2018-01-22techcrunch.com

Overall I'm impressed with the seamlessness of the system, and I can see these things successfully operating here and there.

On the philosophical side, I'm troubled, of course -- a convenience store you just walk out of is a friendly mask on the face of a highly controversial application of technology: ubiquitous personal surveillance.

It's a bit overkill, I think, to replace a checker or self-checkout stand with a hundred cameras that unblinkingly record every tiny movement. What's to gain? 20 or 30 seconds of your time back? Lack of convenience has hardly been a complaint for this market -- it's right there in the name: "convenience store."

Seems obvious the big "win" here is for Amazon -- eliminating human employees. Though it's hard to fault any company for wanting to eliminate these sort of jobs (and who really "wants" such jobs anyways?)



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