"so many tech demos end up hiding an ugly truth deep down"
April 17, 2024 1:24 PM Subscribe
Amazon Go, "a new kind of corner store," that company's futuristic storefront where you installed an app on your phone, and could shop for things just by picking them up off of shelves and walking out the door with them, is being shut down. Some random internet person called "Matt Haughey" described his experience with the store, and how it wasn't nearly as magical as it seemed: as it turned out it was a kind of technological sleight-of-hand, instead of using RFIDs and weight-sensing shelves and other techno-devices, they just had a whole lot of people watching cameras. Another random person on Mastodon points out the whole-lot-of-people part was probably a bunch of subsistence contractors in other countries. A third random person notes, even doing that, the store concept couldn't be made to work. Meanwhile the important gigantic hovering electronic head of Jeff Bezos floats above us all, unmoving but watching, silently.
Giant floating head of Jeff Bezos, previously.
posted by mbrubeck at 1:35 PM on April 17 [10 favorites]
posted by mbrubeck at 1:35 PM on April 17 [10 favorites]
omg...it's so weird. like amazon destroyed brick-n-mortar shopping (pre-covid) and first it was just books and then it was everything and now they want to have you go to a place and get it like we used to. confuse.
that SNL is great :\
posted by supermedusa at 1:48 PM on April 17 [3 favorites]
that SNL is great :\
posted by supermedusa at 1:48 PM on April 17 [3 favorites]
Amazon Go: now *everybody* gets to experience being followed around a store by a suspicious hourly employee with a clipboard, except you don't see them, and they get paid pennies an hour
Progress! Future technology! Move fast and break things!
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 1:52 PM on April 17 [21 favorites]
Progress! Future technology! Move fast and break things!
posted by Two unicycles and some duct tape at 1:52 PM on April 17 [21 favorites]
Kiwibots food delivery robots were also just remote controlled by low wage workers. Also, all the people tagging and training AI in Kenya and the Philippines (who also get PTSD from doing it), weirdly left out of many conversations about the topic. Their jobs are basically Winston Smith's job but for capitalism. The AI "George Carlin" (previously) turns out was not actually written by AI. There are also people whose jobs are just identifying and tagging google maps images like an Eternal Captcha job. Idk who was bagging and pre-pressing the Juicero bags but there's stuff like that too.
Lots of tech "innovations" is just outsourcing and imperialism, because of course it is. Like, if you REALLY want to know why so much money goes into it and why we're being given stuff nobody asked for--it's this.
And fyi, this is also why I haaaate people who like to promote these gadgets as a step towards fully automated communism or accessibility conveniences or whatever because IT ISN'T unless you are a rich north american and your idea of "no more human labor" is actually "no more human labor and also foreigners don't count as humans; they are robots"
posted by picklenickle at 1:57 PM on April 17 [54 favorites]
Lots of tech "innovations" is just outsourcing and imperialism, because of course it is. Like, if you REALLY want to know why so much money goes into it and why we're being given stuff nobody asked for--it's this.
And fyi, this is also why I haaaate people who like to promote these gadgets as a step towards fully automated communism or accessibility conveniences or whatever because IT ISN'T unless you are a rich north american and your idea of "no more human labor" is actually "no more human labor and also foreigners don't count as humans; they are robots"
posted by picklenickle at 1:57 PM on April 17 [54 favorites]
Wait'll they find out AWS is just an enormous warehouse full of people with calculators.
posted by mittens at 2:00 PM on April 17 [32 favorites]
posted by mittens at 2:00 PM on April 17 [32 favorites]
Amazon insists Just Walk Out isn’t secretly run by workers watching you shop. Amazon is pushing back on claims that its cashierless Just Walk Out technology is run by humans in India — not AI. In a blog post on Wednesday, the e-commerce giant calls these reports “untrue” and says that a machine learning model powers its system.
posted by 1970s Antihero at 2:09 PM on April 17 [2 favorites]
posted by 1970s Antihero at 2:09 PM on April 17 [2 favorites]
Uh huh. I can't even get my local supermarket to believe there's nothing in the bagging area.
posted by Melismata at 2:14 PM on April 17 [52 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 2:14 PM on April 17 [52 favorites]
>warehouse full of people with calculators
and pee bottles
posted by torokunai at 2:18 PM on April 17 [9 favorites]
and pee bottles
posted by torokunai at 2:18 PM on April 17 [9 favorites]
I can't even get my local supermarket to believe there's nothing in the bagging area.
And don't get me started on how the self-checkout machine starts bleating at me to remove my items from the bagging area, before the receipt finishes printing out and while I'm frantically throwing stuff into my reusable bags (which, by the way, the bagging area hates so I can't pre-stage them and just move the items straight from the scanner into the bags).
But I digress...
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:19 PM on April 17 [13 favorites]
And don't get me started on how the self-checkout machine starts bleating at me to remove my items from the bagging area, before the receipt finishes printing out and while I'm frantically throwing stuff into my reusable bags (which, by the way, the bagging area hates so I can't pre-stage them and just move the items straight from the scanner into the bags).
But I digress...
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:19 PM on April 17 [13 favorites]
(For you newbies: Matt Haughey is the founder of Metafilter.)
posted by Melismata at 2:25 PM on April 17 [39 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 2:25 PM on April 17 [39 favorites]
fully automated communism
As far as I can tell AI bros lean way more fash-adjacent libertarian.
posted by Artw at 2:25 PM on April 17 [15 favorites]
As far as I can tell AI bros lean way more fash-adjacent libertarian.
posted by Artw at 2:25 PM on April 17 [15 favorites]
We have an Amazon Fresh near me. I've shopped there twice and never again because - the prices weren't really any better; the whole store just felt claustrophobic and dark in a very offputting way.
Should bring back the OSH that was there, but no... Lowe's had to kill that brand after buying it.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:29 PM on April 17 [1 favorite]
Should bring back the OSH that was there, but no... Lowe's had to kill that brand after buying it.
posted by drewbage1847 at 2:29 PM on April 17 [1 favorite]
And then you have the fact that you need to use Amazon's app for it to work properly.
