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Introducing Amazon Go and the world’s most advanced shopping technology

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Symphonic

Member
what if you act like you are with another person who is scanning their phone and walk in with them? Or is every person individually required to have a phone with the app

Then you steal food. Stealing is so unbelievably common in stores already, I don't think this is attempting to solve that, merely make it easier for those who don't.
 

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
Society has been forcing people to perform busywork and stand in one place pushing a button all day to justify their existence, because it isn't interested in providing them with the education to be prepared to do something more.

Welp, technology says:

WWqAa.gif


I hate this. I know I am a knuckle-dragging caveman but still, this is not the future I want.

This is one step removed from the self-checkout stations already in almost every supermarket in the US. Actually, a chain near me is nearly the same as this Amazon concept. You take a hand scanner when you walk in, scan everything as you pick it up, and insert the scanner into a unit on the way out that totals your charges and asks for a payment method.
 
J

Jpop

Unconfirmed Member
you dont have to. Video showed the first guy scan phone on entry, puts phone in pocket, grabs food, then just leaves

RFID chips that will set off an alarm, if the goods aren't played for?

The store is basically a Beta, so I'm sure anything is prone to change.
 

Dierce

Member
Guaranteed basic income, y'all. If we do this right, we're headed for Star Trek!

(But we won't do it right. So we'll probably just kill each other...)

Orange fucking turd won the election. The socialist utopia will never happen in this earth. The ship has sailed and is never coming back.
 

IronRaven

Member
As nice as it would be to get items immediately by picking it up at a physical location, I would still rather wait for the mail than go to a location. I guess I'm just too lazy.
 

Exile20

Member
Yes but if you have done it 10 times with no issue you will be less likely to check on the 11th time until later in the day you look and suprise you now get to make another trip to the store. Errors happen all the time, this is just going to inconvenience people when it happens, and it most definitely will happen. The scanning process is instantaneous, having 3 cashiers would solve a ton of headaches.
Customer service is not going away you know. Mistakes are made all the time in supermarkets also and we survived.
 

Maoyama

Banned
I'd like to see more information on how it works rather than "self driving car!" and "sensor fusion!" buzzwords, but then, I'm a huge nerd. I'd assume they track you round the store with cameras, and all the products have RFIDs or similar so they can be sure which you've removed from a shelf?

I work in a research university, and even though its not my field exactly, I interact with computer vision people a lot. This probably doesn't need RFID, it just tags people as they come into the store with the account number on their phone and assigns them a position in 3D space. The individual items might be hard-coded into the program, and then the central hub keeps track of every item across the store.

So, how I think this happens, is that the whole store is modeled in 3D space within a centralized server. Once you step into the store, the server assigns you a number and starts tracking you. Every item is also being tracked by the server, and if it sees you grab one and its hidden from vision it assumes you have it
 
I still find it intreasting that nobody seems to care about the horrible way amazon treats their warhouse workers. Guess people dont care how the sausage gets made as long as it taste good.
 

NOLA_Gaffer

Banned
I would assume they have heavy security at the doors so you can't just walk out with shit.

Apple Stores have a similar "pay with app in store" option but I always feel the need to show a clerk my receipt on my phone anyway because I just feel like they think I'm walking out with something.
 
Customer service is not going away you know. Mistakes are made all the time in supermarkets also and we survived.

Im not saying this is a bad thing, but the odds of return trips are going to be a more likely occurance because people aren'talways on top of things. Im just pointing out a potential flaw in the pick it up and leave philosophy. Which could be rectified by a minimal amout of staff.
 
D

Deleted member 284

Unconfirmed Member
Anyone remember that commercial of the shifty looking guy who gets railed tailed in the retail store? Only to be told he dropped/forgot something while walking out? Yeah.l, itshappening.gif.

Just didn't think it would be this soon.
 

Symphonic

Member
As nice as it would be to get items immediately by picking it up at a physical location, I would still rather wait for the mail than going to a location. I guess I'm just too lazy.

Those sandwiches are gonna be pretty gross once they get shipped to your house.
 
Some of you guys are thinking like Trump and his voters. Can't blame you, losing jobs is scary but this won't be mainstream for a few decades. Enough time for you to reproduce less because your children will not be needed in the productive chain.
 

