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Amazon to open grocery shop with no checkouts


Still Waters

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Amazon has revealed plans for a grocery shop without a checkout process, where customers will instead pay for the goods they have selected via an app.

The Just Walk Out shopping experience uses the same types of technologies found in self-driving cars.

The system detects when items are taken or returned to shelves and tracks them in a virtual shopping trolley.

Once the shopper leaves the store, their Amazon account will be charged and receipt sent to them.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-38212818

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Dumb if you ask me. If this becomes the norm then people will be outta the job even me.

Edited by Princess Serenity
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Technology is putting so many people out of work.  At some point too many people will be out of work because of it.  

I like going up to a human and letting them check me out.  I won't even use the self checkouts even if I have to go through the 90 year old woman's lane that is slower than a snail.  I've had to remind her what she was doing before.

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There are so many ways this can go wrong from a technical standpoint to preventing theft.  We'll see how it goes I guess.

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17 hours ago, Ashotep said:

Technology is putting so many people out of work.

It's called progress. In Victorian times over one million people were employed in the UK looking after horses. That figure is now down to a few thousand. The trick is to find new jobs to replace the old.

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1 hour ago, Derek Willis said:

It's called progress. In Victorian times over one million people were employed in the UK looking after horses. That figure is now down to a few thousand. The trick is to find new jobs to replace the old.

That might be quite a trick in the future when so many jobs are being replaced by technology and not just in lower income jobs.  Most new jobs in the future may be started out with using automation and never hire that many people to begin with so moving on to something else may be impossible for many.  That is one thing many for open borders and more H1-B visas aren't taking into consideration. 

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3 hours ago, Ashotep said:

That might be quite a trick in the future when so many jobs are being replaced by technology and not just in lower income jobs.  Most new jobs in the future may be started out with using automation and never hire that many people to begin with so moving on to something else may be impossible for many.  That is one thing many for open borders and more H1-B visas aren't taking into consideration. 

For a short while around 1990 I worked for the UK Department of Trade & Industry (DTI). During 1990 the DTI carried out its "Ten Year Strategic Forecast". The internet as we know it now was not even mentioned. In the UK now, a quarter of a million jobs have been created by the internet. But I do agree, this new wave of technology may be different to the past. Horses were replaced by cars, and so that meant jobs in the car industry. But cars are increasingly made by robots. That said, I reckon there will be a new source of jobs in the relatively near future. I wish I knew what it will be - then I could invest!  

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1 hour ago, Derek Willis said:

For a short while around 1990 I worked for the UK Department of Trade & Industry (DTI). During 1990 the DTI carried out its "Ten Year Strategic Forecast". The internet as we know it now was not even mentioned. In the UK now, a quarter of a million jobs have been created by the internet. But I do agree, this new wave of technology may be different to the past. Horses were replaced by cars, and so that meant jobs in the car industry. But cars are increasingly made by robots. That said, I reckon there will be a new source of jobs in the relatively near future. I wish I knew what it will be - then I could invest!  

True jobs have been created because of the internet but some have been lost because of it so I'm not sure how much internet has helped.  While internet business is doing great many physical retail stores aren't because of them.  The post office is another place that has lost out.  You will also be hard pressed to find a travel agent anymore.  I wonder if you deducted jobs lost because of the internet from jobs created what the numbers would be. 

Cars replaced horses and now are mostly built by robots and in the future they will also be driving themselves.  In the future truck drivers may have a hard time finding a job.  Right now there are over 3 million truck drivers in the US.  That is a lot of people to eventually be replaced and that is just one industry.  Farming is another area that is going to be using more technology and less humans.  Many fields people work in are using more technology all the time.  That is the reason I don't get too excited over factories coming back, sure they will employ a few people but they will mostly hire robots.  I just don't see new jobs keeping up with the loss of old jobs and the expanding population.  Some countries have even thought about giving people a guaranteed income because they know what is coming.  I don't think we need to do that yet but in 15 or 20 years who knows.

 

Quote

Last week a self-driving truck delivered a little over 50,000 Budweiser beers over a distance of 120 miles. This was widely cheered as an accomplishment, but truck driving is one of the most common jobs in America for men and autonomous trucks would no doubt replace workers.

http://dailycaller.com/2016/10/31/self-driving-technology-is-poised-to-put-millions-out-of-work/

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8 hours ago, Ashotep said:

True jobs have been created because of the internet but some have been lost because of it so I'm not sure how much internet has helped.  While internet business is doing great many physical retail stores aren't because of them.  The post office is another place that has lost out.  You will also be hard pressed to find a travel agent anymore.  I wonder if you deducted jobs lost because of the internet from jobs created what the numbers would be. 