I ran out to one of these when I was working on a play in January - I needed a quick sandwich during a break in a tech rehearsal and it was a block from the theater. It took me a good minute and a half just to get through the turnstile at the entrance because I did not have the Amazon app downloaded, and moreover refused to download it. Finally an employee offered me two options - I could swipe a credit card, or I could order from the in-house hot food area they had in the lobby as well. I think I used both options a couple more times over the next few days, but ultimately it seemed way too much trouble for a reheated egg sandwich.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:34 PM on April 17 [3 favorites]
I ran out to one of these when I was working on a play in January - I needed a quick sandwich during a break in a tech rehearsal and it was a block from the theater. It took me a good minute and a half just to get through the turnstile at the entrance because I did not have the Amazon app downloaded, and moreover refused to download it. Finally an employee offered me two options - I could swipe a credit card, or I could order from the in-house hot food area they had in the lobby as well. I think I used both options a couple more times over the next few days, but ultimately it seemed way too much trouble for a reheated egg sandwich.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:34 PM on April 17 [3 favorites]
Mechanical Turk meets Mechanical Clerk.
posted by effluvia at 2:45 PM on April 17 [17 favorites]
posted by effluvia at 2:45 PM on April 17 [17 favorites]
as it turned out it was a kind of technological sleight-of-hand, instead of using RFIDs and weight-sensing shelves and other techno-devices, they just had a whole lot of people watching cameras.
Both things can be true, and it could still have failed for any number of reasons, including they just got tired of throwing money at it. I have no reason to doubt there were actually weight-sensing shelves and other non-human, technological measures, in addition to low-paid, offshore humans doing camera oversight. But camera coverage cannot (without spending way more than even Amazon is probably willing to) be 100%, so unless they were willing to accept a much higher shrink rate than normal stores, there's no way they were relying completely on cameras.
Bloomberg is the same outfit that reported the Super Micro "hack" that literally everybody involved in, including the supposedly hacked companies & the US federal government, denied ever happened, which they have never retracted or walked back even a little; and they literally update their articles after the fact to point out how their article moved company stock prices (read: motivation to make mountains out of molehills). So pardon me if I don't believe that everything they say is 100% accurate or not sensationalized.
posted by tubedogg at 2:47 PM on April 17 [7 favorites]
Both things can be true, and it could still have failed for any number of reasons, including they just got tired of throwing money at it. I have no reason to doubt there were actually weight-sensing shelves and other non-human, technological measures, in addition to low-paid, offshore humans doing camera oversight. But camera coverage cannot (without spending way more than even Amazon is probably willing to) be 100%, so unless they were willing to accept a much higher shrink rate than normal stores, there's no way they were relying completely on cameras.
Bloomberg is the same outfit that reported the Super Micro "hack" that literally everybody involved in, including the supposedly hacked companies & the US federal government, denied ever happened, which they have never retracted or walked back even a little; and they literally update their articles after the fact to point out how their article moved company stock prices (read: motivation to make mountains out of molehills). So pardon me if I don't believe that everything they say is 100% accurate or not sensationalized.
posted by tubedogg at 2:47 PM on April 17 [7 favorites]
Lowe's had to kill that brand after buying it.
Lowes is forever dead to me for doing that.
...now, mind, I did get some wicked deals on K&S precision metals as a consequence, but while that was lovely it doesn't remove my now-permanent hatred for Lowes. The revived pseudo-OSH is better than Lowes, but somehow you still feel like you're necro-shopping. That which is not living can never die, and all.
(Also, Bloomberg is a cheap rag on par with Fucking Forbes. Believe anything they write at your peril.)
posted by aramaic at 3:02 PM on April 17 [1 favorite]
Lowes is forever dead to me for doing that.
...now, mind, I did get some wicked deals on K&S precision metals as a consequence, but while that was lovely it doesn't remove my now-permanent hatred for Lowes. The revived pseudo-OSH is better than Lowes, but somehow you still feel like you're necro-shopping. That which is not living can never die, and all.
(Also, Bloomberg is a cheap rag on par with Fucking Forbes. Believe anything they write at your peril.)
posted by aramaic at 3:02 PM on April 17 [1 favorite]
the important gigantic hovering electronic head of Jeff Bezos floats above us all
When it comes to gigantic floating heads of Jeff Bezos, I will always prefer this one.
posted by senor biggles at 3:45 PM on April 17 [4 favorites]
When it comes to gigantic floating heads of Jeff Bezos, I will always prefer this one.
posted by senor biggles at 3:45 PM on April 17 [4 favorites]
I've been to the amazon store with the smart cart. It was fun. It's slightly out of my way so I've never been again. But I'd do an outing w friend there again. Like I said, it was fun.
I also think I used Amazon go tech at BWI recently. I got some nuts and felt bad because I felt like I was stealing. The nuts were yummy, though.
posted by atomicstone at 3:56 PM on April 17
I also think I used Amazon go tech at BWI recently. I got some nuts and felt bad because I felt like I was stealing. The nuts were yummy, though.
posted by atomicstone at 3:56 PM on April 17
I am disappointed that mathowie's report did not include the good news that, whatever else one can say about Amazon Go, at least one never had to worry about how to get cats onto the scanners, or why.
posted by It is regrettable that at 4:08 PM on April 17 [20 favorites]
posted by It is regrettable that at 4:08 PM on April 17 [20 favorites]
The AI "George Carlin" (previously) turns out was not actually written by AI.
The “AI George Carlin” was a couple of comedians doing a high concept bit with voice synthesis tools. I get his heirs being upset about the stunt but the conceit was always pretty clear if you looked it up.
posted by atoxyl at 4:27 PM on April 17 [2 favorites]
The “AI George Carlin” was a couple of comedians doing a high concept bit with voice synthesis tools. I get his heirs being upset about the stunt but the conceit was always pretty clear if you looked it up.
posted by atoxyl at 4:27 PM on April 17 [2 favorites]
So that makes two anecdotes in the above rant that AI is actually just foreign labor not true?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:57 PM on April 17
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:57 PM on April 17
One of my local grocery stores offers the use of hand scanners; you can scan your groceries as you pick them up and pack them directly into your own bags in your shopping cart. Then you drop off the scanner and swipe your credit card on the way out. There's no standing on a line of any sort.
This system isn't some sort of shopping Utopia, of course. And it exists mostly to eliminate entry-level jobs, of course.
