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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

#431

Post by lotsoweiners »

michaelmrose wrote: post #141
noodlesUK wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The scan as you shop systems that I am referring to are where you are given a little barcode scanner with a display, and you go around the shop scanning your items as you pack them. At the end of the shopping trip, you still go to the self checkout machine, but you just transfer your scan list from the portable barcode scanner to the till. At no point are you using a phone camera to scan items. Usually the trolleys h…

Walmart is demoing a scan as you shop system that I think relies on user cameras and the app. At least that was my impression. With American hardware at SCO the scanners are just peripherals like a keyboard and a person walking around the store with them would tie up an entire POS computer while items were being scanned with it. If the portable scanner were itself a portable device this would be tractable however how…

> Walmart is demoing a scan as you shop system that I think relies on user cameras and the app. At least that was my impression.

Walmart and Sam’s Club have both had this for years. It is only available at Walmart if you have Walmart+. I tried it when I had a Sam’s Club membership and it was ok but occasionally I’d have account issues, alcohol purchasing issues, and someone still wants to see your app receipt when you walk out the door issues.

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

#432

Post by [deleted] »

madeofpalk wrote: post #254
bilalq wrote: post #190

This is pretty sad to read. Before Covid, the Amazon Go store experience was phenomenal. All the convenience of a 7-Eleven but with the pricing of a normal grocery store. The food options were really good and the BlueApron style meal-kits were amazing. The Alexa integration was also nice for being able to just verbally ask what's the next step on a recipe while you're busy stirring or chopping things. When it rolled…

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#433

Post by rwbt »

b112 wrote: post #279
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.

I'm sure all those fired, new job seekers jn India agree fully with you.

If the system did end up working as designed, wouldn't they get the shaft anyways?

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

#434

Post by Dylan16807 »

rwbt wrote: post #314
allan_s wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 )

There is a difference. In a typical grocery store, people only have to tally what you bought only once at the end during checkout. Where as in this "walk out" system someone has to follow you around "virtually" and keep track of everything you do in the store.

> keep track of everything you do

It wasn't all manual.

An important question to ask is how many minutes of camera-viewing there were per customer. Let's not assume too hard before we judge the level of wastefulness.

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

#435

Post by jrpt »

chrash wrote: post #310

this might be my first comment here heh. i've worked on a similar product before. there's no way they were turning a profit. they definitely missed stuff all the time even with a ton of sensors. and sensors aren't the only cost. annotation is by far the most costly operational expense. new product? needs several annotated photos and recalibrated weight sensors. merchant decides to put Christmas branding on the same U…

Come on, it isn’t anything to do with being a “marketing stunt.” Often products like this are expected to lose money at first, but they hope with enough R&D and scale that they can make it successful eventually.

For example, you are pointing out that annotating is costly, but that’s an expense that scales independently of the number of stores. So with enough scale it wouldn’t be as big a deal. Or if they figured out some R&D that could improve it too.

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

#436

Post by fshbbdssbbgdd »

ec109685 wrote: post #323
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.

I thought so too, but the article says this: > 700 out of 1,000 Just Walk Out sales required human reviewers as of 2022.

If you required a high accuracy like 99.9% to charge a customer, you could have a system that was mostly automatic but still needed human review when the model isn’t confident enough. It’s hard to know exactly what this means without a lot more details, which Amazon is unlikely to provide.

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

#437

Post by strken »

omgwtfbyobbq wrote: post #369
Timshel wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Amazon did not think so: > Amazon’s internal goals of reaching less than 50 reviews per 1,000 sales.

They didn't even agree with the 700 out of 1000 trips needing review figure > 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 1,000 sales. Amazon called this characterization inaccurate, and disputes how many purchases require reviews. Even if the system was fairly accurate, if the v…

Might be "700 manual reviews per 1000 trips" getting misinterpreted as "700 out of 1000 trips needed manual reviews". If some trips were pathological edge cases that required near-constant reviews and a substantial majority took zero reviews, I could understand why Amazon would keep trying to fix its system.

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

#438

Post by adolph »

skhunted wrote: post #428
h0l0cube wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for that Edit: On thinking about this tangent, it seems that if global regulation is the only solution, it would make sense to enforce regulation from the ship building side (in western countries), rather than the wrecking side (in developing countries) which will only displace the bad practices to less scrupulous countries. A solution might be sizable amount of money that had to be paid to escrow that could n…

Globalization was largely a response to environmental movements in the U.S. We offshored our pollution generation.

Also industrial safety, worker hours, etc

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

#439

Post by mrangle »

Johnny555 wrote: post #239
bilalq wrote: post #190

This is pretty sad to read. Before Covid, the Amazon Go store experience was phenomenal. All the convenience of a 7-Eleven but with the pricing of a normal grocery store. The food options were really good and the BlueApron style meal-kits were amazing. The Alexa integration was also nice for being able to just verbally ask what's the next step on a recipe while you're busy stirring or chopping things. When it rolled…

Lots of services would be phenomenal when you can offload much of the cost to run them to cheap offshore labor. Remember how great Uber and Doordash were when much of the cost of operating was offset by underpaid workers and VC funds? Now that they don't have unlimited piles of money and cities/states are making them pay more fair wages, the cost-benefit of those services has diminished. I was ok paying $5 for $20 of…

"Underpaid" and "fair" is a modern political myth, except in the instances when there is a concerted effort to undermine the semi-natural labor market. Pay will never be enough, as a point of fact. It will always be "underpaid" and "unfair" in discussion. As this is an immortal pressure and negotiating tactic. It is incentivized, and therefore we will get more of it. That works both ways, but at some point there has to be a reckoning that accepts that it is better to have employed than unemployed unskilled workers. In the context of a massive and growing unskilled population base. Yet the same people who demand that everyone earn a living wage, sometimes punctuating their points with riots, tend to be the same crowd who wants to import unskilled workers by the millions.

There is no effectively borderless world in which most are both employed and not "underpaid". It won't happen both ways. In fact, the pay trend is about to tip massively against fairness. In a manner that even will make economic rationalists uncomfortable. These "fair pay" efforts are a distraction before that storm.

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

#440

Post by adolph »

robertlagrant wrote: post #302
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used the UK/US type self checkout machines while travelling, I must say it is so nice to live in Northern Europe where the self checkout machines are largely just based on trust, with randomly sampling ~five items of every 100 shoppers. There is no weighing at any of the stores. If you don't get randomly selected for inspection, there is nothing stopping you from just walking out with groceries you didn't pay…

> Another benefit of having a proper social safety net I guess. I doubt it's as simple as this. People don't only steal because they could technically afford things. Just as people don't only kill in self defence.

  I enjoy stealin', it's just as simple as that
  Oh well, it's just a simple fact
  When I want something, man, I don't wanna pay for it
https://genius.com/Janes-addiction-been-caught-stealing-lyri...
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