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Amazon opens a store with no registers

Posted: Mon Dec 05, 2016 8:45 pm
by Captain Picard's Hair
I'd seen on some History channel show about supermarkets that this sort of evolution was expected. The store monitors customers' activity and charges you electronically for whatever you take out.

https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011#

On one hand it's very convenient for customers. On the other, it continues down the path of technology eliminating jobs. Just the other day I heard of a project to create self-driving long-haul trucks. Neither field offers especially great jobs, but they are in fact paying jobs (a lot of them at the moment).

Re: Amazon opens a store with no registers

Posted: Tue Dec 06, 2016 2:21 am
by Graham Kennedy
There is a hell of a lot of automation coming down the pipeline right now that is downright scary.

There are apps that can scan legal documents and find flaws in the legal language. Sounds unimpressive until you realise that something like 8 out of 10 lawyers spend their days doing that, without going anywhere near a courtroom. The apps can do it better, faster, and 24 hours a day. So there goes most of the legal profession.

As you say, there are unmanned trucks coming. Ditto unmanned taxi cabs. There goes two whole industries.

There are apps that can diagnose medical symptoms, and do it significantly better than the average GP can.

And so on. It's horrifying really - tens of millions of jobs may be about to go down the tubes, and we have absolutely no plan for what to do about it other than a vague hope that the market will work it all out.