But it seems so low-tech, so incremental, so simple and obvious by comparison with the "just walk out" system, that I'm flabbergasted anyone tried to implement that at all.
posted by Western Infidels at 4:59 PM on April 17 [5 favorites]
This system isn't some sort of shopping Utopia, of course. And it exists mostly to eliminate entry-level jobs, of course.
But it seems so low-tech, so incremental, so simple and obvious by comparison with the "just walk out" system, that I'm flabbergasted anyone tried to implement that at all.
posted by Western Infidels at 4:59 PM on April 17 [5 favorites]
> In a blog post on Wednesday, the e-commerce giant calls these reports “untrue” and says that a machine learning model powers its system.
“We’re not paying human beings any money to do this, and we resent the implication!”
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:00 PM on April 17 [10 favorites]
“We’re not paying human beings any money to do this, and we resent the implication!”
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:00 PM on April 17 [10 favorites]
Amazon insists Just Walk Out isn’t secretly run by workers watching you shop. Amazon is pushing back on claims that its cashierless Just Walk Out technology is run by humans in India — not AI. In a blog post on Wednesday, the e-commerce giant calls these reports “untrue” and says that a machine learning model powers its system.
AI. Actually Indians.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:07 PM on April 17 [34 favorites]
AI. Actually Indians.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:07 PM on April 17 [34 favorites]
Mechanical Turk meets Mechanical Clerk
As much as I was shocked to learn this was a Mechanical Turk operation, I was really floored when I learned they were shutting down the one in the heart of Capitol Hill (Seattle).
That neighborhood was pretty much the perfect nexus for a convenience store that sells an easy mix of quasi-groceries, ready-made food, and alcohol to the 20-something crowd that now makes CH a Disneyland of luxury consumption. Maybe H-Mart will pick up the slack.
Amazon ruined Whole Foods, as well. I can't go there without getting pushed out the way by an Instacarter. I'd be just waiting for that option to shut down near me, except that I now avoid it unless I need Alexandre farm eggs.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:20 PM on April 17 [4 favorites]
As much as I was shocked to learn this was a Mechanical Turk operation, I was really floored when I learned they were shutting down the one in the heart of Capitol Hill (Seattle).
That neighborhood was pretty much the perfect nexus for a convenience store that sells an easy mix of quasi-groceries, ready-made food, and alcohol to the 20-something crowd that now makes CH a Disneyland of luxury consumption. Maybe H-Mart will pick up the slack.
Amazon ruined Whole Foods, as well. I can't go there without getting pushed out the way by an Instacarter. I'd be just waiting for that option to shut down near me, except that I now avoid it unless I need Alexandre farm eggs.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 5:20 PM on April 17 [4 favorites]
I once wrote a story about someone in a third world call center type place, whose job was deciding whether a live video feed of a face was the same face as the file photo. So he spent all day looking at images of affluent first world types looking into cameras to get into their front doors, to buy things etc. (They were bouncing live video around the world to remote call centers because I'd read that humans were slightly faster and more accurate at facial recognition than software; not sure if that's still the case).
He starts kind of living vicariously through the fleeting glimpses of their world he gets behind them as they're authenticating themselves. And then someone who clearly is not the person they're supposed to be starts steering themselves to his station over and over (usually you get sent to a random person and it's unheard of for a checker to get the same user again) and starts reaching out to make a connection for social engineering purposes.
I didn't really have a good ending for it, unfortunately, beyond he finally lets the criminal into the account they were trying to log into. So it never sold. But apparently I was pretty damn prescient.
posted by Naberius at 6:18 PM on April 17 [13 favorites]
He starts kind of living vicariously through the fleeting glimpses of their world he gets behind them as they're authenticating themselves. And then someone who clearly is not the person they're supposed to be starts steering themselves to his station over and over (usually you get sent to a random person and it's unheard of for a checker to get the same user again) and starts reaching out to make a connection for social engineering purposes.
I didn't really have a good ending for it, unfortunately, beyond he finally lets the criminal into the account they were trying to log into. So it never sold. But apparently I was pretty damn prescient.
posted by Naberius at 6:18 PM on April 17 [13 favorites]
ZIPPITY SHOP
posted by clavdivs at 6:44 PM on April 17 [5 favorites]
posted by clavdivs at 6:44 PM on April 17 [5 favorites]
Wait til they reveal that ChatGPT is really just a bunch of monkeys with a typewriter.
posted by briank at 7:01 PM on April 17 [5 favorites]
posted by briank at 7:01 PM on April 17 [5 favorites]
Wait'll they find out AWS is just an enormous warehouse full of people with calculators.
I mean, this isn't wrong as a description of AWS.
Bloomberg is the same outfit that reported the Super Micro "hack"
I mean, Bloomberg sucks, but the Supermicro story was never believable from jumpstreet. The Intel IME and AMD PSP are more credible threats for compromise and actually exist. Whereas, a story that Amazon used shady labor practices and oversold the capabilities of a product—that was then never rolled out beyond the "uh, I guess we'll try this?" stage—that's a pretty believable story on the face of it. Corporate denials or no.
posted by majick at 7:27 PM on April 17 [3 favorites]
I mean, this isn't wrong as a description of AWS.
Bloomberg is the same outfit that reported the Super Micro "hack"
I mean, Bloomberg sucks, but the Supermicro story was never believable from jumpstreet. The Intel IME and AMD PSP are more credible threats for compromise and actually exist. Whereas, a story that Amazon used shady labor practices and oversold the capabilities of a product—that was then never rolled out beyond the "uh, I guess we'll try this?" stage—that's a pretty believable story on the face of it. Corporate denials or no.
posted by majick at 7:27 PM on April 17 [3 favorites]
So that makes two anecdotes in the above rant that AI is actually just foreign labor not true?
Is this directed at my comment immediately above it, and if so, why?
posted by atoxyl at 7:30 PM on April 17
Is this directed at my comment immediately above it, and if so, why?
posted by atoxyl at 7:30 PM on April 17
I assume it was directed at aramaic's comment upthread about not believing everything Bloomberg prints.
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:55 PM on April 17
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:55 PM on April 17
I had to use this sort of thing to get beers at a recent Matildas match (sorry Uzbekistan, you showed heart and the score was cruel).
My sister was all "You do data stuff, how does that work"?
I said "Cameras and object tagging... Maybe it's fancy CV analysis, but it's probably some bloke in India in the end".
