Waitrose in the UK has had something called "Quick Check" for maybe the last 10 years. On the way into the store, you swipe your "My Waitrose" card and collect a barcode scanner. You then scan and bag everything on the way around and return your scanner to a dedicated terminal (which generally have no queue) and very quickly pay. More recently they added the ability to use your smartphone as the scanner so that you don't even need to pick up a barcode reader. They are only one step away from allowing you to pay with your smartphone and walk out... although as it's at the terminal they ID you if you have any restricted items that seem unlikely. Every once in a while (I have had it once in 5 years of shopping there weekly) they will flag you for a "rescan" to check you scanned everything.
It's a brilliant system and doesn't require hundreds of cameras and machine learning.
My cousin showed me that system back in 2009 when I was visiting. Fantastic system.
He said that around 1 times in 10, the cashier would actually check your items to make sure you weren't stealing anything- and if you had any discrepancies, you could expect to have the cashier check you every time for the next 2 months.
The main principle is that the workload of scanning the items is spread out to the customer, who isn't being paid for their time, rather than the cashier, who is.
Safeway in the UK had it at some of their stores 20 years ago. I think it all got removed when they were acquired by Morrisons. Here's an article from 1998 talking about how they were introduced in 1995!
That's something Walmart or anyone else could do. Doing it without compromising on losing items to theft, that's where Amazon is trying to create its moat, and that is where their competitive advantage lies. They have the technology to go completely employee-free. So while it was enlightening and impressive to read about the Waitrose system, it makes it sound like Amazon is being naive and did not think about this simple solution, which I believe is not the case. Amazon could easily do that, but then everyone else could easily copy them. This technology though, Walmart is going to have a really hard time replicating it.
Costco had something like that a few years ago. It would not save much time because in the end someone would need to check if you were not stealing anything. After maybe less than a year in operation they returned to old cashiers.
Stop & Shop in the US has the same system, for a similar amount of time (about 10 years).
Even down to the "rescan" audits by an employee. The only downer with Stop & Shop is the audits went from something I'd encounter a few times a year, to something I'd encounter every other visit.
The system will not work in many places. It is based on honor code i.e, no body will take an item without scanning it. Most supermarkets have razor thin margins - add theft and they will not be able to make money.
Giant has that here and it’s a huge pain in the ass and takes way more time than just going through the checkout line to scan everything while you’re shopping, if you’re buying anything more than a few items.
I know the standard reaction from a lot of HN folk will be to celebrate this progress: it's faster, more efficient, and no one likes to waste time waiting in line.
Still, though, I think Amazon's automation of the retail experience is helping to create a society where there is even less real social interaction, and I think it's a factor (if even a small one currently) in the increasing tribalism in American society.
Throughout history, "the marketplace" had been one of the major centers of interpersonal interaction, and these days for many people it's possibly to completely avoid ever having to go to the store. I'm not sure that's a great thing.
The marketplace today is hardly the place for meaningful interaction, whether with employees or other shoppers. What it seems like to me is unpaid emotional labor. To have interesting social time, we need less hours at work and more public (non-commercial) spaces to meet. For example, where are children supposed to meet?
> where there is even less real social interaction
Good?
I'm an introvert. I don't value random, superficial interactions with people I'll never talk to again. In fact, they cause me anxiety & I dislike them.
I do value the time with a select group of people.
And by reducing the time I spend in the supermarket it allows more of the human interaction I do value.
My social group has a wide assortment of views, from Muslim to Catholic to Athiest, to #TrumpTrain2020 to #NotMyPresident.
I've never witnessed nor heard of people having meaningful discussion with the checkout clerk. I've never seen nor heard of someone, after that brief interaction, saying "You know, you're right. I'll reconsider my position on the person of the opposing political party."
The statement marketplaces may have been true when we in the barter system, but it certainly hasn't been president in modern society for sometime. And I say that as someone who grew up in a town of 2,000 in the 70s and has lived in a large urban area for the last 20.
> Throughout history, "the marketplace" had been one of the major centers of interpersonal interaction
If you shop at Whole Foods, Target, Trader Joe's, Kroger, etc. this has never been true for you, unless by social interaction you mean handing your card to the cashier or asking someone a question. Even in my local, family owned grocery store I don't see this "marketplace" attitude. I doubt it exists anywhere outside of small communities nowadays in the US. Most people work 8 hours a day and hang out at home or in bars/coffee shops; we don't really want to hang out in a marketplace.
