“Though it seemed completely automated, [Amazon’s] 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.” https://gizmodo.com/amazon-reportedly-ditches-just-walk-out-grocery-stores-1851381116
[removes glasses; pinches bridge of nose; sighs until the heat death of the universe]
when Silicon Valley says “innovation,” it’s okay to mentally swap in “rendering labor invisible, while visiting new levels of precariousness and harm on the workers who perform it”
it’s a few more syllables, but i think it generally still scans
It’s important not to see this as happening to some “other” class of workers; these people are, first and foremost, *tech workers*. Without their labor — and the terrible conditions they labor under — these platforms would fail.
At the risk of being That Guy on main, a relevant bit from YOU DESERVE A TECH UNION:
“[Bezos’ wealth] is the result of deliberately hiding actual work – designing, making, sorting, packing, cooking, farming, delivering – behind little icons on your smartphone screen, in order to devalue it. It is the systematic use of the fake robot trick to lower the value of labour, until people are reportedly sleeping in tents at the factory gates, then banking the difference.”
Short, searing post from James Bridle on the real, human costs of automation: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/10/amazon-ai-cashier-less-shops-humans-technology
@beep Oh that is so good.
"The size of Bezos’s rocket is very precisely determined by the difference in costs between paying a worker in Britain and a worker in India – including all the historically determined racist and colonialist inequality that calculation involves."
I got a lot simpler substitution than that. "Innovation" can almost always be swapped with "bullshit" with no loss of meaning (and often a gain). "Innovate" can be swapped with "waste money."
I realize that doesn't get to what you're getting at -- what David Harvey calls "capital's spatial fix" on this, but it's at least pithy.
@beep here’s an interesting detail. This paragraph was altered after publication:
“Instead, Amazon is reportedly moving towards Dash Carts… These offer a more reliable solution than Just Walk Out, whose impressive technology was truly ahead of its time.”
This was despite their own findings. I wonder how that slipped through.
@blogdiva Oof, I hear you. I might just add that there are *legions* of contracted tech workers here in the states, too. (I was lucky enough to speak with some for the book, even.) To a person, they all told me how dehumanizing their working conditions were, and how much anxiety it made them feel.
Anyway, that’s just to say it’s exactly like you said: it’s always about labor. And it just ain’t right.
💜
“The cashiers were simply moved off-site” and *that* is the point. If the cashiers are no longer part of your community, you no longer have *any* engagement or intersection with their living and working conditions, so the corp is now more free to treat them like shit.
The funniest part is that this is primarily being replaced with a system that basically puts the labor back onto you by merging self checkout with a shopping cart
https://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=21289116011
They went full circle
It also looks like the technology is being licensed to stores as well.
I just fail to see what problems this solves aside from serving you with more ads. It certainly won't reduce shoplifting rates
"In the late 18th century, The Turk was presented as an autonomous chess-playing machine that could beat any human player. It was a con – a chess grandmaster was always hidden inside it and making all of the moves – but the illusion succeeded because it was built on the exciting idea that a machine might be able to play a logical game against us. And win." https://www.thats-ai.org/en-GB/units/a-brief-history-of-ai
foxinSOCKS5
Ethan Marcotte
Luke Dorny 
Jessamyn
rrmutt
Jeremy Kahn
Mark Llobrera
Carter Baxter
Neil E. Hodges
PeachMcD
Michael Bacon
Dan Milway
Nicole Sullivan
Keith J Grant
@stevewfolds
punIssuer
Doug Sheppard
Zach Leatherman
Doug Wilson
James Doc
aburka 🫣
McNeely
John Godsland
localzuk
MarkRDavid
EVHaste
almibe
Tajoma
kira :3
your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦
ryan onstott
The 500 Hats of LambdaCalculus
elle mundy
Stephen Tures
jenbanim
David Mitchell 
Soulfire The Wolf 
Pineapple 🍍
Hector Correa
BoneHouseWasps🔶🇬🇧🇪🇺
malevolent dictator for life
Cocoa
Critterzoology
jonathankoren™