So yay... once more my low expectations of the world are borne out. w00t.
posted by pompomtom at 8:26 PM on April 17 [9 favorites]
My sister was all "You do data stuff, how does that work"?
I said "Cameras and object tagging... Maybe it's fancy CV analysis, but it's probably some bloke in India in the end".
So yay... once more my low expectations of the world are borne out. w00t.
posted by pompomtom at 8:26 PM on April 17 [9 favorites]
I always assumed AmazonGo was some sort of prototype or proof of concept - the real money would be to sell it as a form of POS to other retailers. Now I assume the market for this technology never really materialized, or more likely, the costs involved in making this work are still above just hiring lowly paid humans.
posted by elwoodwiles at 8:54 PM on April 17 [3 favorites]
posted by elwoodwiles at 8:54 PM on April 17 [3 favorites]
Maybe Amazon was worried about the cost of SEC violations, since AI is not being used to operate the business.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:59 PM on April 17
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:59 PM on April 17
Whereas, a story that Amazon used shady labor practices and oversold the capabilities of a product—that was then never rolled out beyond the "uh, I guess we'll try this?" stage—that's a pretty believable story on the face of it.
My point was, believable or not, the story's source makes it automatically suspect.
And regardless of the source, to take the view that Amazon is flat-out lying and there was nothing going on here except people watching on cameras is to say that one of the largest companies in the world couldn't even get computer image recognition, weight-sensing, and other inventory management measures operational even a little bit. Which is absurd, because all of those technologies are in use in the real world right now.
And, for the record, that isn't even what Bloomberg is claiming--and it's an opinion piece to boot. No, I didn't read the article before; I was keying off of what was written in the post here, which does say flatly that it was all camera-watching people. That isn't supported by the source article.
posted by tubedogg at 11:22 PM on April 17 [2 favorites]
My point was, believable or not, the story's source makes it automatically suspect.
And regardless of the source, to take the view that Amazon is flat-out lying and there was nothing going on here except people watching on cameras is to say that one of the largest companies in the world couldn't even get computer image recognition, weight-sensing, and other inventory management measures operational even a little bit. Which is absurd, because all of those technologies are in use in the real world right now.
And, for the record, that isn't even what Bloomberg is claiming--and it's an opinion piece to boot. No, I didn't read the article before; I was keying off of what was written in the post here, which does say flatly that it was all camera-watching people. That isn't supported by the source article.
posted by tubedogg at 11:22 PM on April 17 [2 favorites]
In case anyone hasn't heard this before:
The "sales pitch" for machine learning (the suite of tools that back the hype storm that is referred to by the phrase "artificial intelligence") is "give me a process and a way to collect data about it, and an army of low-paid laborers to annotate that data, and I will give you a model that performs correctly a certain percent of the time".
I'm sure Amazon had the system working some percent of the time. The job of the army of people would be: (1) increase available training data; (2) help Amazon measure how frequently their system was wrong; (3) fix mistakes some fraction of the time.
So what must have happened was they decided they couldn't get their error rate as low as they wanted. This is normal in projects that use machine learning. If leadership is doing their job correctly, hopefully they can judge the following: (1) is the task tractable given current technologies (2) what error rate is acceptable given our goals (3) is the added value of automating the process more than the cost of doing it by hand.
Fun story about Amazon: They invested heavily in the Amazon Echo (largely based on a 'vision' document) about a year before one of the largest breakthroughs in the field happened at UToronto.
At the time, doing speech recognition from across the room was referred to as "the cocktail party problem" and was widely considered one of the hardest open problems in computer science.
IOW, they invested heavily in a problem that no one had a plan to solve, but got really lucky. Google took almost a year to replicate the feat, because Amazon had started it at a time when any rational person would have said not to. (I do not consider this evidence that Amazon was being smart, just lucky.)
posted by constraint at 11:55 PM on April 17 [13 favorites]
The "sales pitch" for machine learning (the suite of tools that back the hype storm that is referred to by the phrase "artificial intelligence") is "give me a process and a way to collect data about it, and an army of low-paid laborers to annotate that data, and I will give you a model that performs correctly a certain percent of the time".
I'm sure Amazon had the system working some percent of the time. The job of the army of people would be: (1) increase available training data; (2) help Amazon measure how frequently their system was wrong; (3) fix mistakes some fraction of the time.
So what must have happened was they decided they couldn't get their error rate as low as they wanted. This is normal in projects that use machine learning. If leadership is doing their job correctly, hopefully they can judge the following: (1) is the task tractable given current technologies (2) what error rate is acceptable given our goals (3) is the added value of automating the process more than the cost of doing it by hand.
Fun story about Amazon: They invested heavily in the Amazon Echo (largely based on a 'vision' document) about a year before one of the largest breakthroughs in the field happened at UToronto.
At the time, doing speech recognition from across the room was referred to as "the cocktail party problem" and was widely considered one of the hardest open problems in computer science.
IOW, they invested heavily in a problem that no one had a plan to solve, but got really lucky. Google took almost a year to replicate the feat, because Amazon had started it at a time when any rational person would have said not to. (I do not consider this evidence that Amazon was being smart, just lucky.)
posted by constraint at 11:55 PM on April 17 [13 favorites]
It's secondary reporting on another outlet's story, but yes that seems to be the case according to this Ars Technica article. Some relevant excerpts below (emphasis mine):
A May 2023 report from The Information revealed the myriad tech problems Amazon was still having with the idea six years after the initial announcement. The report said that "Amazon had more than 1,000 people in India working on Just Walk Out as of mid-2022 whose jobs included manually reviewing transactions and labeling images from videos to train Just Walk Out’s machine learning model."
Training is part of any AI project, but it sounds like Amazon wasn't making much progress, even after years of working on the project. "As of mid-2022, Just Walk Out required about 700 human reviews per 1,000 sales, far above an internal target of reducing the number of reviews to between 20 and 50 per 1,000 sales," the report said.
The report said Amazon's team "repeatedly missed goals" to cut down on human reviews, and "the reliance on backup humans explains in part why it can take hours for customers to receive receipts."