Note that I don't disagree with your overall point... I just don't think this is a good example.
Here in Amsterdam I can step into the supermarket, pick and scan items with my phone, put them on a bag, pay with contactless and leave without any human contact. I’ve been doing this multiple times a week for the past 4 years, so nothing new.
I think you’re dramatising what is a natural step as shopping evolves with technology. If you value social interaction you can always spend more time with friends you appreciate, go to public spaces, head to the bar. The supermarket has hardly ever been a source of good times anyway.
The revolution here isn't self-checkout. In my country most stores already have that, which means all social interaction is eliminated already. So your argument is less about Amazon Go and more about self-checkout. The revolution is that you don't need to scan any items yourself or do anything at all. Just pick your items and go out.
I understand how you feel that way. It feels like Amazon, and others, are creating a wholly atomized society. Where people exist without having to admit that other people exist. Where people are stripped away from society for profit.
But... what if I want that? What if I don't want to be coerced into social interaction, every day, just so I get get my basic physical needs met? What if I want to engage with society and humans on my terms, rather than on yours?
Who gets to decide? I welcome this because it gives me another choice. It moves me one step further away from the coerced-social-interaction experient you envision as heavenly and towards a world where I get to make one more of the choices that matters to me.
I think you're right, and I haven't seen the answer from our society yet. If you can sit at home and get things delivered (which is easier and addicting), you do miss out on different experiences (some good, some bad). You can imagine a world where many of our storefronts could empty out.
If you work from home, get Amazon deliveries, go to school online, etc... what will you do and what storefronts do you need? Are bars, restaurants and barbers enough?
One of my favorite anecdotes that makes me think... has our whole society evolved incorrectly?
"In 18th-century America, colonial society and Native American society sat side by side. The former was buddingly commercial; the latter was communal and tribal. As time went by, the settlers from Europe noticed something: No Indians were defecting to join colonial society, but many whites were defecting to live in the Native American one."[1]
Every modern good, service and machine is helping to create a society with less real social interaction, and has been for decades. We're only feeling it now because we're reaching the horizon of not having to directly interact with another human being, ever, while still being able to take advantage of many other aspects of modern life.
The real lamentation is that the lack of interaction is perhaps less of a "choice" and more of a necessity for many people. Casual socialization is becoming a privilege reserved for the people who can afford to indulge. Everyone else is too busy getting by, and will choose the path of least interaction because they can't afford the inefficiency. Economic pressure over generations may make introverts of us all.
>Throughout history, "the marketplace" had been one of the major centers of interpersonal interaction
If you mean "the coffee shop" (there's a long history there) or "the pub" (a longer history, in the western tradition there) sure, I agree. I'm not saying randos approach me all the time when I'm in those sorts of places, but it happens. It doesn't happen at the grocery store hardly at all.
It happens a lot more often in the ride sharing services than even the pub; Yesterday I took my Saturday afternoon ride to Fry's for sandwiches, (The Fry's Sunnyvale Cafe is passable. Not bad. Not as good as the dedicated food places on Murphy, say, but it is super nostalgic for me, so it's something of a weekend tradition.) and while nobody talked to me in the Fry's cafe (I mean, aside from the procurement of food. I have met other interesting people there in the past.) the driver actually apologized to me because he spent most of the ride there speaking with another rider in a foreign language, which was mostly interesting in that he seemed to think that I had some expectation of being included in conversation as he drove. But yeah, I talk to the drivers often, a lot more than talking to strangers in retail spaces.
I guess what I'm saying is that social spaces need space for idling. Sitting in the back of the car does this, as does serving food or drink. Buying groceries, I think, does not.
Or maybe we're just returning back to normal. Consider: historically, in hunter-gatherer societies for example, everyone knows everyone, and that's their social circle. You don't really interact with random strangers, except in very few, usually very formalized ways (or warfare).
Compare this to our existing society: most of the people that you're expected - in fact, required (at work etc) - to interact with, are strangers. Most of our communication protocols deal with various aspects of that.
With this kind tech, we retreat back to our comfy bubbles of familiar people that we've known for a long time, and away from the strangers.
