Artificial Intelligence, why worry?

[Bill]

I think I’ve already told the story about how the facial recognition system at Manchester airport got it completely wrong when it accepted my image as being Irene. Well in Sainsbury’s yesterday I had another case where artificial intelligence seemed to throw a complete wobbler.

Until recently, to weigh vegetables, you popped them on the scale and choose what they were from an on-screen menu, but now, this has been replaced by a camera that scans the items on the scale and does this for you. Chuck on a green or overripe banana and right away it’s cleaver enough to recognise it and put up a picture of a perfect yellow banana. Impressive I thought, but that was only until I tried to weigh a small cabbage which it insisted was a pair of tomatoes.

You’d have thought it wouldn’t be too difficult to recognise the difference between small round red things and something that’s big, blobby and green. At first go it did throw up a picture of a cabbage but refused print a label, and after that it just continued to insist it was tomatoes. 😊

We sent men to the moon back in the sixties and look where we are now.

Technology; Don’t you just love it. 😊

Bloody software engineers are useless these days. Press 1 if you agree OR Press 1 if you disagree.

 

Bill 😊

[Observer II]

Looks like they're going to scrap self service - too much pilfering apparently !

[Bill]

I doubt that. It’s not for you or me but others love it, especially the growing techy generation. It won’t happen because it might affect their all-important market share so, they’d all have to agree to do it at the same time or not at all.

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

the one time i used self service i ended up with the woman who was there to help hovering around me.

five items and before i even scanned one she had to come over to help.

it was the i use my own bags bit on the screen, pressed that and put my bag on the side ready and all these alarms started going off.

it seems that it does not recognise a rucksack as a bag so spat it's dummy out until she overrode it.

oh and they don't like you trying to scan a 32" telly through the self service either as one guy last week found out.

i try not to use it as i like to keep the checkout people in a job and also the supermarket people wont give me a discount for doing theirs for them.

maybe i am getting more rebellious as i get older....

[Bill]

We often get through the normal checkout quicker than those waiting in the self-service queue and that’s with our full weekly shopping. The trick is to not just look how much stuff the people in front have in their trolly but the type of person buying it. Couples tend to pack shopping quickly, so the checkout person doesn’t have to slow down, while single older people might not have as much stuff but they’re usually slower at packing and tend to chat a lot.

Both systems use the same type of bar code scanners but while self-service folk waste a lot of time struggling to just find where the bar code is, a trained assistant could have scanned multiple items by then. The reall killer though is the "unexpexted item" that requires an assistant to come over to sort the problem out and the more you take through, the greater the chances of having this happen. Then there's the item with the recuced price stickers; I allways have my doubts about those. 

 

Bill 😊

[Evil Sid]

having worked behind the counter i very rarely have a problem with scanning bar codes having come across just about every problem with them you can imagine at one time or another.( i did notice that aldi have installed self service tills now)

i never pack at the till in a supermarket merely  shovel the items back into the trolley and then pack them into bags either on the window ledge if at aldi or on the seating if any where else. that way i can pack at my leisure and not hold anybody up dividing chilled and such into separate bags and deciding how much heavy stuff i can comfortably fit in before i need a forklift to get it in and out the trolley. any items that have security tags i put so they are last to be scanned, this gives me a few extra seconds to clear any backlog into the trolley whilst they are being removed and also get my wallet out ready to pay.

i don't mind shopping but do prefer to get it over and done with quickly. half an hour for a fortnights or more shopping is normal for me, even when they have had a change round as i very rarely impulse buy. internet is my friend there as any non - usual items i will look up before buying, also aldi special buys as well just in case they have anything that i might want or possibly find useful at some future date.