According to The Information report, the Just Walk Out tech was deployed in 20 Amazon Go stores, 40 Amazon Fresh grocery stores, and two Whole Foods stores. It had even gotten some third-party outlets on board, including "30 stores operated by other companies in US sports stadiums, 12 airports, and one university in Arlington, Virginia," the report said.
posted by coolname at 1:42 AM on April 18 [7 favorites]
A May 2023 report from The Information revealed the myriad tech problems Amazon was still having with the idea six years after the initial announcement. The report said that "Amazon had more than 1,000 people in India working on Just Walk Out as of mid-2022 whose jobs included manually reviewing transactions and labeling images from videos to train Just Walk Out’s machine learning model."
Training is part of any AI project, but it sounds like Amazon wasn't making much progress, even after years of working on the project. "As of mid-2022, Just Walk Out required about 700 human reviews per 1,000 sales, far above an internal target of reducing the number of reviews to between 20 and 50 per 1,000 sales," the report said.
The report said Amazon's team "repeatedly missed goals" to cut down on human reviews, and "the reliance on backup humans explains in part why it can take hours for customers to receive receipts."
According to The Information report, the Just Walk Out tech was deployed in 20 Amazon Go stores, 40 Amazon Fresh grocery stores, and two Whole Foods stores. It had even gotten some third-party outlets on board, including "30 stores operated by other companies in US sports stadiums, 12 airports, and one university in Arlington, Virginia," the report said.
posted by coolname at 1:42 AM on April 18 [7 favorites]
I'm actually somewhat surprised that, unlike pharmacy chains, they aren't blaming the store closures on (fake claims of) shoplifting.
I guess blaming it on shrinkage would be too close to admitting their thing failed, rather than never really existed.
posted by Dashy at 4:16 AM on April 18 [5 favorites]
I guess blaming it on shrinkage would be too close to admitting their thing failed, rather than never really existed.
posted by Dashy at 4:16 AM on April 18 [5 favorites]
Does it matter if AI Doesn't Work? from Defector
"The most general description of AI as it exists now—which is as an array of expensive, resource-intensive, environmentally disastrous products which have no apparent socially useful use cases, no discernible road to profitability, and do not work—is something like the apotheosis of Silicon Valley vacancy. That the most highly touted public manifestation of this technology is a predictive text model that runs more or less entirely on theft, generates language that is both grandiose and anodyne and defined by its many weird lies, and also seems to be getting dumber is, among other things, kind of "on the nose." But it is all like this, hack bits that barely play as satire; billions of dollars and millions of hours of labor have created a computer that can't do math. These technologies both reflect the bankruptcy of the culture that produced them and perform it."
It doesn't matter if it works when you simply don't care about anyone or anything other than your own self regard. Working is for other people.
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 5:28 AM on April 18 [10 favorites]
"The most general description of AI as it exists now—which is as an array of expensive, resource-intensive, environmentally disastrous products which have no apparent socially useful use cases, no discernible road to profitability, and do not work—is something like the apotheosis of Silicon Valley vacancy. That the most highly touted public manifestation of this technology is a predictive text model that runs more or less entirely on theft, generates language that is both grandiose and anodyne and defined by its many weird lies, and also seems to be getting dumber is, among other things, kind of "on the nose." But it is all like this, hack bits that barely play as satire; billions of dollars and millions of hours of labor have created a computer that can't do math. These technologies both reflect the bankruptcy of the culture that produced them and perform it."
It doesn't matter if it works when you simply don't care about anyone or anything other than your own self regard. Working is for other people.
posted by onebuttonmonkey at 5:28 AM on April 18 [10 favorites]
I lurk on the Whole Foods employees subreddit and one interesting factoid I've learned is that WF has incredibly good high resolution cameras, covering every inch of the store. They observe every instance of shoplifting and identify shoplifters, although they generally don't ban or arrest people until the amount of an individual's theft exceeds a certain dollar amount.
I don't know what that threshhold is, but from an E.P. Thompson-esque, "moral economy" perspective, it seems silly not to find it out and then budget some amount of it into your regular grocery acquisition trips.
And apparently yes, they also know about those times when you decide that the item is free because you tried to scan it four times and it didn't work. Cameras.
posted by Morpeth at 5:49 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
I don't know what that threshhold is, but from an E.P. Thompson-esque, "moral economy" perspective, it seems silly not to find it out and then budget some amount of it into your regular grocery acquisition trips.
And apparently yes, they also know about those times when you decide that the item is free because you tried to scan it four times and it didn't work. Cameras.
posted by Morpeth at 5:49 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
My point was, believable or not, the story's source makes it automatically suspect.
For the record I strongly agree with this statement, and chose my words because of it.
..the view that Amazon is flat-out lying and there was nothing going on here except people watching on cameras is to say that one of the largest companies in the world couldn't even get computer image recognition, weight-sensing, and other inventory management measures operational even a little bit.
I'm pretty sure Amazon can get some—if not all—of these things working together slightly, in a very wonky way. The "denial" says they've been using manual labor for "tagging," which I personally would speculate as meaning "wonky Amazon-data-and-sensor-integration assisted manual processing."
Image recognition and computer vision is getting really really good. I have personally seen some of the incredible work being done in this space in the closed source/Big Tech world. I don't know that I'd call it transactionally good just yet, but it's getting damned good.
But yeah, Bloomberg sucks even when they say something believable and I absolutely agree.
posted by majick at 6:01 AM on April 18
For the record I strongly agree with this statement, and chose my words because of it.
..the view that Amazon is flat-out lying and there was nothing going on here except people watching on cameras is to say that one of the largest companies in the world couldn't even get computer image recognition, weight-sensing, and other inventory management measures operational even a little bit.
I'm pretty sure Amazon can get some—if not all—of these things working together slightly, in a very wonky way. The "denial" says they've been using manual labor for "tagging," which I personally would speculate as meaning "wonky Amazon-data-and-sensor-integration assisted manual processing."
Image recognition and computer vision is getting really really good. I have personally seen some of the incredible work being done in this space in the closed source/Big Tech world. I don't know that I'd call it transactionally good just yet, but it's getting damned good.
But yeah, Bloomberg sucks even when they say something believable and I absolutely agree.
posted by majick at 6:01 AM on April 18
. (I do not consider this evidence that Amazon was being smart, just lucky.)
