There’s no such thing as the implementation of anything new without a few speedbumps. It doesn’t matter whether you’re remodeling a bathroom, or migrating to a new CSM platform, everything is going to have hiccups, misses, bug reports, errors, and confusion before it can truly take. And sometimes it doesn’t take at all, like “Just Walk Out”.
If you’re a laggardly tech pessimist / righteous businessphobe like me, you’re already aware of how implementation isn’t always the be all end all right out of the gate. But if you’re a little more on the ‘companies pay the best to make the best’ side of things, you’ll need a bit more convincing to see the hot new stuff is usually colder and older than you give it credit for.
Try this for size, Amazon’s ‘Just Walk Out’ method of payment was never what it said it was.
The dummy thicc megacorp described its tech thusly late last year:
“The feat is a combination of computer vision, object recognition, advanced sensors, deep machine learning models, and generative AI—a type of artificial intelligence that has recently captured the public’s imagination.
“Without knowing the technology, it feels like magic,” says Gérard Medioni, vice president and distinguished scientist at Amazon. “But creating that magic—determining who took what—is harder than you think.” ”
Apparently it actually is pretty difficult.
Ars Technica, quoting The Information reports that Amazon is not only not implementing Just Walk Out in new stores, it’s also scrapping it in the old, and as the cherry on top, it never ONCE worked the way it was purported to in the first place.
Ron Amadeo’s article, cleverly subheaded “AI stands for Actually Indians”, says:
“A May 2023 report from The Information revealed the myriad tech problems Amazon was still having with the idea six years after the initial announcement. The report said that “Amazon had more than 1,000 people in India working on Just Walk Out as of mid-2022 whose jobs included manually reviewing transactions and labeling images from videos to train Just Walk Out’s machine learning model.”
So much for magic. As usual, there’s a swath of outsourced, underpaid work behind the curtain—all done to make a big company look even bigger for reasons I can’t begin to imagine. Rather than admit any failing, Amazon smartly swerved its way into introducing JWO’s less human-heavy replacement, the Dash Cart.
“We’ve also heard from customers that while they enjoyed the benefit of skipping the checkout line with Just Walk Out, they also wanted the ability to easily find nearby products and deals, view their receipt as they shop, and know how much money they saved while shopping throughout the store.”, said an Amazon rep, quoted in Amadeo’s article.
Not a bad spin!
Sneering up at a billions of dollars type of company is fine for my self esteem, but as always there are lessons to be learned.
One—despite what we might think, discounting the power of human workers behind anything is still a mistake. We’re complex creatures, and replicating our behavior isn’t flawless, easy, or cheap, and may not be for years. Don’t bank on building something intending to phase out the personnel factor because you might end up further in the red for longer than you (and any investors) expected. What can happen to this industry giant can certainly happen to your business.
Two—good PR means never having to say you’re sorry. Unless people actually die from your miscalculations, maneuvering around a ‘We messed up’ to say ‘We know our customers didn’t like how we zigged, so we’re improving things by zagging instead’ is pretty masterful, my ire aside.
So run your company doings like you’re my poor, sweet parents with their flood-induced bathroom overhaul. Look to keep people on hand long term, use your words, and DO NOT SWEEP until it’s irrefutably over.
