Amazon is phasing out its checkout-less grocery stores with “Just Walk Out” technology, first reported by The Information Tuesday. The company’s senior vice president of grocery stores says they’re moving away from Just Walk Out, which relied on cameras and sensors to track what people were leaving the store with.

    • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      6
      ·
      8 months ago

      You linked to the original Mechanical Turk.

      Yup, that’s intended. The original Mechanical Turk was a con, just like Amazon’s “just walk out” service.

      • body_by_make@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        8
        ·
        edit-2
        8 months ago

        The Amazon’s Mechanical Turk was never a con. It’s been known for a very long time that it’s a way to outsource human tasks on a large scale cheaply. Like, a very long time. I think I first heard about it like 12 years ago?

        Unless you mean the way it exploits poor countries for cheap labor. I wouldn’t call that a con, but it is fucked.

        • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          26
          arrow-down
          3
          ·
          edit-2
          8 months ago

          By “original Mechanical Turk”, I am clearly referring to the chess player inside a box. It was a con because the system was presented as an automaton, when it is simply human labour.

          And I am calling Amazon’s “just walk out” service also a con because it was touted as automatic, even if also being mostly human labour.

          I am not calling “Amazon’s Mechanical Turk” a con. It is exploitative, as you said, but it is not a con. People know that it is human labour, and Amazon does not try to hide it.

          Is this clear now?

          • linearchaos@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            8 months ago

            The automated walk out service wasn’t a con. It was a shortsighted, honestly s***** idea, that was never able to be brought past the human oversight stage.

            Con requires intent. I’m absolutely certain they fully intended to make it a completely humanless system. They failed and drug their feet trying and now they’ve shut it down.

            If it’s a con, what’s their long game? What are they gain from having humans watch the store remotely? Is it tech just so neat that they’ll have a lot more shoppers than a regular store? Do they save so much in on-site staff that it’s cheaper to run than a conventional store? There’s no advantage here that would make it a worthwhile con. It’s a failed moonshot that they ended up manning with people to see if they could make it work that’s all.

            • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              8 months ago

              No, what makes it a con is that it was purported to be automated, but the automation was a failure and had to be done by humans almost 3/4 of the time.

            • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              arrow-down
              1
              ·
              8 months ago

              Just because it was a failure doesn’t make it a con.

              On its own a failure is not a con. The con is to publicly pretend that the failure is not there.

              And Amazon is clearly doing the later - read the quote from the spokesperson in the article, it boils down to “The system is automated! «Chrust us lol». The human labour there is just, for, uh… improvements!” Yeah, sure, and the 1770 machine is totally automated too, the chess player there is just the maintenance worker /s

          • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            4
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            And I am calling Amazon’s “just walk out” service also a con because it was touted as automatic, even if also being mostly human labour.

            That’s not what a con is. A con is a deliberate scam. Amazon’s automated checkout simply didn’t function as effectively as intended. They presumably lost money on the venture because the automation was unreliable. Nothing about this situation was a deliberate attempt to pay over 1,000 employees to check an automated system’s work.

            The Mechanical Turk is an interesting story and I’m glad you linked it, but it’s not all that similar.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          The Amazon’s Mechanical Turk was never a con.

          I wouldn’t go that far. They heavily implied that you could make a decent living doing it, not 20 cents per survey or whatever it is.