A bit mixed, as the end result is they created the world’s greatest talking clock.
posted by Artw at 6:32 AM on April 18 [1 favorite]
A bit mixed, as the end result is they created the world’s greatest talking clock.
posted by Artw at 6:32 AM on April 18 [1 favorite]
As my Google Home gets worse and worse at answering questions and responding to commands, I'm halfway convinced that the initial rollout was backed up by a mechanical turk operation and as they transitioned to running the service without any hands on the rudder its quality plummeted.
posted by thecjm at 7:10 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
posted by thecjm at 7:10 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
A bit mixed, as the end result is they created the world’s greatest talking clock.
Yes, the business case for this has to be almost nothing, other than pester you about ads for buying services. That's IMO why the voice recognition has gotten worse; they cut it's budget dramatically because a talking clock doesn't need a billion dollar budget.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:41 AM on April 18
Yes, the business case for this has to be almost nothing, other than pester you about ads for buying services. That's IMO why the voice recognition has gotten worse; they cut it's budget dramatically because a talking clock doesn't need a billion dollar budget.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:41 AM on April 18
On the news this morning, it was reported that Amazon may be leaving its own automat shopping stores, but it is now packaging the system to sell to other shopping providers. So… it was all just a beta test before shipping the product.
posted by njohnson23 at 8:06 AM on April 18 [1 favorite]
posted by njohnson23 at 8:06 AM on April 18 [1 favorite]
Line go up!
posted by Artw at 8:10 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
posted by Artw at 8:10 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
I think its just terrific that they are wasting fucktons of money, exploiting Indian workers, and making life worse at every grocery place you can think of above Aldi et al, just to put a bunch of grocery workers out of a job, unionized workers of course; cause monopoly benefitting only the oligarchy, why not, sounds great!
posted by WatTylerJr at 8:13 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
posted by WatTylerJr at 8:13 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
One of my local grocery stores offers the use of hand scanners; you can scan your groceries as you pick them up and pack them directly into your own bags in your shopping cart. Then you drop off the scanner and swipe your credit card on the way out. There's no standing on a line of any sort.
My grocery store used to have that, and still mourn it's recent unavailability.
It was awesome since I could sort/store the groceries in the correct bag while shopping. I do one run per week, a few bags for fresh produces that go into the basement fridge & freezer, one bag for the kitchen fridge and the other bags are for the pantry.
Made the process of coming the house with the grocery extra efficient, my shopping list is also sorted by order in which I'll go by the items in the grocery store, I'm that king of person I guess.
2 things I didn't like...
1. Printing the barcode stickers for vegetables/fruits took too long, I would have a killed for a barebone combo of scale/numkeyboard/printing machine, throw in a roll with the produce codes (I know mine), I don't need the display and its touch panel, it's supper laggy. I want the professional version that is fast, the one they have at the cashier checkout.
2. That little scanner that uses LTE or 3G to communicate with a server to get the item name/price after scanning the barcode, EVERYTIME, I know because one day we had networking issues and my scanner kept timing out. This is a TINY TINY db can be stored in the scanner with no issues (do push/poll updates to catch price changes). That it stupid and it's slow.
It probably got removed because rampant inflation probably pushed a lot of people to cheat a little bit and the random verification process will 100% not catch an unscanned item at the bottom of a full bag.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 9:11 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]
My grocery store used to have that, and still mourn it's recent unavailability.
It was awesome since I could sort/store the groceries in the correct bag while shopping. I do one run per week, a few bags for fresh produces that go into the basement fridge & freezer, one bag for the kitchen fridge and the other bags are for the pantry.
Made the process of coming the house with the grocery extra efficient, my shopping list is also sorted by order in which I'll go by the items in the grocery store, I'm that king of person I guess.
2 things I didn't like...
1. Printing the barcode stickers for vegetables/fruits took too long, I would have a killed for a barebone combo of scale/numkeyboard/printing machine, throw in a roll with the produce codes (I know mine), I don't need the display and its touch panel, it's supper laggy. I want the professional version that is fast, the one they have at the cashier checkout.
2. That little scanner that uses LTE or 3G to communicate with a server to get the item name/price after scanning the barcode, EVERYTIME, I know because one day we had networking issues and my scanner kept timing out. This is a TINY TINY db can be stored in the scanner with no issues (do push/poll updates to catch price changes). That it stupid and it's slow.
It probably got removed because rampant inflation probably pushed a lot of people to cheat a little bit and the random verification process will 100% not catch an unscanned item at the bottom of a full bag.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 9:11 AM on April 18 [4 favorites]
So let's see if I got this straight:
- Bloomberg said Amazon is using a bunch of humans to watch cameras and do all the store stuff
- Amazon said "no we're not!"
- but Amazon also added the asterisk that they're using a bunch of humans to watch the AI watch the cameras
- the AI screws up a lot so the humans have to correct it a lot, but technically the humans aren't watching the cameras or doing all the store stuff directly
This sounds like trying to run a McDonalds with two-year-olds, where you can't just do the work for them but instead have to keep saying, "That wasn't quite right, try again like this," and they try again but get it wrong in a new way every time, and there are a thousands orders coming in at the order window but the company says, "No, you can't do it for them! They have to learn!" and the whole experience is twice as bad as it would be if they didn't insist on using toddlers.
posted by clawsoon at 9:57 AM on April 18 [9 favorites]
- Bloomberg said Amazon is using a bunch of humans to watch cameras and do all the store stuff
- Amazon said "no we're not!"
- but Amazon also added the asterisk that they're using a bunch of humans to watch the AI watch the cameras
- the AI screws up a lot so the humans have to correct it a lot, but technically the humans aren't watching the cameras or doing all the store stuff directly
This sounds like trying to run a McDonalds with two-year-olds, where you can't just do the work for them but instead have to keep saying, "That wasn't quite right, try again like this," and they try again but get it wrong in a new way every time, and there are a thousands orders coming in at the order window but the company says, "No, you can't do it for them! They have to learn!" and the whole experience is twice as bad as it would be if they didn't insist on using toddlers.
posted by clawsoon at 9:57 AM on April 18 [9 favorites]
clawsoon, I assume the human watching the AI are there to correctly annotate/tag what happened so that the AI can be retrained using new data and perform better.
But since it's trying to run a store every/most-of-the time they intervene to correct it also has to affect the customer so it can look like the humans are running the store.