Technology is not an issue related to this problem. Bigger corporations in general make this inevitable. How meaningful of an interaction do you have with the tired cashier at Walmart or any other big retailer? Even at Trader Joes, the few minutes of interaction are rarely meaningful, even if I try to make them so, and that is the absolute best example. Small talk is not that engaging.
Even more so, technology for not having to interact with cashiers ever already exists: the self-checkout system. If I walk into a chain store like Meijer, people will be piled up at the self-checkout even if there is a completely free human cashier waiting for customers!
But even so, people are not checking out to socialize. Even what they do say isn't so substantial. Things move too fast, there's too many customers and too little time. How often do you remember the name of your cashier? How often are they still working there a year later?
Amazon's store actually represents a potential departure because as they say, they introduce humans in ways they think will improve the customer experience. Quote:
>“We’ve just put associates on different kinds of tasks where we think it adds to the customer experience,” Ms. Puerini said.
So there are people. And those people, with their hopefully less hectic roles, are almost certain to interact with customers in ways that will be more meaningful than the overworked cashier with a line of 10 carts and a full bladder. And perhaps, if the job doesn't suck (unlike many of Amazon's jobs, unfortunately,) they might actually stick around to become a normal you can interact with.
Of course, that's completely just conjecture. I actually believe Amazon's store will be around the same as any other in terms of the social value you get out of it, which is to say minimal at best. If people actually had meaningful value to get out of visiting marketplaces in modern times, they'd look forward to it instead of looking for how to eliminate it.
I think it comes down to respect and social status. In the times that the marketplace was a place of meaningful interaction, the vendors were merchants or tradesmen selling their products and those were relatively respected stations in life. They weren't nobility, but they weren't at the lowest strata either.
Today, retail is a near-zero-skill job that's manned by people who are either young or uneducated. When I worked retail between high school and college, I remember there being a glaring mix of people like me who were transitioning through it and lifers who'd been there for a decade or more. And you could see it in the interactions with customers. When dealing with the younger employees, customers often adopted an avuncular style that's used when dealing with people of the same class but different generation. But when I'd see people talk to the lifers, the interactions were more mechanical and less personal. It was almost as if customers felt that there wasn't any shared context and so a conversation that went beyond the immediate transaction was pointless.
I contrast this with my experiences going to farmer's markets. There, vendors are viewed much more as equals. They're largely respected and often own their own business. It's much more common to see people having conversations that feel like they're between equals than it is to see those conversations at a traditional supermarket.
Interesting, I saw this as the opposite. Without the existence of centralized checkouts, retailers can craft totally different experiences for shoppers. It's in their best interests to keep shoppers in stores for longer. A great example is wine tastings at Whole Foods locations - it's clearly a social event within a grocery store.
I'd say there's going to be even _more_ opportunities for social interactions at grocery stores like Amazon Go.
To your point, though, the "marketplace" you're talking about is the ambiguity between the consumer and the worker, aka Marx's point about the commodity fetish. That's something that's existed since the late 1800's, though. I don't think that's going away anytime soon.
Although I can see something similar to a farmer's market run in the same format as Amazon Go. I haven't thought through all the edge cases yet, but it feels like a solvable problem.
Seems like the total investment in this store/technology is probably in the single digit digit millions (or maybe low double digit).
If it doesn't work? Lose, ~$10 million. But if it works there's likely huge upside. It's just a smart bet for a big company. Sometimes your bets turn into AWS, and sometimes they turn into the Fire phone. Most companies I've worked at are very risk averse, and failure on startup type projects is not really accepted the same way.
The checkout system was the failed promise of RFID[1], and maybe the future is still with RFID. But maybe it's with vision, and if it is, then Amazon seems well positioned.
BTW, the rudimentary math I'm doing. Let's say the store saves two checkout people, working on average 20 hours a day for 365 days a year, who each average cost of $15/hr. $15/hr 20 hours365 days*2 people = $219k savings per year. How much does the system cost to setup in a new store? How much extra effort is there to keep food items organized? If you need someone checking IDs, managing errors, etc, is there really savings? Maybe the only way this really scales is if you can do this for full size stores?
Anyone in NYC who regularly shops at Trader Joes or Whole Foods knows how badly this is needed. There are literally two employees at Trader Joes whose job it is to hold a sign that says "End of Line" because the line is always almost out the door on weekends and weekday evenings.
"Amazon won’t say much about how the system works, other than to say it involves sophisticated computer vision and machine learning software." Why do I have the feeling this probably actually translates to humans staring at video feeds a lot of the time?
