Is it true that in smart stores without a cash desk from Amazon a thousand Indians worked instead of artificial intelligence?

In April 2024, a wide resonance caused the news that in Amazon offline stores, instead of the declared artificial intelligence, hundreds of Indians who watched buyers on video cameras performed work. We checked whether this is so.

Publications that Amazon allegedly closes its stores with Just Walk Out ("I took it and go"), Began to appear first in the American press, and then in the Russian -speaking media. April 3 edition RBC wrote that instead of AI, the goods scanned 1000 Indians, and the publication on the site NTV I went out under the heading "The work of the neural network in Amazon smart stores performed thousands of Indians." Portal "Gorodche"Described what happened as follows:" The largest scam in the field of AI. 1000 Indians replaced artificial intelligence. Amazon admitted in a major scam. " Commented on the news in the State Duma of the Russian Federation - by opinion Deputy of Alexei Govirin, “Russia should not contact Amazon,” because “instead of taking ten cashiers and security guard, the company exploited a thousand hubs.” A similar statement was published by the publication "Cold":" Amazon gave out thousands of Indians for artificial intelligence ", but in fact," the cashiers were simply transferred to another place. " Messages about the scam parted in Telegram - for example, the channel "Ax 18+"(3 million views at the time of writing this analysis) noted:“ It turned out that there was no artificial intelligence, ”but“ ”VPSh"(500,000 views) wrote that" Technology [Amazon] turned out to be a fake. " “The buyers through the cameras watched a thousand low -paid Indians - they looked at what goods you took and made a purchase,” the publication said.

Technology Just Walk Out -Development of Amazon, which allows offline stores to serve customers without cash desks and sellers. At the entrance to the store are turnstiles, for the entrance you need to scan the QR code in the Amazon Go application. In the trading floor, the buyer can take the goods from the shelf and put it in a bag or pocket - then the product is included in the preliminary list of purchases (if you return the goods to the place, it will be removed from the list). When a person leaves the store through the same turnstiles, the application fixes the final list of purchases, and after a couple of minutes he sends an electronic check and write off the fee from the account in Amazon.

From a technical point of view, such smart stores work something like this: at the time of scanning the QR code, the camcorders read and remember its physical characteristics, and motion sensors and microphones begin to track the movement of a person along the trading floor. The system of infrared sensors and weight sensors recognizes what goods the visitor took from the shelf and put in the bag, and which he returned to the place. By information On the site Amazon, Just Walk Out combines the same technologies as unmanned cars: Computer vision (AI area associated with the analysis of images and video), Sensory data merger (building a single picture based on information received from different sensors) and Deep training (type of machine learning, which, using artificial neural networks, provides digital systems with the ability to study and make decisions based on unstructured data).

Amazon Started Just Walk Out technology development in 2012. Four years later, the company opened the first test store for its employees, and two years later launched the first offline store for the general public. Later the system Implemented Amazon Go, Amazon Fresh, supermarkets of other large retailers and minimarkets at stadiums, airports and other institutions in the USA, Great Britain, Canada and Australia. In 2018, the founder of Amazon Jeff Bezos in his annual Letter to shareholders He wrote that Just Walk Out technology is a way to “get rid of the worst that is in physical retail trade: queues for the cashier.”

So, did Just Walk Out really not have the Just Walk Out, but a thousand people from India, who remotely watched buyers and manually brought them to purchases in a check? For the first time, the mention of the thousand Indians employed in the project appeared in the publication The Information in May 2023, but how noted After almost a year, the authors themselves, then left without much attention. They suggested that this could have happened due to the "lack of skepticism in relation to any technology related to artificial intelligence." The Information It was reported that the Just Walk Out project involves more than a thousand employees, mainly based in India. Then the representative of Amazon confirmedthat the company hired people in this country to find videos, but did not specify how much they were and what exactly they did. April 2, 2024, Amazon Vice President Tony Hoggett in an interview for the publication of The Information declared On the termination of use by Just Walk Out in Amazon Fresh supermarkets. And when in the article with an interview, the publication again mentioned the team from India in the context of some difficulties that Just Walk Out developers faced, then the detail about a thousand Indians and received so much attention in the media.

