Posted on 12/06/2016 6:54:38 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
Amazon on Monday unveiled the latest plan to automate American workers out of existence — a futuristic grocery store without any cashiers.
High-tech sensors and artificial intelligence are allowing shoppers at the Seattle food market to swipe an app when they enter, then roam the aisles and grab staples like bread and milk, artisanal cheeses and chocolates and ready-made meals.
Customers can watch as the items they pluck off the shelves get added to a virtual cart on the app — and subtracted if they put them back — with receipts emailed to them once they leave, according to the company.
The 1,800-square-foot Amazon Go store is currently open only to employees of the online retail giant, but the company plans to start letting the public in next year.
Amazon will also test out “large, multifunction stores with curbside pickup capability” and “drive-through prototype locations,” sources told the Wall Street Journal (paywall).
The company wants to open more than 2,000 brick-and-mortar grocery stores, compared with about 2,800 operated by The Kroger Co., now the nation’s largest full-service grocery retailer.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Or sell, barter, and trade EBT cards on the illegal market.
Where do you put them back now
Another luddite story about how technology is going to make us all destitute. If you don’t like cashierless stores, then frequent the ones with cashiers.
LOL!
“I see this as making people even more lazy then they are.”
Meh. I’m in my 60s, and for $ 99. a year, Amazon will contract with the USPS to deliver and carry anything right to my door. I don’t have to carry anything that weighs more than a couple of pounds from the store to my car to my house. The rude USPS employee has to lift my cases of drinks, etc., instead of me.
I don’t think utilizing a service makes ME lazy. ;-) It makes me smart. I get a very good value for that $ 99.
Yes, that is a great point... I don’t think this idea will fly in the real world, especially for some of the customers who rely on the EBT cards.
My prediction is that all these robotics will be taxed to provide welfare for the unemployed.
Or will humans develop new needs/desires that require new products and services which will end up employing these people?
Sort of like what happened during the turn of the last century when the vast majority of the people worked on farms and now only 3 or percent.
“Waiting for this to be put in all central minority urban centers “food deserts” and then enjoy watching the outcome.”
Yeah, I want to see video of the first flash mob looting frenzy.
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winnah!
I thought that was MicroSoft?
Now that you mention it, them too.
I made a similar suggestion to an R&D engineer in the food storage industry. He said they’ve been working on it.
I think you envy Bezos more than you hate him.
I lived through the great dot com boom and then bust. Made a bit of money investing in early e-commerce companies, and lost a bit when they went under. There were an awful lot of them not that long ago. Somehow Amazon survived and grew. IMHO it was because they had better execution and now better ideas.
They did not become so big by buying up other companies to form a monopoly, they grew themselves. They still have a lot of competition, but seem to thrive.
Personally, I like Amazon. DW and I retired years ago, and moved to a rural setting. Amazon lets us enjoy most of the advantages of living in a city with few of the drawbacks. Almost any consumer good we want is available to us relatively quickly. And, not driving to the store saves gas and pollution. (Jeff Bezos has reduced pollution more than Obama could ever dream of, without even trying) The prices are good, not the best on the web, but good enough to stretch our dollars.
I will pay a little more for the convenience of Amazon, the free shipping, and most of all because when something isn't what I expected, their customer service can look at our total buying vs. complaining record and issue a prompt refund.
As far as Bezos being a slave driver, I have yet to hear of even one instance of a worker being forced to stay at Amazon. If someone doesn't like the working conditions, they are free to leave and get another job. He has created a lot of jobs in just s few years -- give him credit for that.
I worked long enough as a "wage slave" to know that any job has components I don't like. I was always free to quit and go somewhere else, but somehow all jobs chafe some part of my body.
Now I have my own part-time business, and lots of people like to tell me what I am doing wrong. If they don't like my way, they are free to start up their own business.
Getting back to Amazon, we buy a lot from them because we feel it is a good deal for us. The second it stops being a good deal, we will go somewhere else.
If you don't like them, you are free to buy from anyone else you do like. If you don't like their jobs, start your own company and do it your way.
Yeah. I think it’s one of those things that is actually pretty obvious to those that pay attention to the tech.
I mean, once driverless cars are a reality, how many trips will there be that don’t require a human? And if there is no human in the vehicle, think of all the weight that can be eliminated. Think of “hard rolling” skinny tires that drastically enhance fuel mileage and all the other things that can be changed once a vehicle is not designed for human occupancy.
And all the other facets of this to boot. Thing is, we are looking at this tech through the eyes of the “past”. I’m reminded of Apple computer coming to a deal with Apple records about music. At the time, not even Jobs thought music and computers would have much in common so he cut a deal with Apple recoreds. A pretty sweet deal for the record company as it turns out.
Once this tech becomes common, it will change the way we live in ways we currently can not even imagine.
Safeway has had on line ordering and home delivery in the Gay Frisco area for a few years.
One of our small premium grocery stores about over a decade ago, allowed key customers to order by fax and to pick up the order when it was ready. Then, they started free delivery, if the order was over a certain amount. Later, you could email your nearest store.
The same store allowed select customers order the fixings for a complete Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas, birthday dinner or whatever. They would deliver or have your order ready to pickup at a certain time. They probably did a better job of selecting the produce and meat than most customers.
Now many stores will deliver a complete and cooked Thanksgiving, Easter, Christmas, birthday/special dinner.
A few years later at the same store, key customers could order by email and charge the orders to a key customer charge acct..
They, also, allowed those key customers to email or fax orders to the delis in their stores to pick up on the way home from work. That worked great at their headquarter store. It didn’t at our local store due to a hostile anti customer lesbo in charge of the deli. It wanted to close down her deli at about 5:30 pm. After a few discussions with the family owners, the hostile one got an early retirement.
The fax, email, and phone in Deli orders for after work soon exceeded the rest of the normal deli business, which didn’t decrease with the off store ordering.
Most of our working adult children, nephew/nieces hate any store shopping. Many use Safeway or a grocery store that delivers or has orders ready to pick up.
We still enjoy grocery shopping at stores with good products and good people. That may change when we get older.
Many or our same age friends want to stay in their homes/not move to a retirement home. They like to cook and hate to shop. So, they order from stores that deliver. More on this increasing market, below.
As the boomers enter into our basic age group, 65-80, we will see many of them opting for home delivery or store pickup after ordering on line.
These changes are not sinful, lazy nor evil. They reflect what our changing demographics and lifestyles are asking for. The businesses, which ignore these changes will be like Kmart, Wards and other dodo birds businesses. The business which meet these changes will survive.
This is an idea multiple companies have been working on. Heck IBM (I think) was advertising it a few years ago in their “power of the future” campaign. It’s better because it’s faster even than self checkout because there’s no checkout, much harder to shoplift which costs a lot of money, fewer employees also greatly reduces shoplifting (dirty little secret of retail). Biggest problem I see is bagging your stuff, but all the big lib cities have functionally outlawed bagging anyway.
The technology has existed for decades. Warehouses have been using it for years for inventory control.
Every item in a package has a bar code now and many, if not most, have an RFID chip for inventory control. I expected it to be tied to a subcutaneous chip or card reader, like in the video, but now almost everyone seems to have a smartphone connected to the internet.
We will eventually see shopping just like in the video with no check out, no cash. Just automatic debit from your account as you walk out the door. Of course, there will be a record of ALL of your purchases so you will receive very specifically targeted marketing messages based on your known shopping habits, just as you receive targeted advertising now based on your browsing habits. Except there will be no “Clearing cookies” and a complete record will be kept by someone of everything you buy and everywhere you go.
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