You’ve probably heard or maybe even seen some of Amazon’s retail stores, Amazon Go, where you don’t need to visit a cashier. (Yes, way high surveillance state vibe.) That same tech is now being offered to other retailers.
The story appears here in Recode.
Amazingly, at least one retailer appears to be paying for it. Airport shop Cibo. And Amazon claims they’ve reached agreements to put it in more stores in the near future.
This is one of those head-scratchers. Sure, employers want to fire cashiers, though arguably, in small shops, people working the register are also doing other things, so not all cashiers will disappear. But people still pay in cash, and in some places, it’s now law that retail establishments have to accept cash.
What’s weird is that the data Amazon can gain from retailers is far more valuable to Amazon than it is to individual retailers. It’s very much the kind of market research Amazon can use to drive the stores using this tech out of business. Nothing like giving Amazon proprietary data on your business and trusting them to not use it for their own ends.
Of course, consumers seem pretty unaware that the data they hand over will be used against them. That’s not weird at all.
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