Amazon Go • Hacker News Board

Re: Amazon Go

#891

Post by euyyn » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

rednerrus wrote: post #564

crazypyro wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What are you in such a hurry to do? Get home and post on HN? How much of our lives do we want tech to live for us? Part of what makes life awesome is meeting random people standing in lines.

> What are you in such a hurry to do?

> Part of what makes life awesome is meeting random people standing in lines.

By all means go search for lines to meet random people. But spare me because for me that time is wasted, and I rather recover all of it to spend it with my friends, or doing sport, or even watching TV with my wife. This thing won't make lines disappear altogether, so you'll be fine: you'll be able to find them in the post office for example.

Re: Amazon Go

#892

Post by pwinnski » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:23 PM UTC

dimino wrote: post #632

jedberg wrote: post #554

I suspect during the beta they've asked their employees to try and steal things amd move things to the wrong place -- really push the software. At least I hope they did. I assume they are going into this expecting a loss while they work out the kinks.

Based on comments in here, one would suspect they implemented this entire thing without trying to break it even once.

No company or government in the history of humanity has managed to foresee the myriad ways dishonest people will try to get away with dishonest things. Many, many, many, many, many companies have severely underestimated the high cost of fraud.

Also, employees trying to break the system are not likely to bringing young kids shopping with them.

The only question I have is who's liable when things are fuzzy: right now, the store bears the liability for things eaten within the store, destroyed while in the store, snuck out, etc. It's easy to see that this technology leads to the liability being pushed onto the shopper for all of those cases, but that will definitely lead to some serious customer-service arguments.

Re: Amazon Go

#893

Post by rtkwe » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

jaypaulynice wrote: post #875

rtkwe wrote: post #844

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need for them to talk to your phone or a smart bag. They just funnel you out through a lane and scan them there if they're using RFID. They can also do this theoretically without using RFID at all if they can solidly determine what product you're taking off the shelf, maybe by using good cameras to see where you're reaching and if you're placing or replacing the item that's assigned to that slot. They've been trac…

It would take many cameras working together to pull this off...what happens when you drop out of sight? Feels like a big vending machine...If they're not competing with big grocery stores, then this won't scale well...right?

If the system relies on tracking you constantly from the moment you enter they'll have as many cameras as they need to cover the whole store. For just tracking the person you really don't need too high of detail just decent coverage and if the system is using CV to determine what you're taking off the shelves instead of RFID(ish) tags (which makes sense given the cost of applying tags to every item) then they've already got way better camera coverage than they need to just track you around the store.

Really this whole thread is all just rank speculation that'll be mostly confirmed or denied once a store actually opens and people can look around and see what's going on.

Also as for scaling it's a fixed cost to cover a larger area compared with a variable cost if they're using RFID to scan when you pass through the turnstiles so really a camera based system probably scales better than a tag based system.

Re: Amazon Go

#894

Post by spyckie2 » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

nawitus wrote: post #796

spyckie2 wrote: post #700

Here's my speculation on the technology behind it: Tracking. A lot of tracking. You don't need deep learning and car sensor technology to do simple rfid tag pick up/drop offs to detect what you have in your cart. No, this technology probably fully tracking your every movement in the store. It may use rfid tags to detect what you have, but that is not the main tech. When you walk in and scan your phone, a camera array…

Here's my rough sketch on how this could work: a) You track every person from multiple camera angles, it should be "relatively easy" to track the position of every customer at all times. I'm not sure if it can handle people in very close proximity (or e.g. after hugging in store) - maybe Amazon actually uses facial recognition to resolve the identities afterwards b) Only one person can enter the gate at once, and it'…

for d) it could be a combination of rfid, closeness, and cameras detecting who grabbed it.

Re: Amazon Go

#895

Post by euyyn » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

adamsea wrote: post #620

crazypyro wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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." What evidence do you have for this claim? A study of some sort? It is also obvious from reading the news that some people do not want this. "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." Again, this sounds like hearsay…

> What evidence do you have for this claim? A study of some sort?

The fact that people go to supermarkets, to get their groceries faster and cheaper, instead of going to half a dozen small stores where the potential for fulfilling social interaction is much bigger.

Re: Amazon Go

#896

Post by rtkwe » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:31 PM UTC

iainmerrick wrote: post #883

rtkwe wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? You're already recorded pretty heavily in every chain store you go into for loss prevention.

