亞馬遜生鮮扼殺“Just Walk Out”(拿了就走)購物技術(shù)：它從來沒有真正發(fā)揮過作用
Amazon Fresh kills “Just Walk Out” shopping tech—it never really worked
譯文簡介
Just Walk Out技術(shù)簡單來說就是極大地簡化結(jié)賬流程，用戶只需要拿起物品就能離開商店，全程不需要排隊結(jié)賬。該系統(tǒng)利用攝像頭和傳感器追蹤顧客離開時的物品，并將費用計入他們進入商店時使用的支付賬號。只是效果似乎不盡如人意。
正文翻譯
插圖：亞馬遜生鮮店的“Just Walk Out”宣傳。
Amazon is giving up on the cashier-less "Just Walk Out" technology at its Amazon Fresh grocery stores. The Information reports that new stores will be built without computer-vision-powered surveillance technology, and "the majority" of existing stores will have the tech removed. In the early days, Amazon's ambitions included selling Just Walk Out to other brick-and-mortar stores. The problem was that the technology never really worked.
亞馬遜公司正在放棄在其生鮮門店內(nèi)使用無收銀臺模式的“Just Walk Out”（拿了就走）技術(shù)。據(jù)《The Information》報道，接下來即將建成的店鋪后續(xù)將不再使用計算機視覺監(jiān)控技術(shù)，“絕大多數(shù)”已經(jīng)采用此技術(shù)的現(xiàn)有門店也將取消這項技術(shù)。早期，亞馬遜公司曾有向其他實體店出售“Just Walk Out”技術(shù)的野心?？蓡栴}是，這項技術(shù)實際上從未真正發(fā)揮作用。
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亞馬遜公司正在放棄在其生鮮門店內(nèi)使用無收銀臺模式的“Just Walk Out”（拿了就走）技術(shù)。據(jù)《The Information》報道，接下來即將建成的店鋪后續(xù)將不再使用計算機視覺監(jiān)控技術(shù)，“絕大多數(shù)”已經(jīng)采用此技術(shù)的現(xiàn)有門店也將取消這項技術(shù)。早期，亞馬遜公司曾有向其他實體店出售“Just Walk Out”技術(shù)的野心?？蓡栴}是，這項技術(shù)實際上從未真正發(fā)揮作用。
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As it says on the tin, Just Walk Out was supposed to let customers grab what they wanted from a store and just leave, skipping any kind of checkout process. Amazon wanted to track what customers took with them purely via AI-powered video surveillance; the system just took a phone scan at the door, and shoppers would be billed later via their Amazon accounts.
正如其包裝盒上寫的那樣，“Just Walk Out”本應(yīng)讓顧客在商店里拿上想要的東西就走，而無需任何結(jié)賬程序。亞馬遜希望純粹通過人工智能驅(qū)動的視頻監(jiān)控技術(shù)來追蹤顧客帶走了什么；系統(tǒng)只需在門口進行手機掃描，購物者隨后就會通過亞馬遜賬戶收到賬單。
正如其包裝盒上寫的那樣，“Just Walk Out”本應(yīng)讓顧客在商店里拿上想要的東西就走，而無需任何結(jié)賬程序。亞馬遜希望純粹通過人工智能驅(qū)動的視頻監(jiān)控技術(shù)來追蹤顧客帶走了什么；系統(tǒng)只需在門口進行手機掃描，購物者隨后就會通過亞馬遜賬戶收到賬單。
When the technology was announced in 2016, Amazon's sales pitch asked, "What if we could weave the most advanced machine learning, computer vision, and AI into the very fabric of a store so you never had to wait in line?" The store was filled with 100-plus cameras and rigid item locations, all designed to try to make AI-powered computer vision checkout possible.
2016年宣布這項技術(shù)時，亞馬遜的銷售宣傳語是這樣的：“如果我們能把最先進的機器學(xué)習、計算機視覺和人工智能技術(shù)融合進到商店的結(jié)構(gòu)中，讓你永遠不用去排隊，那會怎么樣？”門店內(nèi)布滿了100多個攝像頭和剛性商品位置，所有這些都是為了讓人工智能驅(qū)動的計算機視覺結(jié)賬成為可能。
2016年宣布這項技術(shù)時，亞馬遜的銷售宣傳語是這樣的：“如果我們能把最先進的機器學(xué)習、計算機視覺和人工智能技術(shù)融合進到商店的結(jié)構(gòu)中，讓你永遠不用去排隊，那會怎么樣？”門店內(nèi)布滿了100多個攝像頭和剛性商品位置，所有這些都是為了讓人工智能驅(qū)動的計算機視覺結(jié)賬成為可能。
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."
