This will ultimately be the death of retail stores.
Half the reason anyone wants to go to a store in 2026 is to have a good time shopping in person. If going to the store leads to any chance of a shitty experience? Fuck it dude, I’ll just order online like everyone else I suppose.
I guess the stock boys and cashiers could just be like the olden groceries, where you bring your list and they fill it? Or, I guess more layoffs?
The world would be dramatically better if about 10,000 specific people died
Self Checkouts are not even self checkout anymore. You go up and scan your stuff then 2 times out of 3 someone has to come over and approve that you scanned everything. At that point just open the normal lanes back up
I literally stopped shopping at Kroger over this. If you’re gonna accuse me of stealing every third item I scan because I use a reusable shopping bag instead of the single-use plastic ones, you aren’t getting my business.
I think the only one more over it than me was the poor associate who had to keep signing in to watch videos of me scanning stuff.
It’s so annoying. I’ll scan something big and the computer is OUT LOUD saying at me “BAG YOUR ITEM” like NO! I DONT WANT TO!
Not a bug.
Kafkaesque nightmares
I gotta read something besides The Metamorphasis because all I associate with that phrase is physical body horror of becoming a bug. Somehow I don’t think that’s what they meant here.
Pick something other than The Castle, especially if you’ve ever worked for any government.
Unless you want to know why Curtis Yarvin is wrong about monarchies being more efficient, then by all means…
What is wild about all this is looking back to the old social contract and how it basically made this
fobittedforbidden.The best example is the movie minority report in which the had a fool proof way to 100% of the time predict the future.
I won’t spoil the movie, but the whole premise was that even if there was one instance of it making a mistake, and a innocent person was put on ice by mistake, then the whole thing had to be shut down.
And in today’s reality: all of big tech’s new tools make mistakes constantly, sometimes more than getting things right, and it’s still full steam ahead on the rollout.
MFW dystopia movies were too optimistic
kill the fuckers in charge or you’re rolling the
dicechamber every day.Same can be said for the death penalty, but the GOP and even a lot of Democrats are for it. Even though they’re are actual past cases of killing innocent people.
fobitted
I’m sure this is a typo of some kind, but I can’t for the life of me work out what it was.“Predicted”? “Foretold”? I’m sure I’m being dense and just missing something obvious, but I’d love to hear what.
You write just one book about a labyrinthine bureacracy and people use your name to curse organisational dysfunction forever.
A situations like this makes me use a form of Malapropism one would expect of a Dickensian society to bring about almost Orwellian situation. Makes you wonder when someone will use Chekhov’s Gun before it all gets Bowdlerized. Alas this Machiavellian paragraph is reminiscent of a Lovecraftian creature.
But seriously, that paragraph above reads like the scene in Blackadder when they meet the writer of the Dictionary.
Poor Machiavelli too. Everyone goes on about how he faked his death and “dark triad” traits, and he was just some bloke taking the piss out of the government.
I think that guy might have been trolling. He was imprisoned by the Medici family, amd then ended up writing a book to give advice to the princes? I think it could have been intentionally bad advice, especially after reading Sun Tsu.
What would Machiavelli do? is a fine continuation of that energy.
“As the Prince you’ve got to know when to hold ‘em. Know even to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away and know when to run.”
I worked at my local Goodwill (they’re split up by region). We kept a close eye on known shoplifters, but we couldn’t say anything and even my boss couldn’t say anything unless he literally saw them conceal the object then walk out of the store and never broke eye contact. They said the store could get sued if we stopped them and they had ditched the contraband in the moment we looked away.
I don’t see why the stores discussed here should be treated differently. Someone needs to sue these surveillance stores until they stop automating false accusations.
This is a great way for people to lesen how this technology can be used negatively. Get the backlash early before it has completely infected everything.
