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Look, I know this might not be a popular view here on HN, but I think this is useless. And bad.

I'm not talking about the technology behind it (I think it's an amazing achievement)..

I live in Barcelona and I have at least 5 medium-sized supermarkets within 5 minutes walking distance from my home. Plus there are several smaller shops that sell fruits and vegetables.

I know all the people who work in these supermarkets. The cashier in the supermarket downstairs always sings a quiet song while she scans my products, she knows my daughter and she's always nice and friendly.

The cashier in the other store talks to the customers. She stops scanning and starts talking while the line waits. Some customers might join the conversation. I know she has an old cat that eats an unlimited amount of food if allowed to do so...

There are similar stories about other shops in the neighbourhood - they come to work, they serve the people in the neighbourhood, they go home. They do this until they retire.

These people like their jobs because we respect them for what they do, so they feel useful and they work hard.

I don't mind waiting in line for 3 minutes. Or 5. It's never longer than that, even if the cashier discusses the latest news with the old lady.

The humanity of it has value for us here and that value is greater than the time we'd save by removing the people from the shops.

And textile workers were put out of work in the 19th century because new machines rendered their jobs obsolete. But would you really argue that we should roll back back 200 years of progress in the textile industry just to employ more people? What about the fact that textiles would be vastly more expensive and of limited quantity? Do you choose to have all of your clothes hand-woven or do you let technology take those jobs?

The only real difference here is that it's a technology you didn't grow up with that is putting people out of work, so it's seen as unusual to you. We make this choice of technology over manual labour in virtually every industry every single day. But it's normal because we grew up with it. And the kids that grow up with this technology today will see this as normal too. Eliminating cashier jobs in supermarkets isn't fundamentally any different to eliminating textile worker jobs in the 18th century.