2023年5月，《The Information》的一篇報道揭示了亞馬遜在最初宣布這一想法的六年后仍然面臨無數(shù)的技術(shù)問題。報道稱，“截至2022年年中，亞馬遜雇傭了1000多的印度人為Just Walk Out項目工作，他們的工作包括人工審核交易和標注視頻中的圖像，以訓(xùn)練Just Walk Out的機器學(xué)習模型”。
2023年5月，《The Information》的一篇報道揭示了亞馬遜在最初宣布這一想法的六年后仍然面臨無數(shù)的技術(shù)問題。報道稱，“截至2022年年中，亞馬遜雇傭了1000多的印度人為Just Walk Out項目工作，他們的工作包括人工審核交易和標注視頻中的圖像，以訓(xùn)練Just Walk Out的機器學(xué)習模型”。
Training is part of any AI project, but it sounds like Amazon wasn't making much progress, even after years of working on the project. "As of mid-2022, Just Walk Out required about 700 human reviews per 1,000 sales, far above an internal target of reducing the number of reviews to between 20 and 50 per 1,000 sales," the report said.
培訓(xùn)是任何人工智能項目的一部分，但聽起來亞馬遜似乎并沒有取得多大進展，即使在該項目進行了多年之后。報告稱：“截至2022年年中，Just Walk Out項目每千次銷售仍然需要約700次人工審核，遠遠超出了將審核數(shù)量減少到每千次銷售20至50次審核的內(nèi)部目標。”
培訓(xùn)是任何人工智能項目的一部分，但聽起來亞馬遜似乎并沒有取得多大進展，即使在該項目進行了多年之后。報告稱：“截至2022年年中，Just Walk Out項目每千次銷售仍然需要約700次人工審核，遠遠超出了將審核數(shù)量減少到每千次銷售20至50次審核的內(nèi)部目標。”
The report said Amazon's team "repeatedly missed goals" to cut down on human reviews, and "the reliance on backup humans explains in part why it can take hours for customers to receive receipts."
報告稱，亞馬遜的團隊“一再地未能完成減少人工審核的目標”，“對后臺人力工作的依賴在一定程度上解釋了為什么顧客（購物后）仍需要幾個小時才能收到賬單的問題”。
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報告稱，亞馬遜的團隊“一再地未能完成減少人工審核的目標”，“對后臺人力工作的依賴在一定程度上解釋了為什么顧客（購物后）仍需要幾個小時才能收到賬單的問題”。
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According to The Information report, the Just Walk Out tech was deployed in 20 Amazon Go stores, 40 Amazon Fresh grocery stores, and two Whole Foods stores. It had even gotten some third-party outlets on board, including "30 stores operated by other companies in US sports stadiums, 12 airports, and one university in Arlington, Virginia," the report said.
根據(jù)The Information的報道，Just Walk Out技術(shù)已部署在20家Amazon Go商店（無人便利店）、40家Amazon Fresh生鮮超市和兩家Whole Foods商店（全食超市，銷售天然食品和有機食品）。報道稱，它甚至還讓一些第三方門店加入進來，包括“美國體育場館中由其他公司運營的30家商店、12個機場和弗吉尼亞州阿靈頓的一所大學(xué)”。
根據(jù)The Information的報道，Just Walk Out技術(shù)已部署在20家Amazon Go商店（無人便利店）、40家Amazon Fresh生鮮超市和兩家Whole Foods商店（全食超市，銷售天然食品和有機食品）。報道稱，它甚至還讓一些第三方門店加入進來，包括“美國體育場館中由其他公司運營的30家商店、12個機場和弗吉尼亞州阿靈頓的一所大學(xué)”。
Amazon will be switching to a more reasonable cashier-less format: shopping carts with built-in checkout screens and scanners. Customers can leisurely scan items as they throw them in the "Amazon Dash Cart," and the screen will let them instantly see a running total of their purchases. The cart scanners also mean that Amazon no longer needs a small army of store employees to constantly tidy up the shelves so the camera-vision system can work.
