The article starts by blaming AI for the reduced food menu, a speculative claim which the author made no attempt to validate and which is almost certainly incorrect. I stopped reading right there.
> You place all your items on the white shelf with some space between them. Although they were clearly designed to be a self-checkout experience, the stadium had a staff member rearrange your items, then for about 30 seconds the kiosk would be thinking. After, it would pop up all items on the menu, and the staff member would have to tap to confirm what each item was.
Maybe we're just calling all forms of automation and computer vision "AI" these days because it's sexy. Anyway: any automation that requires a human staff member to intervene to complete every run is not automation: It's just adding unnecessary technology and making the process worse. Imagine if each grocery store self-checkout required a human staff member to scan items, re-arrange things, and confirm checkout.
Isn't this the purpose of a lot of AI? To provide "good enough" alternatives to human labor. Why would anyone expect AI to make things better rather than cheaper or more profitable?
In this particular case, it seems mostly use cases that were solved some decades ago with _barcodes_, so it's not even cheaper or more profitable. There's already an alternative to human labour which works for better for this sort of application.
I was recently at an events center, that has replaced all of their vending machines with machines that require me to install an app(!) to purchase a product. Literally, didn't take cash or credit - just via app.
Per the marketing on the side, this is meant to be for my benefit in order to earn "points" and get offered "deals." I don't think I have to tell you that I did NOT install the app, and just walked further to buy one from a vendor.
There is a massive arrogance problem within tech. Everyone thinks their product should be the center of everyone else's universe. The best products are invisible/get out of the way.
It's not tech related. Previously, they all did this with various cards. People were walking around with a giant stack of loyalty or store credit cards in their wallet with a rubber band wrapped around it.
There is a store I shop at where every purchase, they ask every single customer if they "have a phone number with them", which they can type in on the point of sale device. I've waited behind people trying to remember their old phone number.
We had a card for earning points across multiple brands of supermarkets and other kinds of consumer shops.
One of those chains, Rewe, decided they didn't want to share the points with the others and went ahead, creating their own mobile app for consumer points.
The remaining chains, not wanting to stay behind, decided to do exactly the same.
Now almost every chain has withdrawn from the card program, moved into their own little app, and expect every customer to install all their apps.
I refuse to follow along, and get into interesting discussions, because employees naturally following orders that they have to nag everyone, cannot understand that I rather pay more than installing and giving my data to every chain in exchange for a few euros in discounts.
Once you enter the stadium or a concert, you become a part of the captive market. There exists an incentive to limit your choices and extract as much value out of you as possible. The limit to that is mostly defined by the organizer decency and the amount of pushback.
The experience is usually better at the smaller venues that aren't a part of strong fandom and more sensitive to the customer sentiment: indie cinemas, comedy clubs, etc.
> The person in front of me bought two items and saw she got charged for three. Since there were no paper receipts, she took a photo of the machine before going to the guest services to complain. I missed ten minutes of the game getting water.
I wish payment processors / consumer protection would have a significant penalty for sloppy overcharges. I've had to deal with sloppy overcharges like this (one for over $1,000) and you lose a lot of time and the outcome is just 'oppsies, my bad'. There's very little repercussion for sloppy overcharges so it's easy for them to perpetuate.
Back in the olden times overcharging like that would be dealt with the same way as theft would. I'm not entirely convinced it's the wrong way to go about things. It's how the concept of a bakers dozen came to be. Better give everyone 13 in a dozen, just in case you ever miscount.
Circle K has had these rolled out in Arizona for several years now, and honestly they're pretty flawless there. I've used the self checkout hundreds of times at this point, and Circle K has a pretty huge selection of products. When it's 2AM and you're waiting to buy a monster, it's nice not having to wait 45 seconds for the one clerk to finish that they're doing so they can ring you up.
I'm not sure why the performance at this stadium was so vastly different.
Maybe they can only sell 30% as much stuff because it's so slow, but it sounds like they probably laid off at least 50% of their previous staff -- so everybody wins!
This isn't just enshittification, it's hostile software [0]. When you dominate a space, for example being the only vendor in the stadium, you can impose whatever you want on customers. There are no options, you can tell customers to select between yes or ok, this is the only way to pay for hotdogs now. As an LA resident, the rate at which we implement these broken and invasive services is alarming.
Tangential: Can someone more in the know answer this for me? What happened to RFID for things like this? I know it is used elsewhere but it seems like that would be a much faster and lighter weight solution for self-checkout.
