Ars TechnicaAmazon kills “Just Walk Out” shopping tech—it never really worked
"AI" checkout was actually powered by 1,000 human video reviewers in India.
TheEJJ 🇨🇦@arstechnica did Amazon ever claim this was “AI”? My understanding is that the stores used cameras and sensors to detect what shoppers took out of the store and these Indian reviewers were check on the system’s accuracy.
The issue isn’t that 1000 labourers were checking people out remotely and it was all smoke and mirrors, rather it’s that the automated system wasn’t accurate enough in the end.
It doesn’t change much, but it feels disingenuous to lump this in with other fake AI systems.
mmby@TheEjj @arstechnica https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/retail/how-does-amazon-just-walk-out-work
compare that with how they praised the tech to high heaven last year and then extrapolate to others
@mmby @TheEjj @arstechnica ah, so they did associate this tech with generative AI. I’m still not certain what role it plays, the cameras and scanners seem to do all the work.
@TheEjj @arstechnica they trained the system with generated animations it seems
JonathanSomewhere in the article it said that they were training a machine learning system with the video of people buying stuff
Aron Allen 🇩🇰🇨🇦@arstechnica here in Denmark we have a quite lo fi solution. You use your phone to scan products, you can use any bag, bring your own. Then check out you scan a QR code and pay. The catch is that you occasionally might get checked before you can scan your receipt to exit. It’s like 1/20 times, we have a store just across the street, within 5 minutes I can leave my kitchen, pick up a few items, and be back in my kitchen.
Shaun McDonald@aronallen @arstechnica several supermarkets in the UK support you doing similar scan and pack as you go. Can be handy to keep the kids occupied whilst going round.
Levvvy@arstechnica I see 7 eleven is trying it now
Frank Helm@arstechnica it's time to play which one is enterprise ready!
- A black box super duper automated process trust us bro ™️
- Outsourcing the whole thing to Genpact/TCS/etc.
- A black box super duper automated process trust us bro ™️
- Outsourcing the whole thing to Genpact/TCS/etc.
R. K. Niner@arstechnica "The cart scanners also mean that Amazon no longer needs a small army of store employees to constantly tidy up the shelves so the camera-vision system can work."
Ah yes, so the 1000 people they hired to watch video footage can tell when you took something off those shelves
Covidiocracy"AI" = Anonymous Indians
tyx@arstechnica
Ok, they basically made an old joke real again. By old I mean since 1770.
Ok, they basically made an old joke real again. By old I mean since 1770.
Julie Smith😆 @arstechnica reminds me of the "self driving" cars... 🤔🤣🙄 humans are doomed... not because technology will replace us... but because so many of us are so STUPID
Alexey Skobkin@arstechnica
Yet another journalist that can't read 🤡
Yet another journalist that can't read 🤡
Gilgwath@arstechnica Since these days everything gets offshored, we don't get mechanical turks anymore, we now get mechanical indians. Scamming and exploiting people like it's 1770.
M0KHR@arstechnica Every single time, under the hood there's a Mechanical Turk slave.