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Amazon Go

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Re: Amazon Go

#581

Post by OOPMan »

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…

As someone who has worked behind a checkout till it is not a job I think anyone is dying to do.

For you, as the customer, maybe it seems cute and fine as a job but from my time in the job it's basically hours of mindless labour that teaches you little and offers no room for growth.

Your opinion on this is actually kind of despicable. You want people to perform robotic menial jobs because you feel like it adds humanity to your shopping experience but you seem content to ignore the fact that the job in question is a boring, tedious slog.

Re: Amazon Go

#582

Post by ryanSrich »

narrator wrote: post #420
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…

For me, this is useless because Instacart delivers everything I need with no markup, save tips, for $80/year. Perhaps this is wildly unprofitable for them, but for now it's far better than going to the store parking, shopping and driving back. I save many hours a week for hardly any money. If self driving cars get perfected, they won't even need drivers! Amazon Go might as well be a robot that automatically steers an…

Couldn't agree more. My wife and I did the math and Instacart saves us money. I have no idea how long they'll stick around or if they'll continue being so cheap, but it blows my mind how convenient it is. The biggest benefit imo is having them shop at Costco. Every quarter we do a fairly large oder for house hold restocking and Instacart makes this something I don't even have to think about. Before it would have essentially consumed my entire Saturday.

Re: Amazon Go

#583

Post by gnopgnip »

mxfh wrote: post #271
mulletboy wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I worked at a grocery store for several years, and one thing I recall is customers CONSTANTLY putting items back in a random aisle, rather than where they found it. If the incentive is reducing the chances of being charged by the system for an item they didn't buy, you bet people will put stuff back where they found it.

If they were trained on normal shopper, how long does it take for the first exploits to appear, like some ML-equivalent of tag switching. Like I heard from HEB Central Market employee, that they had a hard time with their bulk self-portion coffee beans, where the price range is quite large yet the beans look pretty identical. Like most bigger shops, I think amazon will just tolerate the loss without enforcing it too…

Like self checkouts, these technologies will not work well in high crime areas. By requiring customers to have a cell phone and an amazon account they can avoid a lot of the higher risk customers at least.

Re: Amazon Go

#585

Post by [deleted] »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #362
nmeofthestate wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found it depends on the 'class' of the supermarket. The higher class the supermarket, the less calibrated they are to treat you like a shoplifter.

In Waitrose you can use your own rucksack without getting flagged!

[deleted]

Re: Amazon Go

#586

Post by 0xfeba »

makecheck wrote: post #294
0xfeba wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sorry but if you cost the store $25 by leaving a damned ROAST in the cereal aisle, I would be perfectly happy to never let you in the store again. Wouldn't a better solution be to charge the customer for the roast and if they complain, you explain: "sorry, you didn't put it on the proper shelf, the technology considers that as a purchase", and possibly eat the cost in the form of some incentive to come back to…

Aside from putting up the odd sign to discourage certain behavior, no, I do not think that stores have any good reason to bend over backwards to keep individual customers. Retail is far too accommodating already. Some people figure that being a “valued customer” means they can be an unending source of sunken costs in time, effort and stress, among other things. And those costs can be multiplied across the other custo…

Perhaps my example was a bit too extreme. But someone else replied to me with a better example of notifications on an app, or warnings that items are still in their cart but did not pass the store threshold, etc.

Seems like the maximized value could be somewhere in the middle, maybe without trying to sneak in replacement costs for items left on other shelves..

Re: Amazon Go

#587

Post by hyperbovine »

rescripting wrote: post #522
mikeash wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be worthwhile to re-frame it. Rather than say "10 fewer jobs," say "10 people are no longer forced to spend eight hours a day sitting in front of a cash register." That assumes we can find something better for them to do, of course. But man, we have to try! Forcing people to do things a machine can do is inhumane.

I'm a bit worried that most of us here on HN are feverishly working on ways to automate away jobs, and there is quite a strong economic incentive for us to do so, but there is hardly any effort and no incentive for policy makers to catch those affected. Who is building and planning for this new social utopia once people no longer have to bag groceries? Right now it looks like a lot of misery and poverty on the horizo…

This is the right question to ask. The laborers in question could all be productively employed as artists, homemakers, social workers -- whatever. To the extent that we get lots of new workers in those categories, and still get to have groceries too, that's a net gain for society. But it's up to society to get us there, and right now society doesn't seem even remotely up to the challenge.

Re: Amazon Go

#588

Post by chongli »

CrLf wrote: post #500
Ph0X wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Earth's population isn't getting any lower, those 10 jobs lost mean 10 people that will need support from the rest of society, just to survive. It's utopian to think job losses mean everybody gets their workload reduced, as this has never happened before. Automation has never reduced anybody's workloads. In fact, every reduction has happened to either eliminate de-facto slaves (industrial revolution) or because e…

those 10 jobs lost mean 10 people that will need support from the rest of society, just to survive.

If we have the technology to replace those people and we don't do it, then we as a society are already supporting them just to survive. You're talking about artificially maintaining inefficiency. If we're going to go down that road, we might as well start paying people to dig holes and fill them back up again.

Re: Amazon Go

#589

Post by base698 »

mikeash wrote: post #489
Ph0X wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

It might be worthwhile to re-frame it. Rather than say "10 fewer jobs," say "10 people are no longer forced to spend eight hours a day sitting in front of a cash register." That assumes we can find something better for them to do, of course. But man, we have to try! Forcing people to do things a machine can do is inhumane.

XBox and OxyContin seems to be the current trend.

Re: Amazon Go

#590

Post by anonbanker »

icebraining wrote: post #465
anonbanker wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a few: EDIT : Multiple lawsuits for predatory pricing: https://ilsr.org/walmart-charged-predatory-pricing/ http://www.academia.edu/1511858/The_Effect_of_Wal-Mart_on_Sm... http://business.time.com/2014/02/24/walmarts-big-push-to-go-... http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/brooklyn/study-proves-wa... here's a few directly related to wage fraud: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/18/walmart_n_4466850.h... http:…

I've read the 2nd and 3rd and I can't find anything about Walmart rising prices once monopoly is established. Can you point me more specifically, please? EDIT: I read the 1st, after registering, but the only reference is to another article by the same author[1]. In that, there's seems to be a single statement: "In Dawson Creek, BC the reports have come in that after winning over local shoppers and forcing small busin…

Here's one:

https://ilsr.org/walmart-charged-predatory-pricing/

Admittedly, I'm only taking 30 seconds to search for these things, so the quality might not be 100% accurate. I've held these opinions of wal-mart for over 20 years now, and it's difficult finding old corroborating links via the google bubble. They did exist, but 30 points of karma lost is not worth going through six pages of google search results to find that perfect article to satiate the person from Arkansas.

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