I’ve read an article which I find interesting:
“Amazon opens its first supermarket with no check-outs”
It’s the first store with no employees nor check-outs. The customer enters the shop, opens an app and the AI does the rest. Hundreds of sensors and cameras look what the customer brings.
When the customer exits the shop, he is sent the final bill.
Is there somebody living in Seattle who has tried it?
Wow! That’s intriguing. I loved Seattle when I went there last year. Good excuse to go back maybe!
The article says there are employees, ‘making food, stocking shelves and helping customers’. I guess they wouldn’t want to risk any teething problems!
Really? It’s scary! I don’t want that Amazon knows what I buy. Especially hygiene products, alcohol and similar things.
Is that particularly different from online shopping though?
You buy hygiene products, alcohol and similar things online from Amazon??? 
It depends what it is 
some things are easier to get hold of online, and in some ways it’s more discreet than walking around in public holding said item*. I guess it depends if you’re more worried about other people seeing what you’re buying, or about online stores tracking it. I guess the Amazon store would have both problems.
*this is starting to sound like I buy really dodgy shit. I’m talking about ‘feminine’ products, vitamins, etc not, er… yeah.
I think this would be a good opportunity to discuss basic income once again. Employee less shops like this popping up show that this has to happen at some point.
Not yet worn nickel vibrators?
Is there are market for used ones?
Maybe in japan…-
It’s fine, they just show up as ‘miscellaneous goods’.
Ah, products of daily use,
Exactly. And there are a few other problems. For example I worry about what the KI thinks of me. I don’t want that Amazon thinks that I’m pregnant and annoys me with advertises for diapers (and yes, that happened other people already). Another problem is that Amazon gives the data to other companies. So it could be that I won’t get a new bank account, just because I ordered twenty bottles of cheap wine for a friend (Ok, this is an exaggerate example, but you get what I mean).
That’s why I don’t buy at Amazon and similar stores if I can avoid it. I buy food and hygiene products at local stores that don’t log my purchases.
We already have hardware stores that don´t have cashiers. I heard London has more shops were no actual people work at anymore. In my hometown there is actually a 24 camera surveilanced shop that only consistst of vending machines.
When we get to the point when there is much more people than jobs, basic income has to be an option we need to talk about, there´s no way around that some day.
Can you think of a non-exaggerated example? I can kind of see that with bigger online purchases but not grocery shopping.
I agree there are reservations about using a supermarket through an app, and I wouldn’t rush to use it, but I still find it intriguing. I’ll be interested to see what the outcome and feedback is like from this one.
So, basically, what worries you, it’s your privacy being broken?
Well, if you go to a shop using a fidelity card issued by that shop (personal, with your name on it), it’s the same thing. They know what you have purchased.
It’s not different.
The difference with this Amazon shop, it’s the AI involved.
In the promo video the woman says:“I don´t have to interact with anybody” like it was the greatest thing ever. I don´t get this. And I´m saying that as an introvert.
This belongs to each one’s personalty. But I see it more like a sentence to remark that there are no cashiers.
Yes, and while we´re talking about privacy here I´m kind of missing the issue with disappearing jobs.