RFID still costs several cents per sensor. At suparmarkets, this is a non-starter, but for some retailers, like Uniqlo, it's acceptable.
You would think that overpriced concessions would be a great place for this because it can be very fast and accurate but I think this would require the food handler to make sure to use a different tray or container for each differently priced item, etc. And there may just be enough items that would be hard to affix an RFID to (metal can, etc) that would make it unfeasible.
People overestimate computer vision and other AI capabilities. A few days ago I had a relative struggle to open some fancy cosmetics box. Another relative decided it would be helpful to photograph it and send it to ChatGPT for help. Coincidentally, not that long ago I also heard someone telling about the recent AI advances on the radio and talking how they send photos of things and ChatGPT helps them figure out how to use them instead of reading those boring manuals.
I guess that's what marketing does to the people. But also it doesn't take many failures and broken expectations until those people decide that it's not worth the effort and stop using these tools entirely.
Author went on to claim smaller portions as the closing line of the article but only pictured 2024 meals and 2025 machines and lineups for said machines.
An opportunity to post facts was lost, and for now until it won't, remains anecdotal.
I was at a ballpark and they had self checkout everywhere, except they were usually manned by staff. So I picked out my item, put it on the scanner, and then the staff member would select the checkout button on the screen. Literally that was all they did. And then the screen asked for a tip and the person stared at me expectantly like they had just carried my luggage up two flights of stairs.
>On the bright side, the billionaire stadium owners probably got to reduce their staff in the process while maybe increasing profits.
This is the root problem. When you take people out of the economy, what's the point of having such an economy? Such an economy cannot last indefinitely and will eventually be replaced by one that will.
The owners see you as just another rube to be fleeced, and well, they have no reason to change their behavior. You still bought the tickets and you still bought their concessions. The team is not a gang of hometown heroes offering a slice of Americana, they are a faceless corporation whose sole purpose is maximum revenue extraction. The only thing that will ever send them a clear message is voting with your feet.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 57.1 ms ] threadMaybe we're just calling all forms of automation and computer vision "AI" these days because it's sexy. Anyway: any automation that requires a human staff member to intervene to complete every run is not automation: It's just adding unnecessary technology and making the process worse. Imagine if each grocery store self-checkout required a human staff member to scan items, re-arrange things, and confirm checkout.
Per the marketing on the side, this is meant to be for my benefit in order to earn "points" and get offered "deals." I don't think I have to tell you that I did NOT install the app, and just walked further to buy one from a vendor.
There is a massive arrogance problem within tech. Everyone thinks their product should be the center of everyone else's universe. The best products are invisible/get out of the way.
There is a store I shop at where every purchase, they ask every single customer if they "have a phone number with them", which they can type in on the point of sale device. I've waited behind people trying to remember their old phone number.
We had a card for earning points across multiple brands of supermarkets and other kinds of consumer shops.
One of those chains, Rewe, decided they didn't want to share the points with the others and went ahead, creating their own mobile app for consumer points.
The remaining chains, not wanting to stay behind, decided to do exactly the same.
Now almost every chain has withdrawn from the card program, moved into their own little app, and expect every customer to install all their apps.
I refuse to follow along, and get into interesting discussions, because employees naturally following orders that they have to nag everyone, cannot understand that I rather pay more than installing and giving my data to every chain in exchange for a few euros in discounts.
The experience is usually better at the smaller venues that aren't a part of strong fandom and more sensitive to the customer sentiment: indie cinemas, comedy clubs, etc.
I wish payment processors / consumer protection would have a significant penalty for sloppy overcharges. I've had to deal with sloppy overcharges like this (one for over $1,000) and you lose a lot of time and the outcome is just 'oppsies, my bad'. There's very little repercussion for sloppy overcharges so it's easy for them to perpetuate.
I'm not sure why the performance at this stadium was so vastly different.
[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/hostile-not-enshittification
You would think that overpriced concessions would be a great place for this because it can be very fast and accurate but I think this would require the food handler to make sure to use a different tray or container for each differently priced item, etc. And there may just be enough items that would be hard to affix an RFID to (metal can, etc) that would make it unfeasible.
I guess that's what marketing does to the people. But also it doesn't take many failures and broken expectations until those people decide that it's not worth the effort and stop using these tools entirely.
An opportunity to post facts was lost, and for now until it won't, remains anecdotal.
This is the root problem. When you take people out of the economy, what's the point of having such an economy? Such an economy cannot last indefinitely and will eventually be replaced by one that will.