Someone must have been telling lies aboutSome slop machine must have misidentified Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.The AI gets to accuse you based on a bad guess, while you have to file paperwork and surrender more personal data to prove you didn’t steal a pack of vitamins. »Innocent until proven guilty« is now a premium feature.
if you’re a billionaire you can be proven guilty and still be considered innocent
Innocent even proven guilty
Innocent until proven guilty was always the highest tier wealthy only premium. Everyone else is expected to plea bargain down to a crime they didn’t commit.
When I worked at Lowe’s they could tell the instant shoplifters pulled into the parking lot. They even had nicknames for the repeat offenders.
“Heads up, Dumb and Dumber just pulled in, no doubt headed for lumber.”
How does one shoplift lumber?
I’m so proud to say I have first hand experience: very quickly.
Casually
Only the dumb, obvious ones.
I assure you, I’ve shoplifted quite a bit from Lowes without ever drawing suspicion.
You might be surprised at what they know! Dumb and Dumber above have no idea they’re targeted. Small timers won’t catch any heat as training is to let it slide above all. We had tips on how to “confront” shoplifters without actually saying anything.
Well, I never got ‘confronted’ at least.
That you know of. Some places wait until you hit felony level totals, then inform the police.
I usually go for pretty small stuff. Statute of limitations will probably run out before I rack up enough to hit felony level.
“What are you in for?”
“Felony bubble gum theft…”Lol fair enough
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I’ve gotten so many loose bolts and washers just laying around on the floor in the small parts section. I almost want to tell them to pay me for cleaning up their trash. Can’t say I’ve ever made off with lumber though.
Same with the LEGO isle in Wal-Mart.
Can we actually see the reports? Not saying it can’t happen but using AI in articles creates lots of views. Is “Home Bargin” the only store doing this? Is it only in the UK? This is really poor reporting here.
Anecdotally my wife keeps getting flagged by Walmart and they have to come watch her bag at the self checkout every time she uses one. So far no where else, just there. She uses them many other places, so she’s not acting suspicious or using it wrong.
Please stop shopping at places that treat you as if you are a criminal. Self checkouts are already customer hostile but essentially being treated as a potential shoplifter for using one should cause you to take your business elsewhere if at all feasible.
I don’t know their specific situation, but Walmart is often the only viable option for many lower population areas or late-night needs. A large part of Walmart’s expansion strategy is moving into a small town, then under-pricing all of their stuff at a loss. They keep selling things at a loss until all of the other local shops close, because they can’t compete with Walmart’s lower prices. Then once all of the local competition is run out of town, Walmart jacks their prices up because they’re the only option in town.
They’re also often one of the only grocers that stays open late. This means they’re often the only viable option for third-shift workers, because the alternative would be waking up at their equivalent of 2AM to go grocery shopping.
I dont know how much this is actually happening now a days but seems much harder to do when the prices are shown online and you can change pickup location at will. Maybe 20 years ago it was more true.
Target’s online pricing varies depending on the store you’ll be picking up from, so I imagine Walmart can do the same.
Walmart doesn’t have to cut prices to blast all the mom and pops out of business. Maybe that was a thing in the 80s when they went for monster expansion.
When they walk up she should ask them to go ahead and start scanning and bagging her groceries
They actually did the first few times. Which is funny to me because my wife is very much a control freak. She did not think it was funny, though.
This has happened to me at a few times a local grocery chain (it’s not wal-mart, but I don’t want to name it, as that would reveal my general location).
Walmart has extremely good facial recognition software, which I assume now has been taken over by AI.
I also get my reusable bags checked at Walmart (I rarely shop there anymore),they will even make me take out all the empty ones in my larger bag to prove I’m not stealing. I figured it was strore policy.
I do know retail theft has skyrocketed the last 5 or so years. I have read stores getting rid of self checkouts because of this.
I do know retail theft has skyrocketed the last 5 or so years.
Nobody should give any fucks whatsoever as long as it continues to be dwarfed by wage theft.