Or at least this was probably the plan when they started, maybe the model just isn't converging towards something useful and they had to change how they operate because there's an actual store that needs to be kept running.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:06 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
But since it's trying to run a store every/most-of-the time they intervene to correct it also has to affect the customer so it can look like the humans are running the store.
Or at least this was probably the plan when they started, maybe the model just isn't converging towards something useful and they had to change how they operate because there's an actual store that needs to be kept running.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 10:06 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
In Sweden, a country with pretty low population density and high level of tech-acceptance we've gotten a network of shipping container-based "stores" across the country in rural areas otherwise lacking services. Of course there are like half a dozen competing services so you need to download a clutch of apps if you want to use them all, but the basic principle is un-manned, honor-system backed up with cameras and app-identified user data. We have a system of phone-based ID backed up by all the major banks that makes this work.
Thr problem of course is anyone not having a Swedish bank account can't shop here, rendering them useless for tourists or others outside the Swedish system.
posted by St. Oops at 10:21 AM on April 18 [1 favorite]
Thr problem of course is anyone not having a Swedish bank account can't shop here, rendering them useless for tourists or others outside the Swedish system.
posted by St. Oops at 10:21 AM on April 18 [1 favorite]
They observe every instance of shoplifting and identify shoplifters, although they generally don't ban or arrest people until the amount of an individual's theft exceeds a certain dollar amount.
I don't know what that threshhold is […]
For most chains it’s whatever the local jurisdiction classifies as Grand Theft, usually $1000 or so. Petit theft isn’t worth pursuing so they let people dig a deep enough hole and then act.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:36 AM on April 18
I don't know what that threshhold is […]
For most chains it’s whatever the local jurisdiction classifies as Grand Theft, usually $1000 or so. Petit theft isn’t worth pursuing so they let people dig a deep enough hole and then act.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:36 AM on April 18
On the news this morning, it was reported that Amazon may be leaving its own automat shopping stores, but it is now packaging the system to sell to other shopping providers. So… it was all just a beta test before shipping the product.
That makes a lot of sense, a beta test for both the technology and the marketing strategy.
For the technology it particularly makes sense to have someone double checking every action before you try to sell the system as a standalone.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:42 AM on April 18
That makes a lot of sense, a beta test for both the technology and the marketing strategy.
For the technology it particularly makes sense to have someone double checking every action before you try to sell the system as a standalone.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:42 AM on April 18
Idk who was bagging and pre-pressing the Juicero bags but there's stuff like that too.
Thank you. I don't see enough people remembering Juicero. If we fail to remember the lessons of Juicero, we are doomed to repeat them.
posted by straight at 11:03 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
Thank you. I don't see enough people remembering Juicero. If we fail to remember the lessons of Juicero, we are doomed to repeat them.
posted by straight at 11:03 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
AI. Actually Indians.
This is the best alternate acronym since Autoincorrect.
This sounds like trying to run a McDonalds with two-year-olds, where you can't just do the work for them but instead have to keep saying, "That wasn't quite right, try again like this," and they try again but get it wrong in a new way every time, and there are a thousands orders coming in at the order window but the company says, "No, you can't do it for them! They have to learn!" and the whole experience is twice as bad as it would be if they didn't insist on using toddlers.
I love this analogy. Thank you.
posted by straight at 11:08 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
This is the best alternate acronym since Autoincorrect.
This sounds like trying to run a McDonalds with two-year-olds, where you can't just do the work for them but instead have to keep saying, "That wasn't quite right, try again like this," and they try again but get it wrong in a new way every time, and there are a thousands orders coming in at the order window but the company says, "No, you can't do it for them! They have to learn!" and the whole experience is twice as bad as it would be if they didn't insist on using toddlers.
I love this analogy. Thank you.
posted by straight at 11:08 AM on April 18 [2 favorites]
IIRC McDonald’s actually did do a fake AI McDonald’s where it was all hidden workers.
posted by Artw at 11:48 AM on April 18 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 11:48 AM on April 18 [1 favorite]
This is why we do not demand fully automated luxury gay space capitalism
posted by bookwo3107 at 12:19 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]
posted by bookwo3107 at 12:19 PM on April 18 [2 favorites]
I picked the wrong week to stop responding to masto threads about dystopian tech scams
Petit theft
le petit mart
posted by cortex at 6:29 PM on April 18 [9 favorites]
Petit theft
le petit mart
posted by cortex at 6:29 PM on April 18 [9 favorites]
This system isn't some sort of shopping Utopia, of course. And it exists mostly to eliminate entry-level jobs, of course.
Indeed, we've got a mini-mart kind of thing where I work, with grocery store self-check-out kiosks (but they work way better and don't have the stupid scale, it's just a really big iPad-like thing on a stand and a barcode scanner) and there's no customer service staff at all. As far as I can tell it's entirely a one-man show, the guy restocking goods and keeping the place clean. He's not always there, probably because he has to drive somewhere to pick up more goods in his little truck. It works really well.
Anyway, the thing is, even if the cameras at the machines aren't recordings, but actively watched by a person the whole time the store is open, that's still not more expensive than paying the cashier. They're just teleworking mini-mart cashiers who watch you do the whole thing yourself.
But then ya gotta get greedy and make a thing nobody asked for, to eliminate even that minimum-wage payroll cost.
posted by ctmf at 12:50 AM on April 19
Indeed, we've got a mini-mart kind of thing where I work, with grocery store self-check-out kiosks (but they work way better and don't have the stupid scale, it's just a really big iPad-like thing on a stand and a barcode scanner) and there's no customer service staff at all. As far as I can tell it's entirely a one-man show, the guy restocking goods and keeping the place clean. He's not always there, probably because he has to drive somewhere to pick up more goods in his little truck. It works really well.
Anyway, the thing is, even if the cameras at the machines aren't recordings, but actively watched by a person the whole time the store is open, that's still not more expensive than paying the cashier. They're just teleworking mini-mart cashiers who watch you do the whole thing yourself.
But then ya gotta get greedy and make a thing nobody asked for, to eliminate even that minimum-wage payroll cost.
posted by ctmf at 12:50 AM on April 19
"try to" eliminate, I should have said. But it actually made them need MORE people watch the camera, because people didn't scan their items and swipe their card. Stupid.
posted by ctmf at 12:53 AM on April 19
posted by ctmf at 12:53 AM on April 19
One of my local grocery stores offers the use of hand scanners; you can scan your groceries as you pick them up and pack them directly into your own bags in your shopping cart. Then you drop off the scanner and swipe your credit card on the way out. There's no standing on a line of any sort.
