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Amazon Go

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Re: Amazon Go

#511

Post by mrb »

delegate wrote: post #387

Look, I know this might not be a popular view here on HN, but I think this is useless. And bad. I'm not talking about the technology behind it (I think it's an amazing achievement).. I live in Barcelona and I have at least 5 medium-sized supermarkets within 5 minutes walking distance from my home. Plus there are several smaller shops that sell fruits and vegetables. I know all the people who work in these supermarket…

I don't mean to be rude, but you are the example of someone who thinks "this tech is useless/bad for me, therefore it must be useless/bad for everyone else".

But in reality, many other shoppers in the world don't have your experience. I live in a large American city and my shopping experience is the exact opposite of yours: I have to drive 10-20 minutes to my supermarket; it is gigantic warehouse-sized; I don't know the cashiers on a personal level (I don't even recognize any of them as they always seem to be different); I usually wait a long time in line (10 minutes). So yeah I would gladly prefer shopping at a supermarket powered by Amazon Go technology.

Re: Amazon Go

#512

Post by OJFord »

crazypyro wrote: post #429
delegate wrote: post #387

Look, I know this might not be a popular view here on HN, but I think this is useless. And bad. I'm not talking about the technology behind it (I think it's an amazing achievement).. I live in Barcelona and I have at least 5 medium-sized supermarkets within 5 minutes walking distance from my home. Plus there are several smaller shops that sell fruits and vegetables. I know all the people who work in these supermarket…

Trying to save jobs that are no longer the most efficient way of solving a problem is not the way to promote the value of humanity, in my opinion. People want groceries as cheap and fast as possible. They don't go to the grocery store for social interaction and forcing the majority of people to pay extra for something that only the minority get value out of is not a competitive strategy. If humanity were to take your…

    > People want groceries as cheap and fast as possible.
    > They don't go to the grocery store for social
    > interaction and forcing the majority of people to pay
    > extra for something that only the minority get value out 
    > of is not a competitive strategy.
Spoken like a true New Yorker.

(... or some other big American city, but it's more impressive if that's right.)

The parent commenter describes something I immediately recognise as "very European"; there's room for both of you.

Re: Amazon Go

#513

Post by JustSomeNobody »

Ph0X wrote: post #484
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolve as a society, yet remove the social experience of shopping. Interesting. I don't believe I want us to evolve in that direction.

Social experience at a grocery store feels contrived and not everyone may want it. Maybe you enjoy talking to your cashier but not everyone does, so why should everyone be forced to just because some do? It makes much more sense to keep groceries for grocery shopping, and social places such as bars for socializing.

"Social experience at feels contrived and not everyone may want it."

This pretty much sums up _everything_. So, why do we even try to have societies?

Edit: You use an example of going to a bar. You realize "... not everyone may want ..." to socialize at a bar? Some just go to drink.

Re: Amazon Go

#514

Post by Periodic »

mikeash wrote: post #423
delegate wrote: post #387

Look, I know this might not be a popular view here on HN, but I think this is useless. And bad. I'm not talking about the technology behind it (I think it's an amazing achievement).. I live in Barcelona and I have at least 5 medium-sized supermarkets within 5 minutes walking distance from my home. Plus there are several smaller shops that sell fruits and vegetables. I know all the people who work in these supermarket…

If that's true, then you have nothing to fear. People will pay extra to shop at stores with human cashiers, and the machine-driven stores will not be able to compete. However, I suspect that when presented with the choice, people will take the machine store in exchange for lower prices. And I suspect that you suspect the same thing, otherwise you wouldn't be concerned.

What is cheapest in the short term is often not the best in the long run. Economics assumes that the long-term consequences are priced into all decisions, but those consequences may not be clear and people with limited means have to make some very hard trade-offs. The costs may also be put on society as a whole and not borne by the individual. It can be helpful to limit those options as a society.

My best guess at the risks is that we may lose something valuable as a society or damage mental health if we push people away from social interaction. Many people will remain healthy, but those who are in difficult circumstances may find themselves on a downward spiral as they are further isolated from their communities. What if your community doesn't have a large supermarket? We talk about food deserts in the US right now, what if we have social deserts?

A simple example of short-term v long-term, look at soda and sugar-sweetened carbonated beverages. They're extremely cheap. Often less expensive than bottles of water in the US. This encourages many people to buy them as they are a cheap source of calories and sweetness. However, it's only many decades later that we've discovered the damage they can do when consumed for long periods of time. Many people consuming them don't have better food options. A few cities are starting to tax them to make the costs more evident.

Gasoline is another good example. The US is addicted to cheap gasoline and doesn't know how to stop even though we are now aware of the potentially catastrophic consequences.

