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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.

Here's a curve showing how the proportion of the working force employed in agriculture has dropped from 70% to around 2% over 175 years [1]. So in other words, it went from almost everyone working in agriculture, to almost no one working in agriculture. This has happ

So how is this possible? It's possible because the very reason that fewer people work in agriculture is because each human is more productive, resulting in cheaper goods on the shelves, because each salary can produce more of the same good. In other words: when an employee becomes more productive, a company can sell its product at a lower price, and earn more money. It can use this money to hire more employees, to produce more goods, rather than result in a layoff. In a free-ish market (with healthy competition), competitors will force incumbents to lower their prices, in search for profits.

This has been seen countless times, in many different areas of industry (from pantyhose to, TVs to phones, cars etc.). All of these products have become significantly cheaper (relative to median income) over the past decades, and this has resulted in more people buying them, such that layoffs have become unnecessary because the increase in productivity is offset by an increase in demand.

So, it's relatively simple. 1) If the decrease in price does not cause an increase in demand, employees will have to be laid off. 2) If it causes an increase in demand, then the company can afford to hire, perhaps dramatically more. So, for example, if shoppers buy 5% more items because prices are reduced by 5% (because of automatic checkout), then the cashiers can work at the packaging facility, or the farm, or in transportation, needed to make 5% more goods available to consumers.

[1] https://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/assets/4565243/Ag_workforce.png