Also, there is zero fucking reason to let Walmart check your receipt or your bags. With a warehouse club like Costco it’s written into the membership agreement, but a normal store has no authority to hold you, especially without probable cause. Exercise your goddamn rights, people!
You have no 4th amendment rights against a private party. Depending on your state, the store can detain you until police arrive if they suspect you of shoplifting.
The key phrase there is “if they suspect you of shoplifting” which means they need to have actual fucking evidence and merely refusing their rent-a-gestapo bullshit doesn’t cut it.
Otherwise, they’re the ones committing the crime of false imprisonment.
I do know retail theft has skyrocketed the last 5 or so years.
Yeah the stores did that.
They knew self-checkout would be shoplifter heaven but they calculated that they saved more by cutting jobs. Then they cry for insurance and government payouts by pretending there is an epidemic of crime.
And now they’re cutting back on the self-checkouts while not bothering to hire people back to work the registers lol. The lines are getting longer and longer.
And now they’re cutting back on the self-checkouts while not bothering to hire people back to work the registers lol. The lines are getting longer and longer.
Of course, how else to drive you to use their pickup/delivery service for a premium, or to order online where they can really gouge you individually with surveillance pricing.
They were never going to do surveillance pricing in store, that’s too hard, but why have useable stores at all? Throw everything in locked cases, staff minimally, ignore complaints, profit (this quarter).
I have read stores getting rid of self checkouts because of this.
That’s a good result if true. They’ll have to keep employing humans.
I wouldn’t get excited, I work in that tech space and at least in the UA and Canada strategies of major grocery stores is increasing self checkout options as well as AI surveillance. If the bubble pops that may change but it’s not deterring anything from the c-suite this far
they will even make me take out all the empty ones in my larger bag to prove I’m not stealing.
God, I would laugh so hard as I kept walking to my car.
I hope not here as self checkout was a massive improvement for being able to check out with a few items where I live. They also have people assigned and present at slef checkout and more staff roaming the store to answer questions and keep stuff organized compared to before self checkout was a thing. I get help finding things and out the door faster.
Sucks that they are doing a shitty implementation other placss.
CCTV cameras, of which London is completely covered by last I heard, over two decades back, are notorious for misidentifying people with facial recognition before this llm bs even came out.
Especially minorities, there was a dude in detroit, black dude, got falsley flagged by the system for a murder, they arrested him, ignoring his ironclad alibi, and tried to make the charges stick for some time, knowing he was innocent. That was a number of years back, but not a one off at all.
do you have instincts?
We should have learned from navigation systems that people rely too much on a computer without thinking for themselves.
Facial recognition and AI for behavior recognition are potentially good security tools. But only if a human controls the output. The US had people wrongfully imprisoned because some Flock camera made the wrong call. Cases in which a human would have noticed that the accused’s car has an entirely different color.
It’s a human problem that can’t get solved. Not with new protocols, not with new software ideas. I have seen people clicking on buttons without reading what is there, only to get rid of any obstacle fast enough.
The only solution is banning this technology. Alternatively, make all false positives not caught by a human as expensive as possible.
Humans, in aggregate, behave consistently when presented with structured prompts. The trick with new technology is to figure out what presentation of the information results in the desired behavior of checking for AI blind spots. An example with Flock is that they don’t present partial matches any differently than complete matches - in that case the improvement of describing partial matches as incomplete is obvious, but other triggers for human common reactions are more challenging to tease out. But it can be done!
I believe if regulators set up a system to encourage research and implementation of responsible data presentation - meaning outputs that make it easy for humans to have appropriate trust and add checking as needed - that would have more positive and lasting impacts than a ban.
How about don’t present partial matches, demand more data first to raise certainty of the results. Especially partial matches against open ended data sets is wildly unsafe in almost every case (eg. not already having suspects).
Responsible presentation is sometimes not at all, if the user isn’t an expert.
Snitches get glitches.
