Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores
Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores
Amazon Fresh is moving away from a feature of its grocery stores where customers could skip checkout altogether.
Just over half of Amazon Fresh stores are equipped with Just Walk Out. 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. The cashiers were simply moved off-site, and they watched you as you shopped.
"AI" in commercial applications is always just a guy
Al (it's not a capital I it's a lowercase L)
I actually have a really easy fix that allows you to keep doing this
Just walk out checkouts sounds like a joke lmao
This is like 90% of AI companies. They promise an automation to get investment, IP claims, etc, but then actually use a ton of global south labor to run it. They usually try to actually build the tech but there's not much pressure because the cheap overseas labor option does actually function, albeit without the savings they promised.
This is what really blackpilled me on the "AI boom". It would have a lot of problems even if it was exactly what it says it is, but in practice in many cases it's another avenue for outsourcing/unequal exchange.
I've seen many and even been a part of a few projects intended to eliminate the need for labor. They almost always end up costing as much or more than just improving working conditions, training, and developing tools to allow the workers to work more effectively. Meanwhile my last company wouldn't fork out the money to fix or replace the failing roof AC unit that caused me and my overdressed coworkers to find every excuse we could to go be somewhere else in the building.
Oh yea it's Marx predicted this time
It’s super hard to get the average person to care about this though because they already know their treats are based in slave labor and don’t give a fuck. They just see a shiny new toy in whatever context
Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts
Obviously, the problem with this system is that Indians are asking for too much money.
My guess is there was an actual computer vision thing, and people in India were used for post-hoc performance verification, which the system failed.
Disregarding for a moment the exploitation of underpaid global south labour and how this is a dystopian technology originally presented as futuristic, this seems like an awful feature. Like I would probably be riddled by mild anxiety whether I was billed correctly and not overcharged.
I agree lol, but from what I remember, billing errors were more likely to cause you to be undercharged rather than overcharged.
What if your robot was just a guy?
WhatWot if your robot was just a guy?Installing humanoid drones piloted by exploited offshore labour to avoid paying a living wage
Weird. I don't know how they're going to eliminate that for me. I just walk out of grocery stores all the time.
Wow. Capitalism is even outsourcing their "service economy" stuff. Or trying to anyway.
Machine learning? More like machine learning I can steal.
Just Walk Out relied on more than 1,000 people in India watching and labeling videos to ensure accurate checkouts
They couldn’t just put like an RFID chip on everything and have you walk through a scanner?
Grocery stores usually do an insane volume of sales compared to most retail. I'm not sure how big these things were but even if they're tiny they're probably selling thousands of units a day. The number of chips they would need and the labor to apply them would almost certainly be unsustainable.
Isn't this the entire gimmick behind Amazon fresh? Why else would you go there?
Nah, Amazon Fresh is just a regular grocery store. They still have a bunch of other stores with this technology, especially third party vendors i.e. other companies in stadiums and airports mainly who have a contract with Amazon.
I used to work at Amazon on this, and I know A LOT about how this technology works. If I remember correctly, JWO began to separate from Amazon Fresh back in late 2022 when they told us they would cancel JWO in the new Amazon Fresh upcoming stores and use their new dash carts instead. They told us that the focus would instead be selling JWO tech to third party vendors, such as stores in stadiums and airports.
I know (somewhat outdated) about how most of their tech works, as well as some of the internally-stated reasoning behind their business decisions. AMA lol
One thing I know for a fact that is probably the most troubling/dystopian, is that the technology absolutely exists and works pretty well to be able to track the movements of every individual person in a crowd, including by having multiple camera angles as a person moves in and out of view. Drones, satellites, and street cameras can absolutely be used to do this on a fairly large scale, and I have to assume it is being done. Amazon's technology in particular isn't exactly doing this and I don't necessarily think they are providing it to 5 eyes or whatever, but I know for a fact it can and is being done at least for some BS convenience stores.
Probably schools tbh, there have been a lot of papers floated about using a camera and AI to tell if students are paying attention or cheating or whatever. There's already exammonitor & others using webcams so it's not a huge leap to make.
so what did they do if you walked in, didn't scan your qr code, and walked out? how did they think they were going to separate the two groups well enough to prevent theft? like the whole concept screams "figure out how to steal in full view of the entire store". like one wig, a little costuming, and the cops are never going to find you from the video footage.
I spent a decent amount of time thinking of how best to shoplift from there, lol. My best idea is that with some decent slight of hand, you could easily fool the system into thinking you took 1 product instead of 2, or you returned an item when you actually didn't. And then you can challenge your receipt to make them fix it. There are a lot of camera angles, but they are only 14fps, and it can still be pretty tough to tell what someone is actually doing even if they are acting totally normally and non-maliciously.
Another funny theory I had is that to beat the tracking system, you could lie down or something. It's not something I ever tested in practice, but their tracking system relies heavily on the assumption that everyone is standing upright, so maybe if you rolled on the floor a little it would get confused. But when it gets confused it goes to one of those low paid workers in India or Costa Rica, so it might get corrected manually.
The stores have gates that prevent entry until you scan the code. You could maybe hop the turnstyle, but there's usually at least one employee near the front to "help people get in". And to be fair, lots of people have questions about it so it's not entirely bs, but I guess their job is also to dissuade this.
Fuck.... whats the indie movie where one of the main character's "gimme jobs" by his rich in-law was to sit in a cubicle with a helmet on skimming through the video feeds of always on and online digital recording devices and ID things in the rooms? Possessed? Possessor?
I think its the movie where the main character is an assassin who get jacked into the bodies of other people to carry out the hits... checks internet "Possessor" ... thats it!
Was it a good movie?
Yrah it's good.
Fuckin Sleep Dealer ass future.
EDIT: LOL! they advertised this as some bold new tech. OG Amazon Go grocery ad - https://inv.n8pjl.ca/watch?v=NrmMk1Myrxc
if your grocery store has to emboss 'fresh' above its door...
