn "points" and get offered "deals." I don't think I have to tell you that I did NOT install the app, and just walked further to…

Lumen Field in Seattle just installed some Amazon Just Walk Out vendors this year. I'm happy to report you don't need to be logged into Amazon or have an app. I double clicked my phone to swipe my Apple Pay before I walked in, grabbed a beer and walked out. It was fantastic.

Aren't all these transactions checked by a human after the fact? IIRC I interviewed someone who worked on this and thats what they said.

Re: When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone

#36

Post by throwaway48476 »

potato3732842 wrote: post #34
throwaway48476 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bridges are public goods. If the public spends less on material they can afford to build additional bridges and create value for more people.

>If the public spends less on material they can afford to build additional bridges Except what happens is that now that we can build them cheaply they waste the same amount of money by turning what could have been simple I beams into a mirror finish exercise in "art" nobody asks for and was bike-shed into oblivion until the whole budget and more was used up. So the public doesn't actually reap any benefit. It just ma…

Its not the fault of the engineers, they just did a job. The parasites come from elsewhere. I read that in order to build a reactor in the UK they spent 350 pages in the plan discussing how jobs would be given to various minority groups. Everything government touches is a racket now.

Re: When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone

#37

Post by reaperducer »

baggachipz wrote: post #8
ryandrake wrote: post #3

> You place all your items on the white shelf with some space between them. Although they were clearly designed to be a self-checkout experience, the stadium had a staff member rearrange your items, then for about 30 seconds the kiosk would be thinking. After, it would pop up all items on the menu, and the staff member would have to tap to confirm what each item was. Maybe we're just calling all forms of automation a…

> Imagine if each grocery store self-checkout required a human staff member to scan items, re-arrange things, and confirm checkout. They always have at least one person going between each self-checkout kiosk helping confused and upset customers. Meanwhile, 1 traditional checkout lane is open with a long line. Self checkout is great to use if you know how and have a handful of items, but it sucks with a full cart due…

Meanwhile, 1 traditional checkout lane is open

I wish. The Wal-Mart near me no longer has staffed checkouts between 6am (opening time) and 8am. That's two hours in the morning of robots-only. I don't know about in the evenings.

traditional checkout lane is open with a long line.

I use the traditional check-out line whenever I can because where I live, the self-check line is almost always longer. It's not hard to keep an eye on the last person in the self-check line when you go to a real register to see which is faster.

I'm not a fireman on call. I'm OK spending an extra 45 seconds in a traditional line to keep a low-skilled human being employed.

Re: When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone

#38

Post by olliepro »

ryandrake wrote: post #3

> You place all your items on the white shelf with some space between them. Although they were clearly designed to be a self-checkout experience, the stadium had a staff member rearrange your items, then for about 30 seconds the kiosk would be thinking. After, it would pop up all items on the menu, and the staff member would have to tap to confirm what each item was. Maybe we're just calling all forms of automation a…

> any automation that requires a human staff member to intervene to complete every run is not automation

Not strictly true. Barcode readers are used by humans and are definitely automation. The ironic part though is that the automation going on here is literally object classification, which humans are good at.

The play may be to collect data and make their system better.

Re: When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone

#39

Post by ryandrake »

reaperducer wrote: post #37
baggachipz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine if each grocery store self-checkout required a human staff member to scan items, re-arrange things, and confirm checkout. They always have at least one person going between each self-checkout kiosk helping confused and upset customers. Meanwhile, 1 traditional checkout lane is open with a long line. Self checkout is great to use if you know how and have a handful of items, but it sucks with a full cart due…

Meanwhile, 1 traditional checkout lane is open I wish. The Wal-Mart near me no longer has staffed checkouts between 6am (opening time) and 8am. That's two hours in the morning of robots-only. I don't know about in the evenings. traditional checkout lane is open with a long line. I use the traditional check-out line whenever I can because where I live, the self-check line is almost always longer. It's not hard to keep…

I don't even think it's about going faster. In my experience, a traditional checkout staff is much faster than the self-check out. First of all, it's fantastically batched and pipelined. While the person in front of me is being checked out, I load all of my groceries onto the conveyer. Then, when it's my turn, the clerk does one motion over and over very quickly, and puts it on another conveyer that whisks it out of the way. When there's dedicated bagging staff, it's even more parallel.

Contrast that with self-checkout: There is no conveyer. You have to reach into your cart, grab one item, run it across the scanner, and place that item in a bag, then reach back over into the cart, grab one item, and so on. No pipelining at all.

I go the traditional staffed checkout route for the speed.

Re: When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone

#40

Post by lotsofpulp »

throwaway48476 wrote: post #19
svachalek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly. It's like how modern bridges can be built with less materials than old ones, now that we can calculate precisely the minimum we use pretty much exactly that. Things have gone exactly the same way with consumers over the past 30 years, businesses have learned exactly how badly they can treat you and step up to that line at every opportunity.

Bridges are public goods. If the public spends less on material they can afford to build additional bridges and create value for more people.

And

> businesses have learned exactly how badly they can treat you and step up to that line at every opportunity.

Will help numbers in your 401k or pension plan go up.

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