Amazon Ditches 'Just Walk Out' Checkouts at Its Grocery Stores
gizmodo.com
Amazon Fresh is moving away from a feature of its grocery stores where customers could skip checkout altogether.

(via https://hachyderm.io/@jbcrawford/112202942593125987, archive: https://archive.is/VnqRZ)

surprise, Amazon’s godawful surveillance grocery stores were just exploiting hidden labor and calling it innovation, and even that was too expensive

even worse, the few times I’ve seen one of these fucking things in the wild, it still had 1-2 employees hovering near the entrance to make sure nobody did the utterly obvious (fuck with the payment system and get free shit), a job that’s also known as a fucking cashier, but with much worse pay, much harder labor (physically stopping shoplifters), and no counter to lean on or opportunity to even sit down

  • lettruthout@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 months ago

    “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.”

    • self@awful.systemsOPEnglish
      1·
      8 months ago

      the secret sauce is always hiding labor exploitation behind a thick layer of bad ideas

    • Hello_there@fedia.io
      1·
      8 months ago

      Lol. This is some.wizard in oz don’t look behind the curtain level of shenanigans. I remember the news articles when it released all said it was automation.

      • jonne@infosec.pubEnglish
        2·
        8 months ago

        Pretty much every startup operates like that, they hope to figure out the AI stuff later on and basically never do.