What is so different about Amazon’s grocery store?

Amazon has created a store that’s called Amazon Go with no checkout lines–you just leave the store after you get what you want. It opened to the public on January 22, 2018 in Seattle.

To get into the store you need to swipe your phone using the Amazon Go app. Then, when you start taking your groceries, they have weighted sensors and cameras keeping track of what you have grabbed. It automatically puts what you have taken and into your virtual “cart” on the Go app. After you leave the store they will send a receipt to your Amazon account, then you will pay online later.

Amazon says that the technology made for the checkout is the same technology they used for their self-driving cars: “computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning.” They had the store in testing with their own employees for over a year before releasing it to the public.

If other retailers follow Amazon’s lead, the automatic checkout will make cashier jobs obsolete but there will be jobs there such as cooks, ID checkers for alcohol sales, and customer service representative to help with product returns or any other problems that can happen. Getting rid of the cashier job is a bad thing because there will be less jobs for people to get. Especially low-skilled, entry-level jobs that are increasingly outsourced to other countries.

On the day it opened, a news reporter named Deirdre Bosa was shopping there and got a free yogurt because it didn’t pick it up but it pick up all the other items she got. This is important because it shows that this error can happen again and maybe people will find a way to use it to get free items.

Amazon Go is a good idea because not having to stand in line will save customers time. But the negative consequence of this is people may lose their jobs.