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?
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.
And if so, why can't we detect it via camera + AI?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
No thanks.
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.
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.
[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.
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.
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.
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.
> In 2011, firearm injuries accounted for ... 851 deaths from the accidental discharge of firearms [in the United States].
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...