Even if this is the case, it gives them a more straightforward path to incrementally improving the automation behind the scenes without having any visible customer impact.
I thought they were going to use some kind of RFID system.
Using cameras and shelf sensors seem a little archaic for tracking retail purchases in real time. I wonder what happens when the store is extremely busy or people are taking things off shelves and putting them back.
There is a company opening similar types of supermarkets and corner stores in China. But they have taken it a step further, there aren’t even any gates.
The experience feels really surreal... you just pick something off the shelf, scan it with the app, pay in the app (helped by the seamless mobile payment services in China), and walk out. The first time I tried it I couldn’t help finding an employee to show them I paid. The second time I just walked out after paying, but it actually felt uncomfortably like shoplifting (similar to what’s described in this article).
I presume the shops are set up as a sort of VC-funded experiment that will accept a high level of theft in return for a lot of useful data and early positioning in this type of retail.
The other interesting aspect is that the larger of the stores is set up very much as an experiential shopping environment, including a meat counter with chefs that will cook a steak or burger for you, and the same for sea food (you can buy shrimp or a lobster and they will cook it for you so you can eat it in the store, it is very popular).
> ordinary RGB cameras, custom made with boards in the enclosure to do some basic grunt computer vision work, presumably things like motion detection, basic object identification, and so on. They’re augmented by separate depth-sensing cameras (using a time-of-flight technique, or so I understood from Kumar) that blend into the background like the rest, all matte black. The images captured from these cameras are sent to a central processing unit.
> In addition to the cameras, there are weight sensors in the shelves, and the system is aware of every item’s exact weight
Am I the only one living in a country where most stores have self-checkout already? The comments here make it sound like it's either Amazon Go or having to pay through a cashier.
Jobs and social interaction have already been elminated by self-checkout. The revolution with Amazon Go is that you don't need to scan anything yourself, not that it removes the cashier.
When I installed the app it mentions you can let others buy stuff from your account with a single phone on entry(kids, friend, etc). There is an animation that shows you tap your phone in, send your friend in, then re-tap yourself in.
Didn't see this mentioned anywhere, and I thought it was kinda neat.
No shopping carts? Maybe for a convenience store that's ok. I shop at Costco without a car, and I bring two large carry bags. But I don't carry them around inside the store unless I'm just buying one or two things. I buy a lot of heavy things (oh god those watermelons, never again.) And I don't want my arms getting tired in the store. It's bad enough for the 1.5km I have to walk back to my place.
Attacks I'd like to try but would get picked up by the cops if I did:
- Carry empty bags/containers of cheaper items in the store and place products inside these before pulling them off of the shelf.
- Pull products off of the shelf and give them to a friend. Place identical empty bags/containers back to re-credit your account while your friend never has the item debited and walks out.
- Drape a blanket over yourself and remove products from the shelf and put them in your bags so the system never sees items removed from the shelf
Welllll. Now that idea for a Smart Shopping Cart that I drew up 10 years is completely obsolete hahaha.
Like it or not, this Amazon Go store is a model for all future brick and mortar establishments. In 20 years we will recall the good old days when we waited in line and used cash much like people look back at the time when people sent cards and letters before email.
I haven't seen anyone discuss the technology...can this really be reliable? It mentions cameras above the shop floor and machine learning. What do the cameras look for? Are there special visual markets on the products to make this task more robust? If not, there surely must be caveats?
Are RFID tags not a more elegant solution? Or are they too expensive?
I wonder what would happen if you reached through a gap in the products (perhaps one is a big seller and the shelf location is empty) and pulled an item from the back of the next product's location. Like - reaching where the strawberry Pop-Tarts are normally stocked, to remove a box of the cinnamon flavored. (Why would you do this? Normally the older product is on the front of the shelf so it gets sold first)
Your hand would be out of view of the ceiling-mounted cameras so it can't see directly (covered up by the shelf above). Your arm would be in the strawberry opening but you'd pull out a cinnamon. Is it's vision system good enough to tell the difference from the packaging, or does it just go off position when you pull it off the shelf?
There were a little over 3.5 million cashiers in the United States in 2016 — and some of their jobs may be in jeopardy if the technology behind Amazon Go eventually spreads.
Why is this the knee-jerk response to technological progress?
