Every day when I am out in the city, I am amazed by how many jobs we have NOT managed to replace with AI yet.
For example, cashiers. There are still many people spending their lives dragging items over a scanner, reading a number from a screen, holding out their hand for the customer to put money in, and then sorting the coins into boxes.
How hard can it be to automate that?
>How hard can it be to automate that?
Self checkout has been a thing for ages. Heck in Japan the 711s have cashiers but you put the money into a machine that counts and distributes change for them.
Supermarkets are actually getting rid of self checkouts due to crime. Surprise surprise, having less visible "supervision" in a store results in more shoplifting than having employees who won't stop it anyway.
It’s also just resulting in atrocious customer experience.
I can go to Safeway or the smaller chain half a block away.
The Safeway went all in on self checkouts. The store is barely staffed, shelves are constantly empty, you have to have your receipt checked by security every time, they closed the second entrance permanently, and for some reason the place smells.
Other store has self checkouts but they also have loads of staff. I usually go through the normal checkout because it’s easier and since they have adequate staff and self checkout lines it tends to be about the same speed to.
End result is I don’t shop at Safeway if I can avoid it.
I've seen it in Japan, the machine just handles the money. But you still need a human to scan things/check to make sure things are scanned correctly.
They don’t need AI for that, they just cut staff to the bare minimum and put in self checkouts.
And then they hire supervisors, helpers and checkout guards/security. I hope it at least makes sense on paper.
Amazon could not do it. They claimed they could, but it was just indians watching the video and tabulating totals overseas
The hard part is preventing theft, not adding numbers.
Cashiers should not, and will not prevent theft. They're not paid nearly enough to get in danger, and it is not their job.
I'm sure you can find videos of thefts in San Francisco if you need a visual demonstration. No cashier is going to jump in front of someone to stop a theft.
True, but having a cashier standing there waiting to scan your items will prevent most normal people from stealing. Sure, some will brazenly walk right past with a TV on their shoulder, but most people won't.
If there's no cashier and you're doing it yourself, a whole lot more people will "forget" to scan a couple items, and that adds up.
There's usually a security person or two in the store, looking over the self checkouts. I agree that job prevents a lot of people from becoming opportunistic thiefs, but I'm making a distinction between cashiers and security. Today the store needs both.
Pretty sure if a "security person" worked so well, Walmart wouldn't be severely reducing self checkouts at their stores to Walmart Plus members only.
That might be regional, then. I wouldn't say $COUTNRY is exactly a high-trust society, but it's not quite that bad for us over here.
I haven't observed this happening here (Toronto, Canada).
That's not the type of theft they were talking about. Rather, self scanners purposely not scanning items to get them for free, etc
I had a roommate in college who used to stuff containers of beef into produce bags full of kale, and weigh that on the self-service scanner.
They absolutely do. It’s not the cashiers being security, it’s having adequate staffing making people less likely to steal. Its not stopping crimes that have occurred it’s just reducing opportunistic theft.
A thief doesn't know what a cashier will do. And a cashier is an eye witness or can yell "hey stop them!"
You're doing the all or nothing fallacy. The fact that a cashier does not prevent all thefts does not mean a cashier does NOTHING for theft.
> The fact that a cashier does not prevent all thefts does not mean a cashier does NOTHING for theft.
Yes, for one thing, it ignores that a very large share of retail theft is insider theft, and that cash handling positions are the largest portion of that.
Cashiers absolutely do something for theft.
Is the theft really happening at the checkout?
And if so, why can't we detect it via camera + AI?
Detecting theft does not mean theft is prevented. You then need the government to prosecute, and impose sufficient punishment to deter theft. This is not cheap, nor a given that it will happen.
You detect someone leaving your store with a 4€ item. What then?
You ban them from coming back in after a few warnings. Stores seem really icy about facial recognition right now though. The optics are pretty bad (a play on words pun?)
Who is going to stop them from coming back in?
There have been a few stores that won't really stop people from coming back, they just quietly file charges, and then the person finds out next time they get pulled over or something along those lines.
No one, they get automatically flagged, and then someone asks them to leave. Or the police are called and they are trespassed.
You install AI-powered turnstiles at the entrance. Come on haven't you seen or read any dystopian media? :)
Use your army of lawyers to help file misdemeanor theft charges of course. Then get one out of 100 of the defendants who actually has something to lose to pay big damages to fund it to happen again the next time.
So take the broken god awful experience of self checkout and add another layer of “I think you did something wrong so now you have to stand around waiting for an actual person”?
No thanks.
There are stores that are abandoning self-checkouts completely and going back to cashiers as the theft rose to unsustainable numbers.
Checkouts are often only egress points. So having pair of eyes over them does have some effect compared to having none at all.
You mean ordering kiosks and self-checkout machines? We have automated it, it's just not everywhere has implemented it.
The one I'm desperately waiting for is serverless restaurants—food halls already do it but I want it everywhere. Just let me sit down, put an order into the kitchen, pick it up myself. I promise I can walk 20 feet and fill my own drink cup.
