[saddist0]

It isn't that bad an idea.

Imagine that next time you are drunk, you can hire a driver who will drive you back home remotely (along with some AI to stop the car in case connection goes away).

[munk-a]

I disagree - at a basic level if people are able to tell which products you're picking up the resolution is necessarily high enough that there's a huge creep factor. I am sometimes amazed at what companies will pursue without a glance towards common sense.

[freedomben]

I'm a huge privacy advocate and don't think stores should track what you buy at all, so don't confuse what I say next with the is/ought fallacy.

They already have perfect resolution and data retention of everything you buy at checkout time when it's scanned, plus they can verify your identity rather than have to rely on facial recognition or other things. I don't think this is any creepier than what they already do so from their perspective it is "common sense."

[stemlord]

Someone will reply to you saying "I have nothing to hide"

[cdchn]

Is high enough resolution to identify products more creepy than simple ubiquitous surveillance?

[Cheer2171]

Except all these trillion dollar valuations in the AI bubble are based on the belief that AI is replacing humans, not just outsourcing to cheaper humans.

Of course outsourcing to cheaper humans can be great. But that's not what tech is shilling to the world as "AI" right now.

[michaelt]

The grocery industry generally has pretty low margins. Wal-Mart's profit margin is 2.39%.

If you go into a grocery shop to grab lunch, spending $8 on 4 items, and they make 5 cents of profit per item? They need to run an extremely lean operation.

Or target price-insensitive customers, I suppose.

[fsckboy]

>They need to run an extremely lean operation.

they simply need to run a good ordering/inventory system. If they sell every item (on average) in each store every week, that's 2.39% return on the value of the inventory investment each week, or 52*.0239 or over 100% annual return on money they borrow for free because the store pays its grocery bills to suppliers in arrears, net 10 days, etc

[f_allwein]

This actually exists - testing in Berlin, running in Las Vegas: https://vay.io

Maybe not a bad idea - it is a step towards autonomous driving, and will probably ensure drivers have less unintentional down time.

[Avicebron]

So instead of hiring an uber you're purchasing a car specialicially designed to be controlled remotely by a third party..

[avhon1]

Like a taxi or bus?

[woodruffw]

> Imagine that next time you are drunk, you can hire a driver who will drive you back home remotely (along with some AI to stop the car in case connection goes away).

Is this satire? It doesn't seem like a fantastic idea to allow someone to remotely pilot a car over a transoceanic Internet link.

[LudwigNagasena]

Imagine you hire a taxi, but the taxi driver follows commands of someone in another country who receives video stream from the car.

That’s what it’s actually like. It’s just strictly more work than simply having a cashier.