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San Francisco Gets Its First Cashierless Store (cnbc.com)
Last Week, San Francisco got its first completely automated cashierless store, called Standard Market. The store requires users to download their app before they can enter the 1,900-square-foot building. Once they do that, they can enter the store, grab the items they need, and walk out -- all without ever interacting with a cashier. The 27 cameras positioned on the ceiling are supposedly able to identify which items shoppers walk out with. CNBC reports: The start-up behind this operation is Standard Cognition, which has raised $11.2 million in venture capital and formed partnerships with four retail chains around the world. This first market is a prototype to showcase the technology and work on the bugs. The ambitious goal is to add the tech in 100 stores a day (each day!) by 2020. Five of the seven founders came from the Securities and Exchange Commission, where they built artificial intelligence software to detect fraud and trade violations, before starting Standard Cognition in 2017. Now these fraud experts are working to discern something equally complicated: whether I am stealing a snack. The store is very similar to Amazon's cashierless Go market, but differs in that it relies exclusively on the ceiling cameras and AI software to figure out what you're buying. "The goal is to predict, and prevent, shoplifting, because unlike Amazon's Go stores, which have a subway turnstile-like gate for entry and exit, Standard Market has an open door, and the path is clear," reports CNBC. "Once the system decides it has detected potential theft behavior, a store attendant will get a text and walk over for 'a polite conversation,' Standard Cognition's co-founder and chief operating officer, Michael Suswal, said."
Will this stop exiting shoppers who have "sampled" fresh produce? Will the attendant make the grazing shopper pay for that grape? Now that they've told us the cameras monitor changes in gaze and gait for could not someone practice theft techniques - to perfect a theft without altering known behaviors? Do people from different cultures exhibit different bodily movements when preparing to commit a theft? But, no cash in the store no cash robberies.
People can already do this with regular stores. The fact that regular stores have cashiers is not what stops people doing this.
Since you apparently need an app to get it, I'm guessing that they already have your credit card on file and just bill you for it. The cameras are going to have a record of it as well.
Of course that doesn't stop someone from stealing a phone and using it to gain entry. I'd like to think that someone thought of that possibility and there's already a system in place to handle this, but I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't either.
This is San Francisco, where what counts is that you had good intentions. Actual consequences of your actions? Consequences smaushcequences.
Free the minks!
I agree. There was an electronics store that had a security guy at the exit demanding... something. I just told him to piss off. But for some reason, I put up with Sam's club exit checkers. Is this hypocritical?
A dingo ate my sig...
Does it have a robot to clean up after the vagrants shit on the floor?
Of course that doesn't stop someone from stealing a phone and using it to gain entry.
If you steal a phone, why would you go to where the phone is identified while your face is recorded by 27 cameras?
Even thieves aren't that stupid.
:LOL: Wanna bet?
I agree. There was an electronics store that had a security guy at the exit demanding... something. I just told him to piss off. But for some reason, I put up with Sam's club exit checkers. Is this hypocritical?
No since you probably signed contract when getting you membership that said that required to let them check you on the way out in exchange for shopping there. While best buy or whoever has no such stipulation and just try to any way.
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.