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Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#531

Post by davidst »

LPisGood wrote: post #494
davidst wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left the following comment some months ago, duplicating it here: [Disclaimer: Former Amazon employee and not involved with Go since 2016.] I worked on the first iteration of Amazon Go in 2015/16 and can provide some context on the human oversight aspects. The system incorporated human review in two primary capacities: 1. Low-confidence event resolution: A subset of customer interactions resulted in low-confidence c…

What’s still not clear to me about this story is if there was ever live human monitoring of shoppers. Did the low confidence resolution occur in real time, at some point between the customer grabbing the item and getting their bill?

It wasn't real-time. Recorded events were entered into a queue and latency would vary depending on the size of the queue and the number of annotators.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#533

Post by trollbridge »

grogenaut wrote: post #509
davidst wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left the following comment some months ago, duplicating it here: [Disclaimer: Former Amazon employee and not involved with Go since 2016.] I worked on the first iteration of Amazon Go in 2015/16 and can provide some context on the human oversight aspects. The system incorporated human review in two primary capacities: 1. Low-confidence event resolution: A subset of customer interactions resulted in low-confidence c…

The go tech is amazing in 2 places: airport and stadium beverage tunnels. There's a premium price and high volume in those areas. The go tech has basically revolutionized the speed of getting a beer and a dog at the stadium here in Seattle. I can be back in my seat in 4 minutes including the bathroom now which for NFL means I can literally be back in a commercial break sometimes. no idea how much they make on it, but…

One wonders just how much technology is needed to dispense a beer and a hot dog.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#534

Post by twoodfin »

giaour wrote: post #488
twoodfin wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I can imagine it’s hard to prove, which is a pretty good indicator it’s a slippery concept to being with. Everyone wants to “eliminate the competition”, including your competition!

The predatory pricing pattern the FTC would in theory sure over would be: selling items at an artificially low price until the competition goes out of business, then raising prices once you are the only seller left standing. It's the second step that makes it anticompetitive instead of just competitive

What does it mean to be “the only seller left standing”? If somebody’s out there making big margins because they don’t face competition, competition is likely to emerge!

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#535

Post by davidst »

BoredPositron wrote: post #470
davidst wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first iteration of the tech reached the accuracy needed to support just-walk-out for a small-format store. It did achieve that goal. I left the project before it went further. I imagined, at the time, future goals would be to scale store size and product variety while reducing the cost of the technology, but I have no insight into how that progressed. I am sorry to learn it's been shut down.

But they started to have more clerks at the stores 2-3 weeks after launch and they were still present when I last visited one.

I don't know how the store clerk staffing changed over time but they were not directly involved with the underlying tech (that is, clerks did not annotate data.) Stores had to comply with state laws for certain kinds of items (e.g., a live person must verify ID and age for alcohol) so the store automation had the ability to summon a clerk when needed. And there were the usual things all stores must do: restocking, cleaning, safety, and customer relations. I expected customer relations to decrease over time as people became accustomed to the just-walk-out shopping experience.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#536

Post by davidst »

burningChrome wrote: post #512
BoredPositron wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they started to have more clerks at the stores 2-3 weeks after launch and they were still present when I last visited one.

This was one of the issues that killed it. They continually missed goals of reducing human involvement. Training is part of any AI project, but it sounds like Amazon wasn’t making much progress, even after years of working on the project. “As of mid-2022, Just Walk Out required about 700 human reviews per 1,000 sales, far above an internal target of reducing the number of reviews to between 20 and 50 per 1,000 sales,…

Scaling from a small-format store with limited item selection (where the tech worked well) to a large grocery format would come with many challenges. A previous comment touches on a couple of them:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46793253

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#537

Post by afavour »

grogenaut wrote: post #509
davidst wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left the following comment some months ago, duplicating it here: [Disclaimer: Former Amazon employee and not involved with Go since 2016.] I worked on the first iteration of Amazon Go in 2015/16 and can provide some context on the human oversight aspects. The system incorporated human review in two primary capacities: 1. Low-confidence event resolution: A subset of customer interactions resulted in low-confidence c…

The go tech is amazing in 2 places: airport and stadium beverage tunnels. There's a premium price and high volume in those areas. The go tech has basically revolutionized the speed of getting a beer and a dog at the stadium here in Seattle. I can be back in my seat in 4 minutes including the bathroom now which for NFL means I can literally be back in a commercial break sometimes. no idea how much they make on it, but…

Couldn't you just use vending/automat machines in these scenarios? Beers in particular are... not complicated. I believe the go tech makes the existing situation better but if you were to reimagine it from ground up I can't help but imagine you could do better.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#538

Post by erratic_chargi »

Of course it failed, nobody want to shop at a limited selection with mandatory signing up amazon store that closes at like 8.

But a 24/7 data driven store that is a last resort would have succeeded.

Put slop bowls at business areas, Junk food where there are clubs for drunk people.

Moving season in college town, put some stationary and some tools for DIY stuff.

In valentines cheap wine and chocolate for the singles, and flowers with top rated gifts for couples.

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#539

Post by rvnx »

afavour wrote: post #537
grogenaut wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The go tech is amazing in 2 places: airport and stadium beverage tunnels. There's a premium price and high volume in those areas. The go tech has basically revolutionized the speed of getting a beer and a dog at the stadium here in Seattle. I can be back in my seat in 4 minutes including the bathroom now which for NFL means I can literally be back in a commercial break sometimes. no idea how much they make on it, but…

Couldn't you just use vending/automat machines in these scenarios? Beers in particular are... not complicated. I believe the go tech makes the existing situation better but if you were to reimagine it from ground up I can't help but imagine you could do better.

Huge queues

Re: Amazon closing its Fresh and Go stores

#540

Post by rvnx »

kube-system wrote: post #317
jandrese wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which hardly anybody ever gets prosecuted for.

Criminally, no. In a class action? every day.

It's common for companies to claim AI:

Example: Tesla Cybercab with safety drivers, or Starship Technologies "autonomous" robots, which are remote controlled delivery robots.

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