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it's friday evening right after work and you've run low on provisions yet again
maybe the grocery store is packed to the gills with customers and even the
self-checkout lines are long or maybe you have to buy something that
you'd rather not anyone see you leaving the store with hmm
so wouldn't it be nice to have a way around the crowds the long waits the
vague sense of embarrassment you get when you had an 18 pack of toilet paper
to the cashier so this is one of the ideas behind
amazon go a new concept grocery store that allows you to walk in grab what you
need or maybe some things you don't and walk right out without any pesky human
interaction and to be clear it isn't just a glorified place for you to pick up
things you've already ordered like we've seen with amazon's locker system the
only pre-visit setup is to download the amazon go app on your phone and link it
to your amazon account when you walk inside you'll scan your phone against a
turnstile and when you're all done shopping you just walk out amazon has
even put up signs everywhere saying this exact thing turning just walk out into a
slogan to sell customers on the simplicity but how exactly is it keeping
track of what you buy well some of the inventory control features are fairly
obvious like weight sensors under the products kind of like what you see in an
overpriced hotel minibar that can detect when a box of cashews has been lifted
off of them but unlike that system amazon's is smart
enough that it won't charge you if you put it back but much of the real magic
actually happens above you so if you look up in the rafters you'll see an
array of hundreds of cameras and sensors not only keeping an eye on things but
feeding information about customers moving around the store to servers that
use machine learning to determine exactly what you've put inside your
shopping bag or your backpack or whatever now aside from saying that they don't
use facial recognition in this process and that some products are tagged with
special patterns to help the cameras pick them out amazon has been relatively
tight-lipped about exactly how this process works which makes it either a
little magical or a little creepy depending on your perspective
one thing we have seen though is that it does appear that profiling a customer's
body shape and size is part of this special sauce as one of the issues that
amazon's engineer tangled with prior to launch was the system mistaking one
customer for another if they looked physically similar now these little
imperfections mean that amazon staffers are still supervising all of this
automation plus they need a surprisingly large number of human employees at the
store to help customers prepare ready to eat meals and check ideas for those of
you who want to partake in adult libations apparently the state of
washington hasn't decided is ready to trust computers to keep smearing off ice
out of the hands of unsuspecting college bros
but wait why am i specifically calling out washington state
well the only amazon go store currently open to the public is in downtown
seattle in one of the same buildings that houses amazon's headquarters and
amazon has been cagey about providing details about his plan to expand to more
locations in the future probably because outfitting a store like this not only
requires a huge financial commitment upfront but according to amazon also a
ton of computing resources to function properly so it won't happen overnight but amazon
is betting that their new go store might resemble the future of retail and
there's been lots of speculation that we might see similar tech employed at whole
foods which amazon now owns an idea that's already catching criticism for
reasons from concerns about huge amounts of data mining to automation putting
people out of work to making it easier to overspend since there's nothing
stopping you from walking out with perhaps more than you need however you
might feel about all that though we tried it and if you find yourself in
seattle anytime soon i'd say it's worth giving it a shot so let us know down in
the comments if buying some fancy expensive cheese without the rigmarole
of going through a checkout made you feel liberated or just kind of funny
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