Per the marketing on the side, this is meant to be for my benefit in order to earn "points" and get offered "deals." I don't think I have to tell you that I did NOT install the app, and just walked further to buy one from a vendor.
There is a massive arrogance problem within tech. Everyone thinks their product should be the center of everyone else's universe. The best products are invisible/get out of the way.
I hear a lot of talk about how much pain you can inflict on people and how to extract the most value from that. Last I heard it was from a couple of media types discussing radio commercials. No care for their actual product for the end user - but an evaluation of how much people would suffer before tuning away.
Actual professional pride and care is sooo last century.
Relevant Simpsons clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdMjqcjMVTc
He got out a big printout and started showing the different demographics and their habits.
"<ethnic> woman, with a little bit of college" - she will get a credit card, charge it up to the limit, then make the minimum payment... forever.
"<ethnic> man, no college" - he will get a credit card, charge it up to the limit, might make one payment, never make another payment ever.
Then he went on to say, corporations will slant their advertising to target demographic #1 with credit card advertisements. They will make their advertisements disappear from view from demographic #2.
I kind of wonder if the whole vending system is slanted around these kinds of things. Sports fan, uses phone indiscriminately for everything, sell him an impulse snickers bar with an app, then load him down with ads for payday loans.
I saw this at a Simon mall recently.
I took a picture of the machine. Across the front of the door is a banner which reads:
1. Scan the QR code
2. Create profile
3. Scan again to unlock door
4. Close the door
5. You're one drink closer to a free drink!
We had a card for earning points across multiple brands of supermarkets and other kinds of consumer shops.
One of those chains, Rewe, decided they didn't want to share the points with the others and went ahead, creating their own mobile app for consumer points.
The remaining chains, not wanting to stay behind, decided to do exactly the same.
Now almost every chain has withdrawn from the card program, moved into their own little app, and expect every customer to install all their apps.
I refuse to follow along, and get into interesting discussions, because employees naturally following orders that they have to nag everyone, cannot understand that I rather pay more than installing and giving my data to every chain in exchange for a few euros in discounts.
There is a store I shop at where every purchase, they ask every single customer if they "have a phone number with them", which they can type in on the point of sale device. I've waited behind people trying to remember their old phone number.
It was fantastic.
Maybe we're just calling all forms of automation and computer vision "AI" these days because it's sexy. Anyway: any automation that requires a human staff member to intervene to complete every run is not automation: It's just adding unnecessary technology and making the process worse. Imagine if each grocery store self-checkout required a human staff member to scan items, re-arrange things, and confirm checkout.
Funny thing is, at first it was the other way around! 'Computer Vision' has always been a sub-field of AI, but the term was more widely used by academics during a previous AI winter as a way to avoid the tainted 'AI' label.
Meanwhile over at QuikTrip, there's one person checking out two people at a time. Suffice to say, if both stores are available, I will always choose the QT.
That being said, I see the same one-person-two-registers thing at 7-eleven, and it's very, very fast.
Oh it's not JUST that, I'm sure it's also a data-harvesting scheme, because what isn't these days?
Not strictly true. Barcode readers are used by humans and are definitely automation. The ironic part though is that the automation going on here is literally object classification, which humans are good at.
The play may be to collect data and make their system better.
Maybe they were emboldened because many companies still can't even do decades-old UPC barcode scanner self-checkouts well?
The closest self-checkout to working reasonably well I see regularly would be at Whole Foods Market, at least just using the low-tech UPC and scale. I only have a few nits about it.
(Though, within the last week, the usual duct-taped-on off-the-shelf hand scanner apparently saw the wrong barcode on the front of the product label (yes, some brand did that), which wedged the station, and the employee who came over seemed like they might think I was trying to defraud the store. I've coded for a few of those scanners before, and they provide a mix of automagical easy high-value behavior and major pitfalls. There are a few kinds of interfaces, and a large fleet of settings, and you really have to wrestle the device to the ground, to make every scenario bulletproof. If the integrator wasn't careful, for some of them, you can even reprogram or brick them with an in-band barcode, and disabling this feature is buried among the numerous settings.)
The worst self-checkout I'm currently exposed to is the dumpster-fire of a major chain, which goes out of its way to fill the UI with garbage, and then doesn't do even basic sensing and state flow right. They really need to look at WFM design, and then go even further in that direction, and get the state model right. While making sure that no one's bonus is tied to garbage and dark patterns on the screen.
(Also, for return customers who nope right out of the self-checkout headache, and go to the human checkout, or get directed to it by the attendant who's glaring at all the self-checkouts, they need clean their CC terminal keypad that's visibly caked with crud, like maybe it hasn't been disinfected in a year. Especially since they mandate repeated use of it when it should default to working with just a card tap/swipe, for a high-traffic location for many sick people.)
They always have at least one person going between each self-checkout kiosk helping confused and upset customers. Meanwhile, 1 traditional checkout lane is open with a long line. Self checkout is great to use if you know how and have a handful of items, but it sucks with a full cart due to space constraints and the bag scales being finicky.
I wish. The Wal-Mart near me no longer has staffed checkouts between 6am (opening time) and 8am. That's two hours in the morning of robots-only. I don't know about in the evenings.
traditional checkout lane is open with a long line.
I use the traditional check-out line whenever I can because where I live, the self-check line is almost always longer. It's not hard to keep an eye on the last person in the self-check line when you go to a real register to see which is faster.
I'm not a fireman on call. I'm OK spending an extra 45 seconds in a traditional line to keep a low-skilled human being employed.
Usually you will have a single staff member responsible for 4-10 checkouts to override the machine when your product doesn't register a weight, or you move items off the scale too quickly, and it wants them to check it.
It generally just works and is a lot quicker if you're just scanning a few items; surprised it hasn't really taken off in the US.
Most of the issues these days are when they introduce new features like less tolerance on the weight (sometimes adjusting already scanned items trips an error) or auto-scanning fruit and vegetables.
I wish payment processors / consumer protection would have a significant penalty for sloppy overcharges. I've had to deal with sloppy overcharges like this (one for over $1,000) and you lose a lot of time and the outcome is just 'oppsies, my bad'. There's very little repercussion for sloppy overcharges so it's easy for them to perpetuate.
The experience is usually better at the smaller venues that aren't a part of strong fandom and more sensitive to the customer sentiment: indie cinemas, comedy clubs, etc.
Was hoping the article would be about stadium experiences like the announcer, jumbotron, etc. all being AI-driven. When I judge the experience of gameday, concessions are like third on that list. Disappointed with the content.
I guess that's what marketing does to the people. But also it doesn't take many failures and broken expectations until those people decide that it's not worth the effort and stop using these tools entirely.
You would think that overpriced concessions would be a great place for this because it can be very fast and accurate but I think this would require the food handler to make sure to use a different tray or container for each differently priced item, etc. And there may just be enough items that would be hard to affix an RFID to (metal can, etc) that would make it unfeasible.
That is a good point with the pricing making it cost effective but they probably look at it from some maximum profit POV.
Honestly something like an Automat diner style system would help with the latency and queuing and way easier to implement technically.
I'm not sure why the performance at this stadium was so vastly different.
This is the root problem. When you take people out of the economy, what's the point of having such an economy? Such an economy cannot last indefinitely and will eventually be replaced by one that will.
An opportunity to post facts was lost, and for now until it won't, remains anecdotal.
In reality, when getting out first to market, it might be difficult for "AI" to decipher if a user added 1 of 5 available sauces to their chicken wings, so to reduce the likelihood of this error, you remove it until the technology is more mature. Speculative sure, but a strong assumption, and I doubt Mashgin would confirm this.