You seem to like self-checkout processes. I don't. I avoid any place where I have to interact with a screen. Be it a screen installed on-premise or the screen on my phone. It is not a relaxing experience for me.
Self check-out machines aren't automation.
There used to be two humans standing at the cash register, now because of software, automatic change machines, and cameras there is only one. One of those humans' jobs got automated.
Call it what you like but replacing the work of humans one for one is difficult and usually not necessary. Reformulating the problem to one that machines can solve is basically the whole game. You don't need a robot front desk worker to greet you, you just need a tablet to do your check in.
I do their work. No work got automated.
This. And I do their work a lot more slowly because it's not my regular job, and I actually already had to do some of the work (getting the items out of my trolley and onto the conveyor). Now I stand there forever fumbling with barcodes, trying to get bags to stay open, switching between getting items out of the trolley and scanning. The old checkout system is so much more efficient when you are buying anything more than a couple of items at a time.
Yeah this is like saying Aldi “automated” cart return. They didn’t, they got every shopper to do the work themselves. Automated cart return would be if you just gave the cart a little “giddyup!” when you were done and it found its way home. Or those cart conveyor belts at Ikea, it’s only part of the process but that part is automated.
[edit] Aldi did automate the management of getting shoppers to do that work, because there’s not a person standing there taking and handing out quarters, but (very simple) machines. Without those machines they might need a person, so that hypothetical role (the existence of which might make the whole scheme uneconomical) is automated. But they didn’t automate cart return, all that work’s still being done by people.
Do you consider all forms of "self-service" to not be automation of a job that previously required an additional human?
Like checking in at the airport via kiosk/app for example. Do you consider that to be "doing the work" of the desk clerk? Or say ordering at a restaurant by scanning a QR code, in both cases I have to look at the menu, decide what I want, and input my order into a system. But with the QR code there's no longer a human necessary.
Many "productivity improvements" in the modern era are just externalizing the problem. It's like saying I automated recycling by dumping all my unsorted stuff in my neighbors bin.
Japan does this a lot of places, and it makes the experience much easier.
And I think the entire mid and low range restaurants could replace servers with a tablet and people would be happier. I'm not sure how it doesn't make more money for the restaurant too, making it so easy to order more during a meal.
Serverless restaurants have been common in Australia for decades. You just get a buzzer and then need to go pick up your food when it is ready. There's a single person behind the bar to take orders and pour beer/wine/soda.
I don't use self-checkouts at the stores, nor would I eat at automated or self-service restaurants. I have a kitchen for that already.
But it's good if both are available, as apparently there will be customers for both.
Seems like perfect option for robots (not humanoid). Bring me my food. You can still keep people in kitchen for a bit, but well servers in many restaurants are not really needed.
Not AI - but businesses have tried offshoring them - https://www.npr.org/2022/09/30/1126167551/would-you-like-a-s...
Pharmacists are my favourite. They're a human vending machine that is bad at counting and reading. But law protects them. Pretty good regulatory capture.
Please actually understand what pharmacists actually do and _why_ AI is not a good replacement for them yet, unless you want to die of certain drugs interactions.
Hahaha, this drug interaction nonsense is what online people tell each other. It isn't even real. It's like "nice trigger discipline" or "the postal police don't fuck around" and shit like that. Just something that is not true but for some reason is internet urban legend.
Retail pharmacists are human vending machines. You don't need AI. It's a computer prescription written by a far more qualified human which is then provided to a nigh-illiterate half-wit who will then try as hard as possible to misread it. Having then misread it, the patient must then coax them out of their idiocy until they apologize and fulfill what's written.
Meanwhile some Internet guy who gets all his information from the Internet will repeat what he's heard on the Internet. I know this because anyone passingly acquainted with this would have at least made the clarification between compounding pharmacists and retail pharmacists or something.
> trigger discipline
> In 2011, firearm injuries accounted for ... 851 deaths from the accidental discharge of firearms [in the United States].
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
Most of the world does pharmacy dispensing of medicine just fine or much better without the byzantine bureaucracy that it is in the States. Pharmacists in the US is the epitome of regulatory captured job security.
Pharmacists are a fantastic example. My pharmacy is delivered my prescription by computer. They text me, by computer, when it's ready to pick up. I drive over there … and it isn't ready, and I have to loiter for 15 minutes.
Also, after the prescription ends, they're still filling it. I just never pick it up. The autonomous flow has no ability to handle this situation, so now I get a monthly text that my prescription is ready. The actual support line is literally unmanned, and messages given it are piped to /dev/null.
The existing automation is hot garbage. But C-suite would have me believe our Lord & Savior, AI, will fix it all.
The only way AI could fix this if it said "replace the pharmacist with a vending machine and hire a $150k junior engineer to make sure the DB is updated afterwards", which you never know, Claude Opus 4 might suggest. At that point, we'll know AGI has been achieved.