亞馬遜將改用更合理的無收銀員模式：內(nèi)置結(jié)賬屏幕和掃描儀的購物車。顧客可以一邊悠閑地掃描商品，一邊把它們?nèi)舆M“亞馬遜Dash購物車”，屏幕上會立即顯示出他們的購物總金額。購物車掃描儀還意味著，亞馬遜不再需要一小隊商店員工來不斷整理貨架，以便攝像頭視覺系統(tǒng)能夠正常工作。
亞馬遜將改用更合理的無收銀員模式：內(nèi)置結(jié)賬屏幕和掃描儀的購物車。顧客可以一邊悠閑地掃描商品，一邊把它們?nèi)舆M“亞馬遜Dash購物車”，屏幕上會立即顯示出他們的購物總金額。購物車掃描儀還意味著，亞馬遜不再需要一小隊商店員工來不斷整理貨架，以便攝像頭視覺系統(tǒng)能夠正常工作。
Amazon sent along a statement on the news:
亞馬遜就這一消息發(fā)表了一份聲明：
亞馬遜就這一消息發(fā)表了一份聲明：
We’ve invested a lot of time redesigning a number of our Amazon Fresh stores over the last year, offering a better overall shopping experience with more value, convenience, and sextion—and so far we’ve seen positive results, with higher customer shopping satisfaction scores and increased purchasing. 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. To deliver even more convenience to our customers, we’re rolling out Amazon Dash Cart, our smart-shopping carts, which allows customers all these benefits including skipping the checkout line.
“去年，我們投入了大量時間重新設(shè)計了亞馬遜生鮮的一些店鋪，提供了更有價值、更方便、更多樣性的、更好的整體購物體驗--到目前為止，我們已經(jīng)看到了積極的成果，顧客的購物滿意度得分提高了，購買量也增加了。我們還從顧客那里了解到，雖然他們喜歡Just Walk Out帶來的省去排隊結(jié)賬的好處，但他們也希望能夠輕松找到附近的產(chǎn)品和優(yōu)惠，在購物時查看收據(jù)，并了解自己在整個商店購物時節(jié)省了多少錢。為了給顧客帶來更多便利，我們推出了亞馬遜Dash Cart智能購物車，讓顧客享受到包括跳過結(jié)賬排隊在內(nèi)的所有這些好處?！?br />
“去年，我們投入了大量時間重新設(shè)計了亞馬遜生鮮的一些店鋪，提供了更有價值、更方便、更多樣性的、更好的整體購物體驗--到目前為止，我們已經(jīng)看到了積極的成果，顧客的購物滿意度得分提高了，購買量也增加了。我們還從顧客那里了解到，雖然他們喜歡Just Walk Out帶來的省去排隊結(jié)賬的好處，但他們也希望能夠輕松找到附近的產(chǎn)品和優(yōu)惠，在購物時查看收據(jù)，并了解自己在整個商店購物時節(jié)省了多少錢。為了給顧客帶來更多便利，我們推出了亞馬遜Dash Cart智能購物車，讓顧客享受到包括跳過結(jié)賬排隊在內(nèi)的所有這些好處?！?br />
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I forget who, but someone started a joke that "AI" just stands for "Absent Indians".
我忘了是誰說的了，有人開玩笑說，所謂“AI”，其實就代表了“不在場的印度人”而已。
Worth noting that this isn't a case of "there was no AI, it's just people!". There was AI, it just sucked, and 70% of transactions had to be corrected by humans.
值得注意的是，這并不是一個“沒有人工智能，只有人！”的案例。人工智能確實是有的，只是很差勁，70%的交易必須由人工來糾正。
With humans fixing 70% of the work I'd hesitate to call this an AI system with human intervention and think of it more like a human system with some AI assistance.
既然70%的工作都是由人類完成的，我還是不太好說這是一個有人類干預(yù)的人工智能系統(tǒng)，我認為它更像是一個有人工智能輔助的人類系統(tǒng)。
It's actually worse than AI assistance. It's humans, at human speed, having to fix mistakes the computer has made at computer speed.
這其實比有人工智能輔助的人類系統(tǒng)還更糟糕。它是以人類速度的人去修正以計算機速度犯錯的計算機（的系統(tǒng)）。
I used this in the Seattle area several times. It seemed to work well and never gave me any issues.
On several occasions my friends and I discussed and mused about how it worked.
The part we couldn’t reconcile was that IF Amazon had the tech to do all of that completely automated then how did that not seem to exist elsewhere?
We ended up jokingly saying that there was probably a room full of folks just watching the cameras…I emphasize “jokingly” there!
我在西雅圖地區(qū)用過幾次。它看起來運行良好，從未給我?guī)砣魏螁栴}。
有好幾次，我和我的朋友們都在討論和思考它是如何工作的。
我們無法達成一致的是，如果亞馬遜擁有完全自動化的技術(shù)，那么為什么其他地方似乎不存在這種技術(shù)呢？
最后，我們開玩笑地說，可能有一屋子的人都在看攝像頭吧……我強調(diào)那時候可是在“開玩笑”！
This makes sense, if you're going to rigidly control the sextion to what a computer vision system can handle then you can also just put RFID on each container and have the cart scan it as it comes near.
