Publisher's Marketplace Amazon Just Walk Out *not really publishing related but very interesting

I was browsing Publisher's Marketplace for any interesting publishing related news, but what caught my eye was something else. In their headlines section, there was a link about Amazon using cashierless checkout technology. I was taken aback after reading the link. While this is not publishing related, I thought it was interesting the Publisher's Marketplace was headlining it.

Last week, I saw a meme about Amazon's cashier less checkout service, and I thought it was just that, a meme. I did not realize that it was an actual thing, which made me very unsettled. The idea is people who go shopping at an Amazon store (and soon other stores because Amazon is now sharing this technology with other stores) they can grab whatever items they want and just walk out. This will be automatically charged to their credit card, which they swipe when they initially come into the store. It doesn't explain how the technology works, but they somehow know what items you grab from the shelf, and whether you end up buying it, or if you end up putting it back on the shelf.

This is actually quite scary to me because it has your credit card information and tracks who you are, what you touch for pick up, where you go throughout the store, and what you end up buying (or not). To me this feels like something you'd read in a science fiction novel or watch in a movie. It also feels quite dystopian in that Amazon now knows everything about you.

I don't quite understand the purpose. If it is to ease the shopper's experience, I am not sure it actually achieves that. If I went to one of these stores, I'd actually be nervous and uncomfortable the entire time and would opt to ordering something online instead. This removes jobs fo humans and is giving them to robots or computers.  This is not a good thing in my opinion.

My final issue with this is that it doesn't actually explain the technology that is being used. They describe it as "a combination of sophisticated technologies" that "determines who took what" which really says nothing about how the technology at all. this is even more frightening because it seems as if the company is hiding the technology they are using, making it more suspicious.

For anyone who wants to read about it, the link is below.

https://www.justwalkout.com