7 ms·

When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for everyone

167 points by wawayanda 1y ago

s17n 1y ago
The article starts by blaming AI for the reduced food menu, a speculative claim which the author made no attempt to validate and which is almost certainly incorrect. I stopped reading right there.
- TSUTiger 1y ago
  You should've read further. In reality, when getting out first to market, it might be difficult for "AI" to decipher if a user added 1 of 5 available sauces to their chicken wings, so to reduce the likelihood of this error, you remove it until the technology is more mature. Speculative sure, but a strong assumption, and I doubt Mashgin would confirm this.
  - s17n 1y ago
    Its definitely wrong - I've used these exact checkout systems at places with way longer menus than any stadium has ever or will ever have. Even if that wasn't the case, it would still be way too speculative of premise to be worth seriously discussing, especially when the Occam's Razor "they reduced the menu size because its easier, they have a captive market, and why try to make good food when you can just charge $20 for a beer" explanation is right there in front of you.
    - HelloMcFly 1y ago
      When the menu reduction coincides with the introduction of vision-based checkout, I don't think it's an obvious overreach to link the two together. It may be right, it may be wrong, but this wasn't journalism, just a guy's experience, and the root cause of that decision doesn't change what the article is actually trying to communication.
ryandrake 1y ago
> You place all your items on the white shelf with some space between them. Although they were clearly designed to be a self-checkout experience, the stadium had a staff member rearrange your items, then for about 30 seconds the kiosk would be thinking. After, it would pop up all items on the menu, and the staff member would have to tap to confirm what each item was. Maybe we're just calling all forms of automation and computer vision "AI" these days because it's sexy. Anyway: any automation that requires a human staff member to intervene to complete every run is not automation: It's just adding unnecessary technology and making the process worse. Imagine if each grocery store self-checkout required a human staff member to scan items, re-arrange things, and confirm checkout.
- mablopoule 1y ago
  > Maybe we're just calling all forms of automation and computer vision "AI" these days because it's sexy. Funny thing is, at first it was the other way around! 'Computer Vision' has always been a sub-field of AI, but the term was more widely used by academics during a previous AI winter as a way to avoid the tainted 'AI' label.
- baggachipz 1y ago
  > Imagine if each grocery store self-checkout required a human staff member to scan items, re-arrange things, and confirm checkout. They always have at least one person going between each self-checkout kiosk helping confused and upset customers. Meanwhile, 1 traditional checkout lane is open with a long line. Self checkout is great to use if you know how and have a handful of items, but it sucks with a full cart due to space constraints and the bag scales being finicky.
  - reaperducer 1y ago
    Meanwhile, 1 traditional checkout lane is open I wish. The Wal-Mart near me no longer has staffed checkouts between 6am (opening time) and 8am. That's two hours in the morning of robots-only. I don't know about in the evenings. traditional checkout lane is open with a long line. I use the traditional check-out line whenever I can because where I live, the self-check line is almost always longer. It's not hard to keep an eye on the last person in the self-check line when you go to a real register to see which is faster. I'm not a fireman on call. I'm OK spending an extra 45 seconds in a traditional line to keep a low-skilled human being employed.
AlexandrB 1y ago
Isn't this the purpose of a lot of AI? To provide "good enough" alternatives to human labor. Why would anyone expect AI to make things better rather than cheaper or more profitable?
- ThrowawayTestr 1y ago
  Except there's still a human that has to confirm everything the computer did
- esafak 1y ago
  Computers can do some things better than humans; recognize and generate speech, when accents are involved at either end.
  - nicbou 1y ago
    And nag and upsell well past the point humans feel comfortable doing.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  In this particular case, it seems mostly use cases that were solved some decades ago with _barcodes_, so it's not even cheaper or more profitable. There's already an alternative to human labour which works for better for this sort of application.
Someone1234 1y ago
I was recently at an events center, that has replaced all of their vending machines with machines that require me to install an app(!) to purchase a product. Literally, didn't take cash or credit - just via app. Per the marketing on the side, this is meant to be for my benefit in order to earn "points" and get offered "deals." I don't think I have to tell you that I did NOT install the app, and just walked further to buy one from a vendor. There is a massive arrogance problem within tech. Everyone thinks their product should be the center of everyone else's universe. The best products are invisible/get out of the way.
- frogperson 1y ago
  I agree with the arrogance. I am just so tired of poor software consuming hours to troubleshoot. technology was supposed to makes things easier, not turn every interaction into a chore or a debug session.
- clan 1y ago
  The arrogance is not that they think they're the center of the universe. It is much worse. I hear a lot of talk about how much pain you can inflict on people and how to extract the most value from that. Last I heard it was from a couple of media types discussing radio commercials. No care for their actual product for the end user - but an evaluation of how much people would suffer before tuning away. Actual professional pride and care is sooo last century.
  - svachalek 1y ago
    Sadly. It's like how modern bridges can be built with less materials than old ones, now that we can calculate precisely the minimum we use pretty much exactly that. Things have gone exactly the same way with consumers over the past 30 years, businesses have learned exactly how badly they can treat you and step up to that line at every opportunity.
    - throwaway48476 1y ago
      Bridges are public goods. If the public spends less on material they can afford to build additional bridges and create value for more people.
lykahb 1y ago