Right, but it's not typically tied directly to your online account (as far as I know!) Retailers are definitely pushing in that direction with things like Bluetooth LE beacons that talk to your phone. Plus store loyalty cards and the like, which have been around for decades. But those schemes have mostly been opt-out, apart from those weird stores that require membership cards.

I just don't really see how associating it with an online account makes it much better or worse than the normal recording that'd done in stores everyday.

Re: Amazon Go

#897

Post by anonbanker » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:32 PM UTC

sctb wrote: post #837

anonbanker wrote: post #468

Are you saying that someone's homework was incorrect? perhaps you should break out your red pen and correct the mistakes you've found. There are few things more amusing than when people ask for evidence for the sole purpose of discounting it at any cost. Thanks for being that person. Do you think Wal-Mart will pay you for your downvotes? I know CTR paid $0.10 per comment, but that was for an election. What is the goi…

We detached this flagged subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13107392 .

Thank you.

Re: Amazon Go

#898

Post by politician » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:32 PM UTC

karambahh wrote: post #843

politician wrote: post #834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last time I checked, the price of a printable RFID tag was around 10 cents. That's far too expensive for a 15oz can of beans. What sort of prices are you seeing?

The ballpark of 10 cents per printed RFID is right. I have reasons to believe several ink manufacturers/printers are working on an order of magnitude less per tag. But are you so sure that 10 cents is too much? What do you think the gross margin on that can is ? ;-) What do you think the net margin on that can, once the checkout lines (and their personnel) are removed, would be? If a stitched RFID chip on a 2€ thsirt…

I share your optimism - the future of retail belongs to self-service with the checkout process integrated into the shopping cart. Grab and Go.

However, I don't think that end game is the first use case for an RFID solution - inventory monitoring/LP/loyalty can demonstrate ROI long before the checkout lines are removed. For those use cases, the unit price needs to be much cheaper, but an order of magnitude improvement might be right.

Re: Amazon Go

#899

Post by Qwertystop » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:36 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #750

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.

"Forcing people to do things a machine can do is inhumane." It's not clear there's anything a person can do that a machine can never do, in principle. So then what's the point of having people?

Generally in sci-fi, one of:

A): None (catastrophic). People die out, or are wiped out, as advanced machines outcompete them for all resources.

B): The boundary (hopeful). AI capable of creating new ideas is either impossible or just too difficult to invent (hard to prove which way it goes), so people keep pushing it farther.

C): None (utopic). Machines do anything people would have done for society, including the creation of new things to have and/or do. However, machines don't reach the level of autonomy required for them to actively eliminate people, or decide against it because there's plenty of resources for everyone, so people have 100% leisure time (which may happen to resemble what used to be work, if the people in question enjoy the process, but is no longer necessary to society).

D): The boundary (dystopic). Machines end up being more complex than people - to the degree that people are valued less than sufficiently advanced machines, and are put to work rather than manufacturing robots to do the jobs.

A note on D: Generally relatively soft sci-fi that does this, because the stories generally put humanity's role as hard labor, which doesn't make sense. However, I could see a story in "The Thinking Machine of the Future has become so Incredibly Advanced that the Absolute Pinnacle of Human Thought is to them what Plowing Fields is to Us." Humanity as the intellectual equivalent of the plow ox (or the tractor), doing the jobs that the machines (with their much higher potential for more complex thought) find to be beneath them and refuse to subject each other to. Possibly with the assistance of basic nonintelligent machines, the way we wouldn't try to make an ox plow a field without first affixing a plow to it.

Re: Amazon Go

#900

Post by CodeSheikh » Mon, Dec 05, 2016, 9:39 PM UTC

steego wrote: post #876

CodeSheikh wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try to become a part of the solution not part of the problem. As an engineer, this is a mesmerizing and a very appreciative tech. Kudos. As a (selfless) neighbor, I can never be happy to see unemployed neighbors. Sure we can create these autonomous technologies, but we also should be active in policy-making for our cities e.g. if 10 jobs are being displaced then collectively what are we doing to create 10 more jobs.…

Have you bothered to ask yourself where the money goes after it's put in the pockets of Bezos' and other Amazon investors? Do you think that money is just sitting in the bank doing nothing?

I am guessing other pet projects, R&D for Amazon. Clearly not in cancer research or funding of infrastructure or investments in other need base communities.

Last time I heard Amazon is struggling with net positive cash flow because it keeps on re-investing profits into various other side projects with eventual goal of dominating retail space e.g. Amazon Go.