Cars replaced horses and now are mostly built by robots and in the future they will also be driving themselves.  In the future truck drivers may have a hard time finding a job.  Right now there are over 3 million truck drivers in the US.  That is a lot of people to eventually be replaced and that is just one industry.  Farming is another area that is going to be using more technology and less humans.  Many fields people work in are using more technology all the time.  That is the reason I don't get too excited over factories coming back, sure they will employ a few people but they will mostly hire robots.  I just don't see new jobs keeping up with the loss of old jobs and the expanding population.  Some countries have even thought about giving people a guaranteed income because they know what is coming.  I don't think we need to do that yet but in 15 or 20 years who knows.

I have an encyclopedia, printed in the 1950's, which has an article describing the wonders of automation. Back then it was seriously believed that when machines do everything, we humans will have lots of time to spend on leisure. The notion was that we would somehow be paid a proper income even if we aren't working!

A piece of evidence I can give to support my views is that since 1970 in the UK the unemployment rate has averaged 7.5%, with a low of 4% in 1973 and a high of 12% in 1984. The figure is currently 6%. Of course, people will say many new jobs are not real jobs, and that the figures are manipulated.

My point about the internet was that no one saw it coming as a source of major employment. At the end of the 19th century no one saw the car or aviation industries coming as a major sources of employment. Economists don't have a clue what is on the horizon, but history suggests that something always comes along.    

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3 hours ago, Derek Willis said:

I have an encyclopedia, printed in the 1950's, which has an article describing the wonders of automation. Back then it was seriously believed that when machines do everything, we humans will have lots of time to spend on leisure. The notion was that we would somehow be paid a proper income even if we aren't working!

A piece of evidence I can give to support my views is that since 1970 in the UK the unemployment rate has averaged 7.5%, with a low of 4% in 1973 and a high of 12% in 1984. The figure is currently 6%. Of course, people will say many new jobs are not real jobs, and that the figures are manipulated.

My point about the internet was that no one saw it coming as a source of major employment. At the end of the 19th century no one saw the car or aviation industries coming as a major sources of employment. Economists don't have a clue what is on the horizon, but history suggests that something always comes along.    

True we have no idea what sources of employment will come in the future but I'm betting most of those jobs won't go to humans.  Unlike the past the age of the robot is here and they are becoming more intelligent.  Not only will they take jobs, build themselves, they will eventually do their own repair work.  Even in China with their low wages people are being replaced with technology.  People are being replaced and will continue to be even as the population grows and more jobs are needed.

 

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19 hours ago, Ashotep said:

True we have no idea what sources of employment will come in the future but I'm betting most of those jobs won't go to humans.  Unlike the past the age of the robot is here and they are becoming more intelligent.  Not only will they take jobs, build themselves, they will eventually do their own repair work.  Even in China with their low wages people are being replaced with technology.  People are being replaced and will continue to be even as the population grows and more jobs are needed.

 

We will have to agree to disagree on this. Throughout history machines have been invented to replace humans. For example, way back someone in every family ground wheat using quern stones. Then wind and water operated flour mills were invented. Or, automation itself can lead to the creation of jobs. For example, cars were originally made entirely by hand. Hence they were expensive and so not many people could afford to buy them. Then, assembly lines were introduced - cars became cheaper, more people bought them, and huge numbers of jobs were created as assembly line workers. It is true that machines are increasingly replacing jobs in car manufacture, but times change.

I don't know what it is like in other countries, but in the UK many people who can't find "traditional" work are working in flexible "micro jobs", some on an employed basis and others on a self-employed basis. I know of someone who had been employed in banking but lost his job in the financial crisis of 2008, and now has seven or eight individual micro jobs. He works as an Uber driver, a fast-food deliverer, a copy editor, an online financial services adviser, and so on. Each job provides no more than five or six hours of work per week, but collectively he is able to pay his way in the world. He certainly does not consider what he does to be demeaning compared to when he spent forty hours a week stuck in front of a computer screen and being bellowed at by his manager.  

Perhaps in future, there will be an increasing need for flexible, multi-skilled workers, rather than traditional single-skill workers. Who knows? But I try to stay optimistic about the future, and remain convinced that there is always something over the horizon that will create jobs.

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Without jobs, who can buy the crap these robots are gonna spew out anyway? Seems counter productive.

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48 minutes ago, preacherman76 said:

Without jobs, who can buy the crap these robots are gonna spew out anyway? Seems counter productive.

Perhaps when the robots achieve self-awareness, they will start to buy things. How many self-respecting robots will want to be "naked" when they can buy themselves a nice dress?

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