In the real world even Walmart couldn't get all of their suppliers onboard with RFID enough to have universal adoption and even with universal adoption you still have produce to deal with (and packaging every bit of produce into plastic sucks from both a cost and environmental perspective).
Trying to eliminate the handful of checkout staff seems like a losing proposition to me, it's like Tesla trying to 100% automate battery pack assembly, it turns out to be premature optimization, a mix of automation and humans works well.
這是有道理的，如果你要嚴格控制計算機視覺系統(tǒng)所能處理的選擇范圍，那么你也可以在每個貨柜上安裝RFID（RFID一般指射頻識別技術(shù)），讓購物車在靠近時對其進行掃描。
在現(xiàn)實世界中，即使沃爾瑪也無法讓所有供應(yīng)商都采用RFID技術(shù)，而且即使采用了RFID技術(shù)，你仍然需要處理農(nóng)產(chǎn)品（從成本和環(huán)保的角度來看，用塑料包裝的農(nóng)產(chǎn)品都很糟糕）。
在我看來，試圖取消少量收銀員似乎是一個失敗的提議，這就像特斯拉試圖實現(xiàn)電池組組裝的100%自動化一樣，結(jié)果證明其優(yōu)化時機還不成熟，自動化和人工的結(jié)合效果相對更好。
This is borderline fraud, isn't it?
I'd imagine investors who thought Amazon had some advance ai and camera surveillance and was going to revolutionize the grocery shopping experience will be mad to learn it was actually just being run by humans.
這簡直就是欺詐，不是嗎？
我可以想象，那些以為亞馬遜擁有先進的人工智能和攝像頭監(jiān)控技術(shù)，并將徹底改變雜貨購物體驗的投資者，在得知亞馬遜的這個系統(tǒng)實際上只是由人類在后臺經(jīng)營時，一定會氣瘋了。
I'm a bit concerned that Amazon's public view is that people are now considered backup systems. They're not even bothering to hide it any more.
我有點擔心，亞馬遜的公眾觀點是，人現(xiàn)在被視為系統(tǒng)備份。他們甚至都懶得再掩飾了。
People are always backup for automated systems - at least to fix them when they break, and often to provide the service when the automated system can’t.
If it reaches the point that the “backup” ends up taking the load too much of the time, then you don’t really have an automated system.
人總是自動化系統(tǒng)的后備力量--至少人可以在系統(tǒng)故障時修復(fù)它們，而且經(jīng)常在自動化系統(tǒng)無法提供服務(wù)時提供服務(wù)。
可如果到了“備份”最終要承擔超多工作的地步，那么其實你就沒有真正的自動化系統(tǒng)了。
Their original view was "people aren't even necessary", which they publicly stated. "People as backup" is the result of the first goal failing.
他們最初的觀點是“其實根本不用人”，這也是他們公開聲明的?！叭俗鳛橄到y(tǒng)備份”是第一個目標沒有達成后的妥協(xié)。
Fantastic article so spot on. The illusion of "automation" when in reality is underpaid human hamster running in a wheel is everywhere (I work in IT)
精彩的文章，一針見血?！白詣踊钡募傧鬅o處不在，而真相是薪水極低的人類倉鼠在車輪上奔跑而已（我在IT部門工作）。
Doesn't seem to different from outsourcing clothing or technology production to Asia.
這和把服裝或技術(shù)生產(chǎn)外包給亞洲似乎也沒什么區(qū)別。
And isn’t this the truth about capitalism. It always was.
All the bunkum we’ve been told about capitalism feeds into this deception.
The interesting thing is how capitalists sneer at Com...ism socialism as failed projects but their arrogance on their own views means they’re blind to the basic fact that human beings are greedy and selfish and this is what caused socialism and Com...ism to fail and it will cause capitalism to die a death too.
這不就是資本主義的真相嗎？一直都是這樣。
我們被告知的關(guān)于資本主義的所有謬論都助長了這種欺騙。
有趣的是，資本家嘲笑共產(chǎn)主義社會主義是失敗的項目，但他們對自己觀點的傲慢意味著他們忽視了一個基本事實，即人類是貪婪和自私的，這既是導(dǎo)致社會主義和共產(chǎn)主義失敗的原因，也是導(dǎo)致資本主義死亡的原因。
If these so called miracle machines can effectively spy on you in a shop, who's to say they won't develop to the point where 1984 becomes a reality and they will be spying on you no matter where you go?
如果這些所謂的神奇機器可以在商店里有效地監(jiān)視你，誰又能保證它們不會發(fā)展到《1984》成為現(xiàn)實的地步，無論你走到哪里它們都會監(jiān)視你呢？