Once you enter the stadium or a concert, you become a part of the captive market. There exists an incentive to limit your choices and extract as much value out of you as possible. The limit to that is mostly defined by the organizer decency and the amount of pushback. The experience is usually better at the smaller venues that aren't a part of strong fandom and more sensitive to the customer sentiment: indie cinemas, comedy clubs, etc.
CGMthrowaway 1y ago
By "Everything" I guess the author means "Concessions checkout"? I was looking for another example and never got one.
- heyheyhey 1y ago
  And that wasn't really AI, it was more like automation. Was hoping the article would be about stadium experiences like the announcer, jumbotron, etc. all being AI-driven. When I judge the experience of gameday, concessions are like third on that list. Disappointed with the content.
  - HelloUsername 1y ago
    At least they added a photo of him and his pall Greg
bgirard 1y ago
> The person in front of me bought two items and saw she got charged for three. Since there were no paper receipts, she took a photo of the machine before going to the guest services to complain. I missed ten minutes of the game getting water. I wish payment processors / consumer protection would have a significant penalty for sloppy overcharges. I've had to deal with sloppy overcharges like this (one for over $1,000) and you lose a lot of time and the outcome is just 'oppsies, my bad'. There's very little repercussion for sloppy overcharges so it's easy for them to perpetuate.
- Doxin 1y ago
  Back in the olden times overcharging like that would be dealt with the same way as theft would. I'm not entirely convinced it's the wrong way to go about things. It's how the concept of a bakers dozen came to be. Better give everyone 13 in a dozen, just in case you ever miscount.
caminanteblanco 1y ago
Circle K has had these rolled out in Arizona for several years now, and honestly they're pretty flawless there. I've used the self checkout hundreds of times at this point, and Circle K has a pretty huge selection of products. When it's 2AM and you're waiting to buy a monster, it's nice not having to wait 45 seconds for the one clerk to finish that they're doing so they can ring you up. I'm not sure why the performance at this stadium was so vastly different.
- glkindlmann 1y ago
  Circle K in Chicago has them too. Employees are constantly needed to monitor things at checkout. If items aren't clearly separated (which is easy to do out of haste, not malice) it will under-count. The same cashiers at the same store were much faster at checkout than these machines are.
twalla 1y ago
A small price to pay to make the Not Hotdog app from Silicon Valley a reality.
jrochkind1 1y ago
Maybe they can only sell 30% as much stuff because it's so slow, but it sounds like they probably laid off at least 50% of their previous staff -- so everybody wins!
foxfired 1y ago
This isn't just enshittification, it's hostile software [0]. When you dominate a space, for example being the only vendor in the stadium, you can impose whatever you want on customers. There are no options, you can tell customers to select between yes or ok, this is the only way to pay for hotdogs now. As an LA resident, the rate at which we implement these broken and invasive services is alarming. [0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/hostile-not-enshittification https://idiallo.com/blog/hostile-not-enshittification
ivanjermakov 1y ago
One can replace "stadium" in the title with nearly any other product/service and still make sense.
scrps 1y ago
Tangential: Can someone more in the know answer this for me? What happened to RFID for things like this? I know it is used elsewhere but it seems like that would be a much faster and lighter weight solution for self-checkout.
- fortran77 1y ago
  RFID still costs several cents per sensor. At suparmarkets, this is a non-starter, but for some retailers, like Uniqlo, it's acceptable. You would think that overpriced concessions would be a great place for this because it can be very fast and accurate but I think this would require the food handler to make sure to use a different tray or container for each differently priced item, etc. And there may just be enough items that would be hard to affix an RFID to (metal can, etc) that would make it unfeasible.
  - scrps 1y ago
    I kinda figured it would come down to RFID still probably being pricey, used it a while back when it was newish and pricey but haven't looked in years. That is a good point with the pricing making it cost effective but they probably look at it from some maximum profit POV. Honestly something like an Automat diner style system would help with the latency and queuing and way easier to implement technically.
pllbnk 1y ago
People overestimate computer vision and other AI capabilities. A few days ago I had a relative struggle to open some fancy cosmetics box. Another relative decided it would be helpful to photograph it and send it to ChatGPT for help. Coincidentally, not that long ago I also heard someone telling about the recent AI advances on the radio and talking how they send photos of things and ChatGPT helps them figure out how to use them instead of reading those boring manuals. I guess that's what marketing does to the people. But also it doesn't take many failures and broken expectations until those people decide that it's not worth the effort and stop using these tools entirely.
x______________ 1y ago
Author went on to claim smaller portions as the closing line of the article but only pictured 2024 meals and 2025 machines and lineups for said machines. An opportunity to post facts was lost, and for now until it won't, remains anecdotal.
conartist6 1y ago
Another little piece of the bubble story: outright lies about gains made
cainxinth 1y ago
I was at a ballpark and they had self checkout everywhere, except they were usually manned by staff. So I picked out my item, put it on the scanner, and then the staff member would select the checkout button on the screen. Literally that was all they did. And then the screen asked for a tip and the person stared at me expectantly like they had just carried my luggage up two flights of stairs.
drweevil 1y ago
>On the bright side, the billionaire stadium owners probably got to reduce their staff in the process while maybe increasing profits. This is the root problem. When you take people out of the economy, what's the point of having such an economy? Such an economy cannot last indefinitely and will eventually be replaced by one that will.
chuckadams 1y ago
The owners see you as just another rube to be fleeced, and well, they have no reason to change their behavior. You still bought the tickets and you still bought their concessions. The team is not a gang of hometown heroes offering a slice of Americana, they are a faceless corporation whose sole purpose is maximum revenue extraction. The only thing that will ever send them a clear message is voting with your feet.

