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Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

AI has value the way self-checkout has value: it's anti-consumer and widely hated, but it (can) save the companies money and will therefore be too widespread for anyone to opt out.

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Self-checkout has its uses and supporters. Introverts, the socially anxious, people in a hurry, people who'd much prefer to bag (or double/triple bag) their own items in ways that work best for them, people who want to get the organic tomato at the price of the non-organic one.

It's absolutely still a scheme by companies to get rid of employees and get customers to do work for them for free, and there are still issues with the systems not working very well, but we at least have the option (in almost all cases) to queue up at the one or two registers with an employee doing the work. When it comes to AI, we're often not being given any choice at all. Even if we can avoid using it, or somehow avoid seeing it, we will still be training it.

> people in a hurry

Huh, I always thought it was the opposite: If you're in a hurry, you go through traditional check-out. Nothing really matches the speed of an experienced and trained grocery store checkout clerk whizzing boxes past the scanner faster than you can load them into your cart. I think traditional checkout can blaze through 30 grocery items before I can even get three or four out of my cart, fumble around with them in front of the scanners, and then get chastised and stopped by the computer because I didn't place the item properly on the shelf next to the checkout machine.

If I’m buying one thing then it’s much faster to self checkout than have to wait in line.

I agree with you for large purchases.

There are 4-12 self-checkout kiosks and the loads there tend to be smaller. So the line moves. Speed of checkout once you reach the clerk in a traditional lane, hands-down faster than self.

Plus traditional is where you buy alcohol.

I've seen liquor stores that handle alcohol sales through self-checkout without friction. They don't check IDs 99% of the time, which I suspect could get them in some trouble, but instead the monitoring employee basically looks at you and makes a judgement call on your age and if you're clearly not a child they approve it before you're even done scanning.

What state or territory does that? Not a challenge, just curious, there are over 50 to track.

Polish Lidl works like that. You self-checkout alcohol and some store employee gets notified. They look at you and approve remotely. If you scan alcohol first, they will likely do that before you finish checkout and there is no waiting involved.

so far I've only seen it in the midwest - WI and IL

Do you remember "10 items or fewer" lines in grocery stores? I suspect self checkout is the reason they no longer exist. It was a fair trade.

Some variant of express lanes (may be >10 or <10 items) still exist in most of the grocery stores I frequent.

This lines up with my experience loitering in the soup aisle and stopwatching the grocery checkouts: https://bobbiechen.com/blog/2022/2/17/let-them-check-you-out

It's certainly a way to cut costs. It's also, for a few conveniently handled bar-coded items, generally faster and more convenient than waiting in line behind a person with a shopping cart full of items. (Yes, there are express lanes but they're often not that express.)

I like self checkout for medium to small shops (which is pretty much all I do since my local small supermarket is 100 metres down the road). Before they put in the self checkouts there was always a huge queue for the registers and I avoided shopping there; now I almost never have to queue and it's much faster to get in, pick up a dozen items and get out.

Self-checkout has come a long way IMO. I love not having to queue as long or speak to staff. The occasional "unknown item" still happens, but it's worth it. Even better are the ones in smaller shops that don't have a weighing sensor.

Stores seem to have dialed down some of the sensitivity. I don't know the last time I've run into a complaint because I used my own bag or something else that affects weight. One of my regular grocery stores doesn't have self-checkout. The other one has both and I'll wait for a cashier if I have a lot of items, especially produce. But if I have a handful of barcoded items I'll use self-checkout unless there is a cashier's lane with literally no wait.

I donno I like AI, I don't use it often but when I do I've found it useful and impressive. It's really improved quality of life when it comes to having something to read over my work or help with finding small bits of info. I also like self checkout because this it reduced wait times at the store.

I think people are always resistant to change. People didn't like ATMs when they first came out either. I think it's improved things.

Getting cash used to be a royal PITA. Not that I need much cash these days but it used to mean going out at lunch during bank hours and waiting in line.

you get the employees rebate at selfcheckout

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