True progress isn't forcing millions of people into low-wage routine work. True progress would emancipate people from this drudgery entirely.
Isaac Asimov questioned why the goal of both the left and the right is always "full employment":
"The goal of the future should be full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system."
[+] [-] samwillis|8 years ago|reply
It's a brilliant system and doesn't require hundreds of cameras and machine learning.
[+] [-] mabbo|8 years ago|reply
He said that around 1 times in 10, the cashier would actually check your items to make sure you weren't stealing anything- and if you had any discrepancies, you could expect to have the cashier check you every time for the next 2 months.
The main principle is that the workload of scanning the items is spread out to the customer, who isn't being paid for their time, rather than the cashier, who is.
[+] [-] aembleton|8 years ago|reply
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/shoppers-to-check-out-sup...
[+] [-] raz32dust|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silveira|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrFoof|8 years ago|reply
Even down to the "rescan" audits by an employee. The only downer with Stop & Shop is the audits went from something I'd encounter a few times a year, to something I'd encounter every other visit.
[+] [-] pxeboot|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anilshanbhag|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] empath75|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JimDabell|8 years ago|reply
Apple does this for items below a certain value – you walk in, open the Apple Store app, scan the barcode on the product, then walk out with it.
[+] [-] perseusprime11|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hn_throwaway_99|8 years ago|reply
Still, though, I think Amazon's automation of the retail experience is helping to create a society where there is even less real social interaction, and I think it's a factor (if even a small one currently) in the increasing tribalism in American society.
Throughout history, "the marketplace" had been one of the major centers of interpersonal interaction, and these days for many people it's possibly to completely avoid ever having to go to the store. I'm not sure that's a great thing.
[+] [-] threatofrain|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wdr1|8 years ago|reply
Good?
I'm an introvert. I don't value random, superficial interactions with people I'll never talk to again. In fact, they cause me anxiety & I dislike them.
I do value the time with a select group of people.
And by reducing the time I spend in the supermarket it allows more of the human interaction I do value.
My social group has a wide assortment of views, from Muslim to Catholic to Athiest, to #TrumpTrain2020 to #NotMyPresident.
I've never witnessed nor heard of people having meaningful discussion with the checkout clerk. I've never seen nor heard of someone, after that brief interaction, saying "You know, you're right. I'll reconsider my position on the person of the opposing political party."
The statement marketplaces may have been true when we in the barter system, but it certainly hasn't been president in modern society for sometime. And I say that as someone who grew up in a town of 2,000 in the 70s and has lived in a large urban area for the last 20.
[+] [-] sotojuan|8 years ago|reply
If you shop at Whole Foods, Target, Trader Joe's, Kroger, etc. this has never been true for you, unless by social interaction you mean handing your card to the cashier or asking someone a question. Even in my local, family owned grocery store I don't see this "marketplace" attitude. I doubt it exists anywhere outside of small communities nowadays in the US. Most people work 8 hours a day and hang out at home or in bars/coffee shops; we don't really want to hang out in a marketplace.
Note that I don't disagree with your overall point... I just don't think this is a good example.
[+] [-] ricardobeat|8 years ago|reply
I think you’re dramatising what is a natural step as shopping evolves with technology. If you value social interaction you can always spend more time with friends you appreciate, go to public spaces, head to the bar. The supermarket has hardly ever been a source of good times anyway.
[+] [-] Kiro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kalium|8 years ago|reply
But... what if I want that? What if I don't want to be coerced into social interaction, every day, just so I get get my basic physical needs met? What if I want to engage with society and humans on my terms, rather than on yours?
Who gets to decide? I welcome this because it gives me another choice. It moves me one step further away from the coerced-social-interaction experient you envision as heavenly and towards a world where I get to make one more of the choices that matters to me.
[+] [-] tuna-piano|8 years ago|reply
If you work from home, get Amazon deliveries, go to school online, etc... what will you do and what storefronts do you need? Are bars, restaurants and barbers enough?
One of my favorite anecdotes that makes me think... has our whole society evolved incorrectly?
"In 18th-century America, colonial society and Native American society sat side by side. The former was buddingly commercial; the latter was communal and tribal. As time went by, the settlers from Europe noticed something: No Indians were defecting to join colonial society, but many whites were defecting to live in the Native American one."[1]
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/opinion/the-great-affluen...
