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> These have been around forever, and were promised/touted to eliminate jobs. But 15 years later the machines are hardly fully-automated. They are prone to malf

by RajT88 4y ago

> These have been around forever, and were promised/touted to eliminate jobs. But 15 years later the machines are hardly fully-automated. They are prone to malfunctioning. Not only that, but stores, understandably, are paranoid about theft. I was thinking about this the other day at the grocery store. All manual checkout lanes were closed, and 5 automated ones were open. 5 people were standing around chatting while keeping an eye on the automated lanes, for the inevitable situation where either the machine screws up, or a counterintuitive UI quirk confuses customers (in my case, you have to move to payment to see discounts applied on sale items). I'm sure it pays dividends during the busy times, and not 8pm, but still. I have to wonder at the economics of it. Times like I'm describing have to cut into the operational savings.

kolinko 4y ago
It depends on a machine and a store. At least in Poland, I’ve seen a bunch of terrible ones, but most of them are pretty decent. In my local Leroy Merlin, there are 10 machines, all of them busy during rush hours, and just one person staffing them. Plus a security guard that would be there anyway. Similar in large Carrefours. With smaller grocery stores the self checkouts added an extra place for self checkout, with keeping staff unchanged. Rossman (european cvs/wallgreens) regularly has fully unstaffed self checkouts. The guard was always there usually by the door anyway. On top of that we have Żabka Nano - a fully automated store. I haven’t been there yet, but from what my friends told me, it sometimes is fully unstaffed (unlike it’s Amazon counterpart which seemed to have more staff than traditional stores of similar size). Then with Uniqlo UK that I visited it was pure magic - rfid on clothes, you just put a bag in a checkout area, tap your card and you’re ready to go. There is still one or two people of staff, but before they would need 5-10 to handle the same amount of traffic. The main issue with self-checkout in supermarkets seems to be products that can’t have barcodes - bread, buns, etc. Better vision AI that we’ve seen recently should handle that case soon. - before me boycotting Leroy Merlin - they moved out of Ukraine, but stayed in Russia after the war began
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  Sure bread can have bar codes. 'Lazzrr Crizzp!' Or on the label you put on the bag (paper/plastic) which you put it in anyways, if it isn't already packacked in one.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
It has other benefits like further deskilling workers, preventing the face-to-face contact that would build relationships between workers and customers, training customers to think of the abstract entity "the store" or "the brand" providing what they need rather than any person or group of people they could feel solidarity with. It's as much about disempowering labor as it is about direct profitability, and in this has much to teach us about the consequences we can expect from AI.

by RajT88 4y ago

kolinko 4y ago

It depends on a machine and a store. At least in Poland, I’ve seen a bunch of terrible ones, but most of them are pretty decent. In my local Leroy Merlin, there are 10 machines, all of them busy during rush hours, and just one person staffing them. Plus a security guard that would be there anyway. Similar in large Carrefours. With smaller grocery stores the self checkouts added an extra place for self checkout, with keeping staff unchanged. Rossman (european cvs/wallgreens) regularly has fully unstaffed self checkouts. The guard was always there usually by the door anyway. On top of that we have Żabka Nano - a fully automated store. I haven’t been there yet, but from what my friends told me, it sometimes is fully unstaffed (unlike it’s Amazon counterpart which seemed to have more staff than traditional stores of similar size). Then with Uniqlo UK that I visited it was pure magic - rfid on clothes, you just put a bag in a checkout area, tap your card and you’re ready to go. There is still one or two people of staff, but before they would need 5-10 to handle the same amount of traffic. The main issue with self-checkout in supermarkets seems to be products that can’t have barcodes - bread, buns, etc. Better vision AI that we’ve seen recently should handle that case soon. - before me boycotting Leroy Merlin - they moved out of Ukraine, but stayed in Russia after the war began

LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
Sure bread can have bar codes. 'Lazzrr Crizzp!' Or on the label you put on the bag (paper/plastic) which you put it in anyways, if it isn't already packacked in one.

giraffe_lady 4y ago

It has other benefits like further deskilling workers, preventing the face-to-face contact that would build relationships between workers and customers, training customers to think of the abstract entity "the store" or "the brand" providing what they need rather than any person or group of people they could feel solidarity with. It's as much about disempowering labor as it is about direct profitability, and in this has much to teach us about the consequences we can expect from AI.