Amazon announced Amazon Go on Dec. 5, 2016, the program will make it possible to enter a store; checking in with Amazon Go app on your phone, pick up the products you want to buy and then simply walk out.
No need to talk to anybody or make payments at the cashier. The technology has been dubbed “JUST WALK OUT”.
Amazon says through sensors, computer vision and deep learning algorithms, it can track everyone in the store. The system will track everybody and everything they do, the products they picked and the ones they return, when they walk out of the store, the system bills them automatically with everything picked.
Understandably, this move has made people to predict we would not need human staff to man retail stores ever again. Business owners would simply buy the machines that can run this kinds of stores and save costs in the long term.
I tend to believe it is not so simple. Humans are not done, there is also a role for people to play.
There is an human component to shopping. People would always prefer to buy from a person, rather than buy from a cold, heartless machine. I don’t know about you, but I certainly enjoy making small talk when I go to the local grocery store for supplies.
Across the industries, I have observed that what works best is not total human elimination as Amazon Go seems to advocate, rather a blend of both. Machines boosting human efforts, working together to build a more profitable organisation.
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Watching The World