167 points by wawayanda 1y ago

s17n 1y ago

The article starts by blaming AI for the reduced food menu, a speculative claim which the author made no attempt to validate and which is almost certainly incorrect. I stopped reading right there.

TSUTiger 1y ago
You should've read further. In reality, when getting out first to market, it might be difficult for "AI" to decipher if a user added 1 of 5 available sauces to their chicken wings, so to reduce the likelihood of this error, you remove it until the technology is more mature. Speculative sure, but a strong assumption, and I doubt Mashgin would confirm this.
- s17n 1y ago
  Its definitely wrong - I've used these exact checkout systems at places with way longer menus than any stadium has ever or will ever have. Even if that wasn't the case, it would still be way too speculative of premise to be worth seriously discussing, especially when the Occam's Razor "they reduced the menu size because its easier, they have a captive market, and why try to make good food when you can just charge $20 for a beer" explanation is right there in front of you.
  - HelloMcFly 1y ago
    When the menu reduction coincides with the introduction of vision-based checkout, I don't think it's an obvious overreach to link the two together. It may be right, it may be wrong, but this wasn't journalism, just a guy's experience, and the root cause of that decision doesn't change what the article is actually trying to communication.

ryandrake 1y ago

> You place all your items on the white shelf with some space between them. Although they were clearly designed to be a self-checkout experience, the stadium had a staff member rearrange your items, then for about 30 seconds the kiosk would be thinking. After, it would pop up all items on the menu, and the staff member would have to tap to confirm what each item was. Maybe we're just calling all forms of automation and computer vision "AI" these days because it's sexy. Anyway: any automation that requires a human staff member to intervene to complete every run is not automation: It's just adding unnecessary technology and making the process worse. Imagine if each grocery store self-checkout required a human staff member to scan items, re-arrange things, and confirm checkout.