Tenck

Member
You really think Amazon wouldn't immediately rectify any pricing errors when you alert them, regardless of how late after your shopping experience it was? That's the reason they were so successful launching their online business.

Not to mention the tech will improve to a point where this will likely never happen. AND the amount of people it will "inconvenience" is minute compared to how much time and energy this concept will save.

Cashiers are on their way out. The sooner people accept this the sooner we can make plans to adjust our society around that fact.

They day after my house burned down my sister's Christmas present arrived ($300 tea maker). Drove to the house to see if I could grab the package and nothing was there. The feeling of having everything I owned being destroyed in a fire and having my package stolen made me just not care anymore. I ended up contacting them 2 weeks later and they told me it was fine and they gave me my money no questions asked.

Amazon customer service is seriously the best I've ever dealt with.
 
I still find it intreasting that nobody seems to care about the horrible way amazon treats their warhouse workers. Guess people dont care how the sausage gets made as long as it taste good.

I care. I used to work for them actually. And I'd still prefer they learn to treat their workers better than get rid of workers entirely.
 

Symphonic

Member
They day after my house burned down my sister's Christmas present arrived ($300 tea maker). Drove the the house to see if I could grab the package and nothing was there. The feeling of having everything I owned being destroyed in a fire and having my package stolen made me just not care anymore. I ended up contacting them 2 weeks later and they told me it was fine and they gave me my money no questions asked.

Amazon customer service is seriously the best I've ever dealt with.

They have their flukes, but yeah, they're great. I've been told to keep several items that I'm trying to return for one reason or another.
 
Also what about the plebs who dont have credit or debit cards? There are tons of steps that need to occur before we get to the utopia you all seem to think is just around the corner. Its going to get there but its going to be baby steps not strides.
 

Tenck

Member
the video didnt show families or couples though from what I remember, just individual people

ee499bf38e.jpg


They both had their phones out. Even says in the beginning of the video you have to scan your phone to enter.

There was also another couple in the beginning of the video. You see them in the first 2 seconds in the background on the left.
 

Fox318

Member
Automation in the auto industry killed many jobs also.

Self driving cars are going to kill many jobs also.

Self serve gas stations killed many jobs.

The future is killing many jobs.

Unless we live in a future where job education is free we still as a society need to make sure we provide low skill jobs to people who either can't afford the job training/education or people who are simply unable to do it.

And even then there are many high skill jobs that can and will be automated in the future.

Yes we as a society evolve and we don't go hunting for Whales for oil anymore but things like this have to be concerning.
 
You don't need "the most advanced machine learning, computer vision, and AI" to scan a bunch of RFIDs. Sounds to me like they have facial recognition cameras everywhere so they won't just know what you've bought, they'll track how long you've looked at and held each product, how a product or sign made you feel, and how thirstily you were staring at that persons butt.

Kinda creepy, but hey it's so convenient.
 

Tenck

Member
Also what about the plebs who dont have credit or debit cards? There are tons of steps that need to occur before we get to the utopia you all seem to think is just around the corner. Its going to get there but its going to be baby steps not strides.

I got my first debit card when I was 16. There wasn't a ton of steps.

Also this is just Amazon doing it. You're not going to be paying with cash for anything on Amazon. Since it charges your Amazon account you can go buy gift cards with cash at any big retail store.
 

NewFresh

Member
As someone who works in the Grocery business.....this only mildly concerns me. They've been talking about this for a while as well as their fresh delivery services.

I should point out to people concerned with job loss, we already have self checkout lanes everywhere, this is just another step removed. Also, most of a stores personnel does not run a cash registers. I would venture to say 85% of the employees work in different departments or in the back.
 

SJRB

Gold Member
I like how it's presented as some utopian shopping experience, when everything about this feels disturbing to me, haha.

Facial recognition, pattern algorythms, motion and movement sensoring. Not just the things you pick up, but every move you make, purchasing habits, shopping frequencies, everything except your thoughts stored on Amazon servers for your "convenience".

And for what? To spare me the three minutes I stand in line when I go grocery shopping like 3 times a week? Yeah, no thanks.
 

