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Amazon Go

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Re: Amazon Go

#681

Post by hota_mazi »

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 respect your view and how you value human interaction, but I think you're only seeing a part of the picture.

Maybe I'll miss out on these interactions with these friendly people who sell me stuff but if it means I can get my groceries done faster so I can go meet my actual friends faster, there's a clear benefit to me.

And this is one of the many reasons why automation has always won in the long run.

Re: Amazon Go

#682

Post by microDude »

Ok Amazon, why not do this?

Skip the whole stocked shelf thing entirely. Have a website setup that customers can build a shopping cart, then just show up and pickup their "pre-bagged" groceries. The benefits to this are obvious.

1) No shop lifting. 2) Car friendly (you could have multiple drive-thru pickup lines) 3) Convenience for the shopper (saved lists, common items, don't have to walk around the store) 4) The store, could just effectively be a warehouse. 5) Possible to automate almost all of the work.

And before you say "what about produce?". Well, you could have a automated "imaging" station upon goods receipt that customers could use when building their cart. Or, offer really good return policies. Either way, the convenience would far outweigh the produce problem.

Re: Amazon Go

#683

Post by gamegoblin »

theodorton wrote: post #654
gamegoblin wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you that income inequality is a big problem, and it is a major cause of social discord, but to be fair, quality of life increased significantly across all percentiles since then. e.g. which society is better to live in: (low inequality, less wealth) 10th percentile average wealth: 100 99th percentile average wealth: 1000 (high inequality, more wealth) 10th percentile average wealth: 1000 99th percentile…

You have to consider purchasing power, not how much moneys you have in your wallet. If the majority of people get 10x the money they used to, they're not getting 10x the purchasing power, because everyone needs a higher salary. This is also an oversimplification. You can read more about the phenomenon here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

Agreed. I intentionally didn't use units of my wealth numbers to indicate some "absolute" measure or wealth.

10x more food, land, or whatever.

Re: Amazon Go

#684

Post by sampo »

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…

> Who is building and planning for this new social utopia once people no longer have to bag groceries?

I grew up in a country (Finland) where people bag their own groceries. The table behind the cashier just has a bit more room and some dividers, so even 3 customers have room to bag their own groceries simultaneously.

So an utopia without the "grocery-bagging class" is certainly possible.

Re: Amazon Go

#685

Post by samstave »

So...

What if I have a large shopping run, like for Thanksgiving? I have a ~$400 cart worth of loot. Where will I sort and bag my goods?

They should make Amazon Go like a 7-11 rather than a Whole Foods.

Are the item prices any less?

Re: Amazon Go

#686

Post by Reason077 »

dazc wrote: post #569
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 currently live in Spain and completely understand your point of view. But, I am from the UK and the difference is of many orders of magnitude. Supermarkets are not great places to shop or to work. Most employees are working far less hours then they want to on an income that is dependent on welfare top ups in one form or another. Since there is no chance of UK supermarkets adopting a Spanish philosophy I think these…

Since there is no chance of UK supermarkets adopting a Spanish philosophy I think these people would be happier, and no worse off, if they were put out of a job tommorow.

Well it sort of depends on where you want to shop. Staff at my local M&S and Waitrose are always up for a chat if you want it (certainly the older generation seem to like this, and it probably keeps them coming back). But the guys at the Tesco Express are clearly only interested in keeping the lines moving as fast as possible.

In all cases they also have the option of self checkout if you want to save time and avoid the chit-chat!

Re: Amazon Go

#687

Post by TeMPOraL »

odbol_ wrote: post #671
TeMPOraL wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except they won't, because nobody will pay for that. It's easy to find an alternative occupation - it's much more difficult to propose one that's reachable when you consider the starting point and economic reality (living costs money; retraining costs money; people low on the ladder usually don't have cash to burn).

Well, right now the U.S. has spent about $4 TRILLION on bombing countries in the Middle East... Maybe we could use some of that money for a better purpose. The world has enough money to do these things, it's just a question of priorities and replacing greed with compassion.

Right. The money is there. But the economy is structured around money being spent only when you absolutely have to - so it doesn't reach those nice things while there are more directly profitable things like bombing the shit out of Middle East...

Re: Amazon Go

#688

Post by BorisMelnik »

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…

Have you considered that life isn't all about efficiency? People shop because of the experience. This is why book stores are coming "back," eBooks just aren't cutting it for people. This is why "smart lights" won't ever truly take off, people don't want to log onto an app to turn their lights off.

Re: Amazon Go

#689

Post by swamp40 »

r3bl wrote: post #203
tristanho wrote: post #7

"Our checkout-free shopping experience is made possible by the same types of technologies used in self-driving cars: computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning." Very interesting choice of comparison ha... I suppose this is Amazon trying to attract the tech crowd? It almost sounds satirical. Not to downplay the tech -- this looks incredible.

From the rest of the text and the video, I have absolutely zero idea how they are using deep learning here. And let me not even mention that they've used the AI word in the video. So, I highly doubt that attracting the tech crowd will work if they don't explain the damn thing about how they are using it.

Most people here are assuming there are RFID tags on every product.

But I think they are watching the shelves and visually identifying when a product leaves, what it was and who took it. And if they put it back on a different shelf, a different camera sees that and it is removed from the person's "shopping cart".

They are using their internal employees to train the AI or AI's (maybe one per section of shelf).

Imagine a Kellogg's employee assigned to watch each of their cereal boxes and make a list when someone takes one.

That's how I think they are using AI here. Hundreds of them in the store.

Re: Amazon Go

#690

Post by samstave »

elicash wrote: post #43

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. I wonder how this tech deals with that? Maybe they figured that out, too. But I was amused in the video when I saw the customer putting it back where it belonged, because that's not how I remember that going... All that said, this is fantastic and excitin…

If youre on EBT/WIC, what % of those folks have both a smartphone, Amazon Go installed AND an amazon account?
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