mablopoule 1y ago
> Maybe we're just calling all forms of automation and computer vision "AI" these days because it's sexy. Funny thing is, at first it was the other way around! 'Computer Vision' has always been a sub-field of AI, but the term was more widely used by academics during a previous AI winter as a way to avoid the tainted 'AI' label.
baggachipz 1y ago
> Imagine if each grocery store self-checkout required a human staff member to scan items, re-arrange things, and confirm checkout. They always have at least one person going between each self-checkout kiosk helping confused and upset customers. Meanwhile, 1 traditional checkout lane is open with a long line. Self checkout is great to use if you know how and have a handful of items, but it sucks with a full cart due to space constraints and the bag scales being finicky.
- reaperducer 1y ago
  Meanwhile, 1 traditional checkout lane is open I wish. The Wal-Mart near me no longer has staffed checkouts between 6am (opening time) and 8am. That's two hours in the morning of robots-only. I don't know about in the evenings. traditional checkout lane is open with a long line. I use the traditional check-out line whenever I can because where I live, the self-check line is almost always longer. It's not hard to keep an eye on the last person in the self-check line when you go to a real register to see which is faster. I'm not a fireman on call. I'm OK spending an extra 45 seconds in a traditional line to keep a low-skilled human being employed.

AlexandrB 1y ago

Isn't this the purpose of a lot of AI? To provide "good enough" alternatives to human labor. Why would anyone expect AI to make things better rather than cheaper or more profitable?

ThrowawayTestr 1y ago
Except there's still a human that has to confirm everything the computer did
esafak 1y ago
Computers can do some things better than humans; recognize and generate speech, when accents are involved at either end.
- nicbou 1y ago
  And nag and upsell well past the point humans feel comfortable doing.
rsynnott 1y ago
In this particular case, it seems mostly use cases that were solved some decades ago with _barcodes_, so it's not even cheaper or more profitable. There's already an alternative to human labour which works for better for this sort of application.

Someone1234 1y ago

I was recently at an events center, that has replaced all of their vending machines with machines that require me to install an app(!) to purchase a product. Literally, didn't take cash or credit - just via app. Per the marketing on the side, this is meant to be for my benefit in order to earn "points" and get offered "deals." I don't think I have to tell you that I did NOT install the app, and just walked further to buy one from a vendor. There is a massive arrogance problem within tech. Everyone thinks their product should be the center of everyone else's universe. The best products are invisible/get out of the way.

frogperson 1y ago
I agree with the arrogance. I am just so tired of poor software consuming hours to troubleshoot. technology was supposed to makes things easier, not turn every interaction into a chore or a debug session.
clan 1y ago
The arrogance is not that they think they're the center of the universe. It is much worse. I hear a lot of talk about how much pain you can inflict on people and how to extract the most value from that. Last I heard it was from a couple of media types discussing radio commercials. No care for their actual product for the end user - but an evaluation of how much people would suffer before tuning away. Actual professional pride and care is sooo last century.
- svachalek 1y ago
  Sadly. It's like how modern bridges can be built with less materials than old ones, now that we can calculate precisely the minimum we use pretty much exactly that. Things have gone exactly the same way with consumers over the past 30 years, businesses have learned exactly how badly they can treat you and step up to that line at every opportunity.
  - throwaway48476 1y ago
    Bridges are public goods. If the public spends less on material they can afford to build additional bridges and create value for more people.

lykahb 1y ago

Once you enter the stadium or a concert, you become a part of the captive market. There exists an incentive to limit your choices and extract as much value out of you as possible. The limit to that is mostly defined by the organizer decency and the amount of pushback. The experience is usually better at the smaller venues that aren't a part of strong fandom and more sensitive to the customer sentiment: indie cinemas, comedy clubs, etc.

CGMthrowaway 1y ago

By "Everything" I guess the author means "Concessions checkout"? I was looking for another example and never got one.

heyheyhey 1y ago
And that wasn't really AI, it was more like automation. Was hoping the article would be about stadium experiences like the announcer, jumbotron, etc. all being AI-driven. When I judge the experience of gameday, concessions are like third on that list. Disappointed with the content.
- HelloUsername 1y ago
  At least they added a photo of him and his pall Greg

bgirard 1y ago

> The person in front of me bought two items and saw she got charged for three. Since there were no paper receipts, she took a photo of the machine before going to the guest services to complain. I missed ten minutes of the game getting water. I wish payment processors / consumer protection would have a significant penalty for sloppy overcharges. I've had to deal with sloppy overcharges like this (one for over $1,000) and you lose a lot of time and the outcome is just 'oppsies, my bad'. There's very little repercussion for sloppy overcharges so it's easy for them to perpetuate.