[+] [-] nlawalker|8 years ago|reply
The real lamentation is that the lack of interaction is perhaps less of a "choice" and more of a necessity for many people. Casual socialization is becoming a privilege reserved for the people who can afford to indulge. Everyone else is too busy getting by, and will choose the path of least interaction because they can't afford the inefficiency. Economic pressure over generations may make introverts of us all.
[+] [-] lsc|8 years ago|reply
If you mean "the coffee shop" (there's a long history there) or "the pub" (a longer history, in the western tradition there) sure, I agree. I'm not saying randos approach me all the time when I'm in those sorts of places, but it happens. It doesn't happen at the grocery store hardly at all.
It happens a lot more often in the ride sharing services than even the pub; Yesterday I took my Saturday afternoon ride to Fry's for sandwiches, (The Fry's Sunnyvale Cafe is passable. Not bad. Not as good as the dedicated food places on Murphy, say, but it is super nostalgic for me, so it's something of a weekend tradition.) and while nobody talked to me in the Fry's cafe (I mean, aside from the procurement of food. I have met other interesting people there in the past.) the driver actually apologized to me because he spent most of the ride there speaking with another rider in a foreign language, which was mostly interesting in that he seemed to think that I had some expectation of being included in conversation as he drove. But yeah, I talk to the drivers often, a lot more than talking to strangers in retail spaces.
I guess what I'm saying is that social spaces need space for idling. Sitting in the back of the car does this, as does serving food or drink. Buying groceries, I think, does not.
[+] [-] int_19h|8 years ago|reply
Compare this to our existing society: most of the people that you're expected - in fact, required (at work etc) - to interact with, are strangers. Most of our communication protocols deal with various aspects of that.
With this kind tech, we retreat back to our comfy bubbles of familiar people that we've known for a long time, and away from the strangers.
[+] [-] jchw|8 years ago|reply
Even more so, technology for not having to interact with cashiers ever already exists: the self-checkout system. If I walk into a chain store like Meijer, people will be piled up at the self-checkout even if there is a completely free human cashier waiting for customers!
But even so, people are not checking out to socialize. Even what they do say isn't so substantial. Things move too fast, there's too many customers and too little time. How often do you remember the name of your cashier? How often are they still working there a year later?
Amazon's store actually represents a potential departure because as they say, they introduce humans in ways they think will improve the customer experience. Quote:
>“We’ve just put associates on different kinds of tasks where we think it adds to the customer experience,” Ms. Puerini said.
So there are people. And those people, with their hopefully less hectic roles, are almost certain to interact with customers in ways that will be more meaningful than the overworked cashier with a line of 10 carts and a full bladder. And perhaps, if the job doesn't suck (unlike many of Amazon's jobs, unfortunately,) they might actually stick around to become a normal you can interact with.
Of course, that's completely just conjecture. I actually believe Amazon's store will be around the same as any other in terms of the social value you get out of it, which is to say minimal at best. If people actually had meaningful value to get out of visiting marketplaces in modern times, they'd look forward to it instead of looking for how to eliminate it.
[+] [-] curun1r|8 years ago|reply
Today, retail is a near-zero-skill job that's manned by people who are either young or uneducated. When I worked retail between high school and college, I remember there being a glaring mix of people like me who were transitioning through it and lifers who'd been there for a decade or more. And you could see it in the interactions with customers. When dealing with the younger employees, customers often adopted an avuncular style that's used when dealing with people of the same class but different generation. But when I'd see people talk to the lifers, the interactions were more mechanical and less personal. It was almost as if customers felt that there wasn't any shared context and so a conversation that went beyond the immediate transaction was pointless.
I contrast this with my experiences going to farmer's markets. There, vendors are viewed much more as equals. They're largely respected and often own their own business. It's much more common to see people having conversations that feel like they're between equals than it is to see those conversations at a traditional supermarket.
[+] [-] misterbowfinger|8 years ago|reply
I'd say there's going to be even _more_ opportunities for social interactions at grocery stores like Amazon Go.
To your point, though, the "marketplace" you're talking about is the ambiguity between the consumer and the worker, aka Marx's point about the commodity fetish. That's something that's existed since the late 1800's, though. I don't think that's going away anytime soon.
Although I can see something similar to a farmer's market run in the same format as Amazon Go. I haven't thought through all the edge cases yet, but it feels like a solvable problem.