Allforce

Member
I don't know what problem this is trying to solve. Are people seriously that busy that they forgo grocery shopping because of the inconvenience of having to check out?
 
Everyone is talking about automation taking over but what's the difference between this type of store and say what Fresh and Easybwas doing? They also had no cashiers and you simply checked yourself out. The stores still needed to be manned by people stocking, cleaning, and helping customers in the store. And not only that, but the employees were paid a decent wage.

... though Fresh and Easy did go out of business... but the idea was sound. Apparently they couldn't hold the business model since their prices weren't low enough.
 
I got my first debit card when I was 16. There wasn't a ton of steps.

Also this is just Amazon doing it. You're not going to be paying with cash for anything on Amazon. Since it charges your Amazon account you can go buy gift cards with cash at any big retail store.
My store is in a low income area and the vast majority of purchasing is done with cash. Until the low end of the totem pole moves all digital, you wont see this take on aside from affluent areas. I also have had a bank account since I was 17 but there are large amounts of people on the low end of the pay scale who dont have bank accounts. When I started I was shocked at the amount of my employees who didn't have bank accounts.
 

Totakeke

Member
I like how it's presented as some utopian shopping experience, when everything about this feels disturbing to me, haha.

Facial recognition, pattern algorythms, motion and movement sensoring. Not just the things you pick up, but every move you make, purchasing habits, shopping frequencies, everything except your thoughts stored on Amazon servers for your "convenience".

Yeah, no thanks.

If you do online shopping or use a credit card your actions are already being tracked and monetized. What additional information do they gain by tracking how you move in a store other than to better optimize the store layout? No need to be alarmist here.
 
The transition will be easy in the UK from what I've seen. Tesco Express and a few other stores are already heavy on the self checkout with only one or two actual people working registers. Some stores just have a person there to help you with self checkout and that's it. They are heavily used as well and most people have adapted to self checkout.

This is the next step.
 

jonno394

Member
I still find it intreasting that nobody seems to care about the horrible way amazon treats their warhouse workers. Guess people dont care how the sausage gets made as long as it taste good.

Some of their habits are indeed not acceptable, but at the end of the day It's not like they are forcing the staff to keep working there...
 
Some of their habits are indeed not acceptable, but at the end of the day It's not like they are forcing the staff to keep working there...

Not everyone has options and work is work. Just because someone is desperate enouph to put up with it doesn't mean we should let them off the hook.
 

RSTEIN

Comics, serious business!
How?

We lost a few million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2010 that never came back and now we have Trump.

I wish I could see this store in action.

Every job gets eliminated eventually. Productivity increases and the standard of living increases.Tractors displaced thousands of farm hands. Telecommunications technology replaced thousands of switchboard operators. Even on Wall St, the number of analysts has dwindled to the lowest point ever due to information technology advances.

At the same time, other jobs and industries are seeing expansion. Food preparation, security, nursing, general health care, genetics, programming.

Actually, according to Forbes, retail salesperson jobs are expected to increase by over 700,000 between 2010 and 2020.
 

Dougald

Member
I work in a research university, and even though its not my field exactly, I interact with computer vision people a lot. This probably doesn't need RFID, it just tags people as they come into the store with the account number on their phone and assigns them a position in 3D space. The individual items might be hard-coded into the program, and then the central hub keeps track of every item across the store.

So, how I think this happens, is that the whole store is modeled in 3D space within a centralized server. Once you step into the store, the server assigns you a number and starts tracking you. Every item is also being tracked by the server, and if it sees you grab one and its hidden from vision it assumes you have it

Damn, well if this is the case then Amazon are probably one of the few companies with enough computing resources to leverage this on a large scale

I look forward to the inevitable technical breakdowns in future on how they're implementing this


What prevents someone from not activating the Amazon GO app and just run out with the groceries?

That tiny, completely insurmountable turnstyle of course!

I suspect that if you're activating the app and the store is tracking you through cameras and can tell when you're picking up items, it can also tell when someone who hasn't done so is walking around picking stuff up, and alert staff. If anything, there's no way to covertly take things off a shelf any more when every item in the shop is tracked
 
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