People in India were watching people checkout?! Poorly paid workers watching Westerners consume... this is so grim.
Time to dust off those guillotines.
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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If folks haven't yet, what's it going to take?
Amazon used the high tech process of having low paid cashiers that are hidden in another country. Amazon sucks so much.
Haha, so it was never AI? Just an Indian person getting annoyed at the people trying all kinds of weird tricks to see if they could defeat the 'AI' 🤣
It always seemed like a massive amount of money and effort, to replace a couple dozen low wage workers. In the end it didn't even do that.
The article says they replaced them with remote workers in India, I'm assuming with even lower wages
I thought the packaging would have an extra tag on it that would get scanned as you left? Uniqlo already does something similar at their locations. You just dump clothes in a bucket and the tag (can't remember if they're RFID or what) is automatically registered and added to your bill. Just make a tunnel variant and have people go through single file or something. They're already scanning people's palms to pay for Christ's sake.
I had assumed it was a Uniqlo style thing using tags. That truly is magical, like living in the future. This Amazon stuff with the cameras and constant surveillance, not so much....
🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday.
The technology allows customers to skip checkout altogether by scanning a QR code when they enter the store.
Though it seemed completely automated, Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts.
However, the spokesperson acknowledged these associates validate “a small minority” of shopping visits when AI can’t determine a purchase.
Amazon Fresh, the e-commerce giant’s grocery store first launched in 2007, has just over 40 locations around the United States.
Amazon’s push away from expensive tests like Just Walk Out may be a sign the company is looking to further expand its presence as a supermarket.
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I'm a bot
If you work from India, please give us a sign
So after all that it was just a mechanical turk situation
It did say the workers were labelling the videos, so presumably they were trying to train an AI
This might be the last year I use Amazon.
They've been on my BDS list for years now. Welcome to the (fed up) club!
I think my cut off date was in 2019. Do it!
I know some airports have similar Amazon convenience stores. But they're not staffless; there's still at least one person at the exit. Sometimes even another person at the entrance. Yeah it's quick for me since I'm not waiting in a line or being rung up (though I rarely see people in them compared to the traditional convenience stores), but is the company really saving money? Not that I really care if they are or not, but seems pointless if they still have to staff the stores.
Love or hate Amazon, this system would better than the self check out other stores are using.
the system wasn’t as magic as they made it out to be. turns out it was powered by a team of 1,000 people reviewing camera footage in India.
this is probably why they’re killing it.