Tech giants are in an all-out race to provide the most luxurious environment where a person has to do as little as possible. Among the leaders are Google and Amazon. Their home assistants can literally control the whole household using a series of voice commands. They can turn on the lights, turn on the music, order food for, and control the thermostat. If you can imagine it, they can do it.
Amazon has been working on something even bigger for over a year and it is finally ready to unveil it to us. Amazon Go is a grocery store like any other grocery store and you can buy your supplies from there. What makes Amazon Go different from your run of the mill grocery stores is that it has no checkout counter or checkout lines.
Amazon Go cashierless convenience store opening to public: https://t.co/zd4iwJ7hLW
After a nearly 14-month trial run open only to the Seattle company’s employees, Monday marks the public debut of the store — among Amazon’s boldest efforts to reshape brick-and-mortar shopping. pic.twitter.com/YcPsTBOuWI— The Seattle Times (@seattletimes) January 21, 2018
All you have to do is enter the store with a smartphone app, get what you want and leave. You don’t have to stand around waiting in lines. You don’t even have to scan your items or swipe a card anywhere. The store works by thousands of tiny infrared cameras placed all around the store.
These cameras are watching every move you make. Data from the cameras is pushed through an algorithm that determines whether you actually take the item out of the store or just pick it up to take a better look at it. According to Amazon, the algorithm is highly advanced and will never ever charge you the wrong amount. The amount is charged to the card associated with the Amazon account.
You can see the promo video here:
The convenience of the Amazon Go store is what will attract the customers to it and the smart technology will mean the risk of shoplifting is reduced to zero. Even though it is convenient for the people, we must ask ourselves if this is a step in the right direction?
It essentially means a robot doing a job what people did before. These jobs are the only thing some people have to support their families. Such a step is robbing people of those opportunities and one day, only the elite will be able to afford such commodities.