[+] [-] tuna-piano|8 years ago|reply
Seems like the total investment in this store/technology is probably in the single digit digit millions (or maybe low double digit).
If it doesn't work? Lose, ~$10 million. But if it works there's likely huge upside. It's just a smart bet for a big company. Sometimes your bets turn into AWS, and sometimes they turn into the Fire phone. Most companies I've worked at are very risk averse, and failure on startup type projects is not really accepted the same way.
The checkout system was the failed promise of RFID[1], and maybe the future is still with RFID. But maybe it's with vision, and if it is, then Amazon seems well positioned.
BTW, the rudimentary math I'm doing. Let's say the store saves two checkout people, working on average 20 hours a day for 365 days a year, who each average cost of $15/hr. $15/hr 20 hours365 days*2 people = $219k savings per year. How much does the system cost to setup in a new store? How much extra effort is there to keep food items organized? If you need someone checking IDs, managing errors, etc, is there really savings? Maybe the only way this really scales is if you can do this for full size stores?
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eob532iEpqk
[+] [-] dawhizkid|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makomk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Guest9812398|8 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeS8TJwBAFs
[+] [-] cle|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pupppet|8 years ago|reply
>“We’ve just put associates on different kinds of tasks where we think it adds to the customer experience,” Ms. Puerini said.
[+] [-] brandon272|8 years ago|reply
Using cameras and shelf sensors seem a little archaic for tracking retail purchases in real time. I wonder what happens when the store is extremely busy or people are taking things off shelves and putting them back.
[+] [-] philipwhiuk|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aviv|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] janekm|8 years ago|reply
I presume the shops are set up as a sort of VC-funded experiment that will accept a high level of theft in return for a lot of useful data and early positioning in this type of retail.
The other interesting aspect is that the larger of the stores is set up very much as an experiential shopping environment, including a meat counter with chefs that will cook a steak or burger for you, and the same for sea food (you can buy shrimp or a lobster and they will cook it for you so you can eat it in the store, it is very popular).
[+] [-] heinrichf|8 years ago|reply
> ordinary RGB cameras, custom made with boards in the enclosure to do some basic grunt computer vision work, presumably things like motion detection, basic object identification, and so on. They’re augmented by separate depth-sensing cameras (using a time-of-flight technique, or so I understood from Kumar) that blend into the background like the rest, all matte black. The images captured from these cameras are sent to a central processing unit.
> In addition to the cameras, there are weight sensors in the shelves, and the system is aware of every item’s exact weight
[+] [-] Kiro|8 years ago|reply
Jobs and social interaction have already been elminated by self-checkout. The revolution with Amazon Go is that you don't need to scan anything yourself, not that it removes the cashier.
[+] [-] Flammy|8 years ago|reply
Didn't see this mentioned anywhere, and I thought it was kinda neat.
[+] [-] eloff|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blibble|8 years ago|reply
(what about people without phones?)
[+] [-] FLUX-YOU|8 years ago|reply
- Carry empty bags/containers of cheaper items in the store and place products inside these before pulling them off of the shelf.
- Pull products off of the shelf and give them to a friend. Place identical empty bags/containers back to re-credit your account while your friend never has the item debited and walks out.
- Drape a blanket over yourself and remove products from the shelf and put them in your bags so the system never sees items removed from the shelf
[+] [-] avg_dev|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrewseanryan|8 years ago|reply
Like it or not, this Amazon Go store is a model for all future brick and mortar establishments. In 20 years we will recall the good old days when we waited in line and used cash much like people look back at the time when people sent cards and letters before email.
[+] [-] seanwilson|8 years ago|reply
Are RFID tags not a more elegant solution? Or are they too expensive?
[+] [-] yodon|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chiph|8 years ago|reply
Your hand would be out of view of the ceiling-mounted cameras so it can't see directly (covered up by the shelf above). Your arm would be in the strawberry opening but you'd pull out a cinnamon. Is it's vision system good enough to tell the difference from the packaging, or does it just go off position when you pull it off the shelf?
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] panarky|8 years ago|reply
Why is this the knee-jerk response to technological progress?
True progress isn't forcing millions of people into low-wage routine work. True progress would emancipate people from this drudgery entirely.
Isaac Asimov questioned why the goal of both the left and the right is always "full employment":
"The goal of the future should be full unemployment, so we can play. That’s why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system."
[+] [-] akhilcacharya|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 21|8 years ago|reply