This is how I shop most of the time and it's great. When I'm done shopping, I'm done shopping. The only way it could be better would be letting me auto-pay when I'm done and just walk out. Especially since you can scan with your phone instead of the little scanner thing. Just let me Apple Pay!
posted by uncleozzy at 7:09 AM on April 19
This is how I shop most of the time and it's great. When I'm done shopping, I'm done shopping. The only way it could be better would be letting me auto-pay when I'm done and just walk out. Especially since you can scan with your phone instead of the little scanner thing. Just let me Apple Pay!
posted by uncleozzy at 7:09 AM on April 19
Sams Club offers basically the same thing, with your phone instead of a hand scanner. They do have people at the door to scan your digital receipt and then a few of your purchases to minimize theft.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:15 AM on April 19
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:15 AM on April 19
Cannot be overstated how much the current shoplifting scare, to the degree that it isn’t just manipulated figures and media exaggeration, is just the result of understaffing stores and relying on self checkout.
posted by Artw at 7:41 AM on April 19 [8 favorites]
posted by Artw at 7:41 AM on April 19 [8 favorites]
At my office, there's a self service area where we can buy sodas, candy bars, fresh sandwiches, fruit cups, two hard boiled eggs sealed in water, etc. There's a camera overlooking everything, but theft is never an issue. Why? Because we're a bunch of nerdy engineers, and it would never occur to us to do anything other than what is equally fair to both parties. The engineers who design all these self-service everythings really need to understand that not everyone thinks like them. It would solve a lot of problems.
posted by Melismata at 9:16 AM on April 19 [2 favorites]
posted by Melismata at 9:16 AM on April 19 [2 favorites]
My engineering team went out to lunch together for years and the bill always totaled correctly with tip. The only time we ever came up short was when we had invited a guy from marketing. We’ll say it was bad math.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:59 AM on April 19 [4 favorites]
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:59 AM on April 19 [4 favorites]
Cannot be overstated how much the current shoplifting scare, to the degree that it isn’t just manipulated figures and media exaggeration, is just the result of understaffing stores and relying on self checkout.
I thought that whole thing was based on gangs of thieves robbing the same stores multiple times per day and making off with thousands of dollars of merchandise each time, not somebody failing to pay for a couple pears at self-checkout. Not to say that shrink won't go up at all with self-checkout, but to my recollection individual consumers were not the ones being blamed in the mass hysteria.
posted by tubedogg at 12:29 PM on April 19 [1 favorite]
I thought that whole thing was based on gangs of thieves robbing the same stores multiple times per day and making off with thousands of dollars of merchandise each time, not somebody failing to pay for a couple pears at self-checkout. Not to say that shrink won't go up at all with self-checkout, but to my recollection individual consumers were not the ones being blamed in the mass hysteria.
posted by tubedogg at 12:29 PM on April 19 [1 favorite]
It's infuriating how these business-serving rumors get started. Even before COVID, Wal-Mart switched away from being 24-hours, which is their right (even if it's hugely inconvenient for us nocturnal people), but a friend told me he heard it was because someone walked off with all the laptops on display in their electronics department. He even stuck by that story when I interrogated it: wasn't that quite a lot? Aren't they chained down? Wouldn't it be better to just keep a clerk in electronics, or a greeter at the door? Wouldn't they be traceable?
As it turns out, Wal-Mart stopped being 24-hours nationwide, and many more than me rue the change. I wonder how many of them have been heard stories like that to cover for it?
posted by JHarris at 7:49 PM on April 19 [1 favorite]
As it turns out, Wal-Mart stopped being 24-hours nationwide, and many more than me rue the change. I wonder how many of them have been heard stories like that to cover for it?
posted by JHarris at 7:49 PM on April 19 [1 favorite]
I thought that whole thing was based on gangs of thieves robbing the same stores multiple times per day and making off with thousands of dollars of merchandise each time, not somebody failing to pay for a couple pears at self-checkout.
Makes for good footage but the numbers don’t bear it out.
posted by Artw at 10:56 AM on April 20 [1 favorite]
Makes for good footage but the numbers don’t bear it out.
posted by Artw at 10:56 AM on April 20 [1 favorite]
I hear that steal from Loblaw's day is May 12th.
No responsible person is endorsing it.
posted by clawsoon at 2:45 PM on April 20
No responsible person is endorsing it.
posted by clawsoon at 2:45 PM on April 20
a friend told me he heard it was because someone walked off with all the laptops on display in their electronics department
FWIW I have a friend (who I trust implicitly) who works at a Meijer's store in various capacities, although not loss prevention. He has told me he has on multiple occasions watched thieves cart out several TVs at a go as if they had bought them. (Management has not shown any interest in trying to stop them, supposedly due to concerns about personnel safety.) So maybe there was some element of truth to what your friend heard, but the 24-hour change was coincidental timing and not a causal factor.
Makes for good footage but the numbers don’t bear it out.
As the rest of my comment illustrated (I used the phrase "mass hysteria"), I didn't say that that was actually occurring--at least not on the scale originally reported--but rather that that was what was being blamed.
posted by tubedogg at 5:58 PM on April 22
FWIW I have a friend (who I trust implicitly) who works at a Meijer's store in various capacities, although not loss prevention. He has told me he has on multiple occasions watched thieves cart out several TVs at a go as if they had bought them. (Management has not shown any interest in trying to stop them, supposedly due to concerns about personnel safety.) So maybe there was some element of truth to what your friend heard, but the 24-hour change was coincidental timing and not a causal factor.
Makes for good footage but the numbers don’t bear it out.
As the rest of my comment illustrated (I used the phrase "mass hysteria"), I didn't say that that was actually occurring--at least not on the scale originally reported--but rather that that was what was being blamed.
posted by tubedogg at 5:58 PM on April 22
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('Hilariously,' with the low-wage human surveillance described here, it seems quite likely that the system would incorrectly flag visible minorities more frequently for shoplifting. They were right!!!)
posted by praemunire at 1:29 PM on April 17 [22 favorites]