Doxin 1y ago
Back in the olden times overcharging like that would be dealt with the same way as theft would. I'm not entirely convinced it's the wrong way to go about things. It's how the concept of a bakers dozen came to be. Better give everyone 13 in a dozen, just in case you ever miscount.

caminanteblanco 1y ago

Circle K has had these rolled out in Arizona for several years now, and honestly they're pretty flawless there. I've used the self checkout hundreds of times at this point, and Circle K has a pretty huge selection of products. When it's 2AM and you're waiting to buy a monster, it's nice not having to wait 45 seconds for the one clerk to finish that they're doing so they can ring you up. I'm not sure why the performance at this stadium was so vastly different.

glkindlmann 1y ago
Circle K in Chicago has them too. Employees are constantly needed to monitor things at checkout. If items aren't clearly separated (which is easy to do out of haste, not malice) it will under-count. The same cashiers at the same store were much faster at checkout than these machines are.

twalla 1y ago

A small price to pay to make the Not Hotdog app from Silicon Valley a reality.

jrochkind1 1y ago

Maybe they can only sell 30% as much stuff because it's so slow, but it sounds like they probably laid off at least 50% of their previous staff -- so everybody wins!

foxfired 1y ago

This isn't just enshittification, it's hostile software [0]. When you dominate a space, for example being the only vendor in the stadium, you can impose whatever you want on customers. There are no options, you can tell customers to select between yes or ok, this is the only way to pay for hotdogs now. As an LA resident, the rate at which we implement these broken and invasive services is alarming. [0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/hostile-not-enshittification https://idiallo.com/blog/hostile-not-enshittification

ivanjermakov 1y ago

One can replace "stadium" in the title with nearly any other product/service and still make sense.

scrps 1y ago

Tangential: Can someone more in the know answer this for me? What happened to RFID for things like this? I know it is used elsewhere but it seems like that would be a much faster and lighter weight solution for self-checkout.

fortran77 1y ago
RFID still costs several cents per sensor. At suparmarkets, this is a non-starter, but for some retailers, like Uniqlo, it's acceptable. You would think that overpriced concessions would be a great place for this because it can be very fast and accurate but I think this would require the food handler to make sure to use a different tray or container for each differently priced item, etc. And there may just be enough items that would be hard to affix an RFID to (metal can, etc) that would make it unfeasible.
- scrps 1y ago
  I kinda figured it would come down to RFID still probably being pricey, used it a while back when it was newish and pricey but haven't looked in years. That is a good point with the pricing making it cost effective but they probably look at it from some maximum profit POV. Honestly something like an Automat diner style system would help with the latency and queuing and way easier to implement technically.

pllbnk 1y ago

People overestimate computer vision and other AI capabilities. A few days ago I had a relative struggle to open some fancy cosmetics box. Another relative decided it would be helpful to photograph it and send it to ChatGPT for help. Coincidentally, not that long ago I also heard someone telling about the recent AI advances on the radio and talking how they send photos of things and ChatGPT helps them figure out how to use them instead of reading those boring manuals. I guess that's what marketing does to the people. But also it doesn't take many failures and broken expectations until those people decide that it's not worth the effort and stop using these tools entirely.

x______________ 1y ago

Author went on to claim smaller portions as the closing line of the article but only pictured 2024 meals and 2025 machines and lineups for said machines. An opportunity to post facts was lost, and for now until it won't, remains anecdotal.

conartist6 1y ago

Another little piece of the bubble story: outright lies about gains made

cainxinth 1y ago

I was at a ballpark and they had self checkout everywhere, except they were usually manned by staff. So I picked out my item, put it on the scanner, and then the staff member would select the checkout button on the screen. Literally that was all they did. And then the screen asked for a tip and the person stared at me expectantly like they had just carried my luggage up two flights of stairs.

drweevil 1y ago

>On the bright side, the billionaire stadium owners probably got to reduce their staff in the process while maybe increasing profits. This is the root problem. When you take people out of the economy, what's the point of having such an economy? Such an economy cannot last indefinitely and will eventually be replaced by one that will.

chuckadams 1y ago

The owners see you as just another rube to be fleeced, and well, they have no reason to change their behavior. You still bought the tickets and you still bought their concessions. The team is not a gang of hometown heroes offering a slice of Americana, they are a faceless corporation whose sole purpose is maximum revenue extraction. The only thing that will ever send them a clear message is voting with your feet.