Re: Amazon Go

#515

Post by dap »

Ph0X wrote: post #469
CrLf wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am unsure we are evolving. We have evolved in many areas that solve real problems, like healthcare and such, but I'm not sure today's society is any better for all the technology that allows us to save a couple of minutes in a queue. To improve the efficiency of a particular group, we create problems elsewhere. The result may not be net positive. In fact, I think it isn't, since those saved "couple of minutes" will…

The point isn't that we save 2 minutes, it's that there's now 10 less job we need. And that may seem as a negative at first, but the idea is that as more and more job get automated, prices should go down until the point where people will not have to work full weeks anymore, or rather, focus on learning and reaching higher education, rather than doing dummy work all day (aka just scanning items non stop for 8 hours).

The claim that increased automation will enable people not to work is often cited as a defense of putting people out of work in favor of automation. This relies heavily on a number of assumptions that I think are empirically completely untested:

- that automating all jobs will cause all prices to go down. (It seems just as plausible that if everything were automated, then the relatively small class of people who work building and maintaining the machines wield monopoly-like power and charge accordingly, concentrating wealth even more than it's concentrated today.)

- that with lower prices, people will want less money. (It seems just as plausible that people will expect to be able to keep working and buy more to raise their standard of living.)

- that the intermediate state, where many jobs are automated, but people still need to work for a living, is tenable for society

- that there are no significant social problems resulting from a society where nobody has to work

I don't know whether these are true or not, but if they're not, the result will greatly impact the lives of millions (billions?) of people. Obviously, banning automation isn't a solution either, but it seems flippant to bet the lives of so many people on what we think might happen in a system as complex as the global economy.

[edited formatting]

Re: Amazon Go

#516

Post by vintageseltzer »

Ph0X wrote: post #469
CrLf wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am unsure we are evolving. We have evolved in many areas that solve real problems, like healthcare and such, but I'm not sure today's society is any better for all the technology that allows us to save a couple of minutes in a queue. To improve the efficiency of a particular group, we create problems elsewhere. The result may not be net positive. In fact, I think it isn't, since those saved "couple of minutes" will…

The point isn't that we save 2 minutes, it's that there's now 10 less job we need. And that may seem as a negative at first, but the idea is that as more and more job get automated, prices should go down until the point where people will not have to work full weeks anymore, or rather, focus on learning and reaching higher education, rather than doing dummy work all day (aka just scanning items non stop for 8 hours).

I used to believe that, but yeah, that hasn't happened and is not likely to, because the real world does not operate anywhere close to an efficient market.

Instead, those with the means of production have hoarded the benefits. Despite all of our technological progress after the American industrial revolution, we are working more hours and earning less as a whole. Despite record profits, companies are not increasing wages and prices are not decreasing for anything except cheap, low-quality, mass-market consumer goods.

See: trickle down economics.

Re: Amazon Go

#517

Post by BjoernKW »

delegate wrote: post #387

Look, I know this might not be a popular view here on HN, but I think this is useless. And bad. I'm not talking about the technology behind it (I think it's an amazing achievement).. I live in Barcelona and I have at least 5 medium-sized supermarkets within 5 minutes walking distance from my home. Plus there are several smaller shops that sell fruits and vegetables. I know all the people who work in these supermarket…

A supermarket is a pretty dismal place for social interaction, don't you think? It's like saying that white collar bullshit jobs are necessary because if it wasn't for water cooler talk people wouldn't get any social interaction at all.

Social interaction besides the usual benefits also makes otherwise dull or tedious jobs more tolerable. If those people didn't have to work as cashiers anymore (how that could work is an entirely different matter but something like a basic income would be a start) they wouldn't simply disappear but be able to make better use of their time, for example by serving the people in their neighbourhood in more expedient ways.

Keeping jobs for the sake of it just leads to stagnation. People working on a job until they retire (or drop dead, whichever happens first ...) because they either have to or don't know otherwise is not something virtuous but actually quite sad in my opinion. It's often required to make a living and support yourself and your family but we shouldn't accept it as the natural state of affairs.

Re: Amazon Go

#518

Post by kirykl »

waqf wrote: post #141
kirykl wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avoiding getting charged is an incentive to put it back in the right place that doesn't exist currently. Maybe not even where you picked up just a discard area

Yeah, or it's an incentive to not shop there at all. You can't just use "incentive" as a reason why you expect to succeed with a UX that punishes your users for small mistakes.

incentives can be positive or negative

Re: Amazon Go

#519

Post by colordrops »

delegate wrote: post #387

Look, I know this might not be a popular view here on HN, but I think this is useless. And bad. I'm not talking about the technology behind it (I think it's an amazing achievement).. I live in Barcelona and I have at least 5 medium-sized supermarkets within 5 minutes walking distance from my home. Plus there are several smaller shops that sell fruits and vegetables. I know all the people who work in these supermarket…

I get what you are saying, and I agree emotionally to some degree. But I think there is a fallacy lying in this sort of thinking. This sentiment appeals to the idea that certain life experiences are the natural order of things and are timeless and shouldn't tampered with. In this case though, shopping at a supermarket and checking out in a line is hardly an ancient tradition that has been the same since time immemorial.

That being said, there is value in daily ritual and routine, and we need to find a way to replace our current ones with new ones that are just as meaningful if we wish to automate all jobs away.

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