[alexwhb]

So true. And when autonomous driving finally get to the safety levels where society accepts it… that will be a shocking number of jobs taken. Also Amazon is going to start selling their self checkout technology to stores… so most cashiers will definitely be out of work in the next decade if not sooner.

[bradknowles]

What we know of the current Amazon technology is bad enough that Amazon keeps closing stores. It's just not profitable enough to keep them open.

Now, maybe what they're thinking is that these stores were just a training exercise and known to be unprofitable from Day One, and now those training exercises are over so they can start shutting them down. Dunno -- I have no inside information on this.

But I wouldn't be looking to Amazon to solve all these problems for all the retailers. At least, not until they can come out with better technology.

[alexwhb]

Fair point, but then again… self checkout sucks!! And it’s everywhere. point being maybe it doesn’t have to be very good if it saves companies money. I hope that I’m wrong, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised

[bradknowles]

Self checkout as we know it today sucks. Imagine if you could do it based on RFID tags and just walk past with everything still in your cart. Of course, you'd have to make sure that you don't get double billed for anything, and you don't get billed for anything that someone else has nearby.

But if you got properly billed for only the things in your own cart, and that RFID scanning process was quick and easy, then I'm not sure it would suck so bad.

[alexwhb]

Totally agree. I’d actually prefer this type of system if it’s in fact faster than checkout with a cashier. Especially now that it seems many markets have dramatically cut down on staff and it can take shocking amounts of time to checkout.