Comment by shmatt
2 years ago
It’s a well known industry “secret” that just walk out shopping (like Amazon Go) is just cheap labor checking you out remotely
Yes, AI powered software can help them associate items to a person, but not even close to the 100% success rate companies like Amazon and Trigo claim
> It’s a well known industry “secret” that just walk out shopping (like Amazon Go) is just cheap labor checking you out remotely
Interesting, because this wasn't a well-known "secret" within Amazon.
Recode has learned that Amazon has staff on call behind the scenes to assist the computer vision system that is supposed to detect which items a shopper pulls off a shelf and carries out of the store.
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed the setup and said that Amazon staff is asked to help out when the system used in the new Amazon Go store can’t make a determination
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/2017/1/6/14189880/amazon-go...
I work in the industry and the 100% success rate touted by these companies just doesn’t exist in live in person real time inferencing. We will get there one day, but in many cases “magical” computer vision AI has humans verifying and changing AI outputs
Imagine Amazon was flexing the stores being fully automated before “Track Everything Everywhere All At Once” was written
This seems fine though? The postal office has workers who decipher the vanishingly small percent of mail automated systems can’t figure out.
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Can you expand on this? Google just returns advertisements posing as news articles parroting the joys of Amazon Go.
It's BS. I have friends on that team, and the tech works (it's very expensive and doesn't scale too well, but it works a hell of a lot better than having some Indian dude squinting at security camera footage)
I’m sure your friend is under many NDAs where they understandably might or might not be comfortable discussing implementation. But as of 2017 Amazon admitted they are using humans in the loop for go, you can ask your friend at what year they stopped
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>it's very expensive and doesn't scale too well,
If the system was AI and image recognition based, this would not be the case, as it would scale very very well.
The fact that it's expensive and doesn't scale well is in fact a great red flag that it relies on human labor.
Where does Amazon claim a “100% success rate” or that humans are never used for review behind the scenes?
Is there a source on this?
That sounds extremely expensive and error prone.
It’s error prone when no humans are involved. humans in the loop as the industry calls it, is what makes things fool proof
I posted the recode article about Amazon admitting to it above
It's a lot less expensive when you hire exclusively third world laborers for a dollar a day.