Comment by dale_huevo
9 days ago
I've been flagged as a potential shoplifter by the self-checkout at the grocery store based on some video analysis of CCTV footage of my hand motions. (It was wrong, of course.) After leaving the store I wondered if it really was software analysis or just some guy in India or the Philippines watching a live feed of me scanning bananas.
It is likely a real machine vision system if it was the same system our former company evaluated.
It worked by camera tracking the shelves contents, and would adjust the inventory level for a specific customers actions. And finally, tracked the incremental mass change during the checkout process to cross reference label swap scams etc.
Thus, people get flagged if their appearance changes while in the store, mass of goods is inconsistent with scanned labels, or the cameras don't see the inventory re-stocked.
You would be surprised how much irrational effort some board members put into the self-checkout systems. Personally, I found the whole project incredibly boring.... so found a more entertaining project elsewhere... =3
Percepta was a company that was doing a lot of CV/ML in this space looking for shoplifting traits. They had a few paying customers before they were completely acquired by ADT Business. A lot of shoplifters use the PLU for bananas when tag swapping higher-ticket items at the self checkout, so, more than likely, they wanted to check that you were actually purchasing bananas.
For a while a lot of grocery stores were randomly auditing self checkout. I haven't had it happen to me in a couple years though.
It always seemed to be random and coincided with Kroger doing the "scan as you shop" trial thing.
As long as their losses on self checkout are less than the cost of paying cashiers and baggers they are happy.
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The scan as you shop thing seems to be pretty heavily audited, which really removes the point of doing it, since it just slowed things down. I think when I tried it I put up with it for about 4 out of the first 6 shops winding up slower than just going through the self-checkout or a regular one because of the extra faff.
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In France at the Monoprix chain, I'm randomly audited about once a month.
Which is doubly annoying, because I'm in that line to save time, and now I have to hunt down one of the employees who isn't paying attention or where they're supposed to be.
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I regularly get flagged for review during self checkout at my local market. It occurred to me the other day that when a cashier handles the scanning, I don’t take on any risk. Now I have to do the checkout work myself, and if I do it poorly, I can go to prison. Welcome to the future!
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In Belgium, Albert Hijn, I get audited about half the time. It's pretty quick so I don't really mind, but it happens a bit too frequently to my taste.
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You can just refuse that BS in non-membership stores. After payment, your debts are settled and the merchandise is your property. If they want oversight they need to eliminate self-checkout and staff their registers.
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What is PLU?
One of my friends spent a few years as a cashier and knew PLUs (Price Look Up) by heart, "oh that's 3072".
Here's some examples for apples:
https://www.bobbywires.com/plu-1.php?S=V&L=A&V=APPLES
"Price Look-Up" - the 4-digit code you punch in for different produce items.
You probably need to eat more fruits and vegetables.
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At the Circle K they have the option of doing self checkout by putting all your items under a camera and the register will automagically count 'em up and assess your total. I keep wondering if it's done by AI -- All Indians. Same with the OCR ATMs do on cheques.
Relevant: Uniqlo's self checkout, based on RFID tags with a great user experience:
- https://archive.is/ms1ke
Those Uniqlo self checkouts really do fall into that “ indistinguishable from magic” territory for me - on a technological level I completely understand how they work, and yet every time I use them I’m a little surprised that it works so well and filled with joy anyways
Decathlon use a similar system: https://sustainability.decathlon.com/product-traceability-an...
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Ah man I remember the RFID hype when the idea was you'd just shop and walk out and the items would all be automatically scanned by an RFID reader and charged. A tough lift in a grocery store but a single source store can build all the tags into their own products.
This vibes with my multiyear theory that Tesla self-driving is someone in China driving your car for you like a racing simulator. Perhaps the graphics are even game-ified so the work stays mysterious.
There's a car company that runs in vegas that does exactly that. You rent the car for a few hours and it will be driven up to you by a remote driver and then when you're done it'll drive off remotely. No AI needed.
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You didn’t really think you were playing “Crazy Taxi” did you?
I hope that whoever operates these devices, is aware about it.
> So much of “ai” is just figuring ways to offload work onto random strangers.
https://xkcd.com/1897/ (2017)
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> someone in China driving your car for you like a racing simulator.
while sleeping and connected by NeuraLink. Before Musk/NeuraLink gets to me though, judging by the content of some of my dreams, i've been driving a space-folding spaceships for some aliens.
> This vibes with my multiyear theory that Tesla self-driving is someone in China driving your car for you like a racing simulator. Perhaps the graphics are even game-ified so the work stays mysterious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truck_Simulator
There were scenes from Black Panther in which Shuri drives a car in Korea remotely from Wakanda. I thought, wow, she can do that from thousands of km away with zero latency! They must have super advanced tech to have solved the network latency problem.
And important.
Very Ender's Game.
I've been flagged as a potential shoplifter by the self-checkout at the grocery store based on some video analysis of CCTV footage of my hand motions.
Shopping in 2025 must be a frustrating experience for magicians.
I mean there is precedent: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/10/amazon...
Sorry to hear.
Why would it matter to you if it’s a real human or AI? Wrong in any case.