However, in publications accusing Amazon of deceit, there is great inaccuracy regarding why Just Walk Out technology, in addition to AI, was needed so many employees. AI system requires constant adjustments, and even the simplest neural network must first be trained in a huge number of examples with already Submitted data. In the case of Just Walk Out, this could be, for example, prepared personnel with customers who perform a certain action, and notes about what a person does. This method of teaching the neural network is called "Training with the teacher". That is, before the AI ​​can independently and qualitatively analyze the data, a person must prepare thousands of samples for him with explanations. In a conversation with Quartz, an unnamed former Amazon employee, who worked with Just Walk Out, explainedthat his Indian colleagues were engaged in marking data for teaching AI-model and that this is a common practice in machine learning. Also a team from India Revealled Video purchases marked with the neural network itself as “Events with a low degree of confidence”, that is, the results of its analysis in which errors are likely. In such cases, people watched the videos and, if necessary, recalculated the amount in the buyer’s check.

Initially, Amazon assumedthat, as II-models improved, no more than 5% of purchases will have to double-check. At the time of the Just Walk Out launch in 2016, a person consultation It was required In almost all cases, by the middle of 2022, the number of inspections decreased to 70%, and in April 2024, by words The former Amazon developer decreased to 20-50%, which was still many times higher than the initial plan of the company. At the same time, the Amazon press service in the comments by USA Today She saidthat “employees are checking only a small share of purchases” and that “from year to year the number of resolving people It is reduceddespite the scaling of the project. " For those sprinkled with the substitution of AI by employees from India, the representative of Amazon Sarmiste Ramsha objectedthat these employees only annotate video images in order to improve the model underlying Just Walk Out technology.

Such an insurance of artificial intelligence human is used everywhere, especially at the stage of training of AI models. For example, Openai -Chatgpt creator-in 2023 he paid thousands of freelancers of $ 15 per hour to write the offered answers to questions from the chatbot users, which were then used to teach AI. The company offered about the same amount Invisible For writing training conversations in which the employee alternately acted as a user and neural network. For labeling data for unmanned vehicles, some freelancers Received $ 1 per hour. Amazon even has a special platform for hiring such employees - Amazon Mechanical Turknamed after chess machine The XVIII century, in which a living chess player actually hid, issuing his moves per game of a smart car.

Human labor is widely used not only for AI training, but also to secure and correct the mistakes made by them. For example, Cruise's unmanned taxi at the testing stage Demanded The distance intervention of the man-man every 7-8 km, when the “robots drivers” fell on the road in a difficult situation. And ChatGPT freelancers Corrected Chatbot answers marked with users as poor-quality. Despite the rapid development of AI, it still relies in many ways on huge human resources.

Nevertheless, Amazon is really decided Refuse the use of Just Walk Out in your Fresh supermarkets for a number of reasons. According to the former employee of the company, whom the Quartz publication spoke with, the management planned to do this for almost a year - the technology worked well in small stores with a small choice of goods and a stream of people, but for large outlets it turned out to be inappropriate. Weight sensors for tracking purchases, bypassing cameras in reliability, were too expensive to manufacture ($ 350 each), and the share of the recruiting by people, although it was reduced, was still much higher than the planned 5%.

In many publications The closure of Amazon stores with Just Walk Out technology not only distorted the role in the project of employees from India, but also other inaccuracies are allowed. Firstly, this technology leaves only from Amazon Fresh supermarkets in the United States, but it will still be Applied in Amazon GO stores, some points of Amazon Fresh in the UK and more than 130 third -party stores In airports, educational institutions and cafes. Secondly, Amazon Fresh stores in the USA Do not close, just replacing Just Walk Out technology will come a new gadget - smart carts Dash Cartwho scan the goods in them. Some Amazon Fresh supermarkets are already several years old Use Both technologies simultaneously, in addition to the traditional method of paying for purchases at the checkout for those who are not a client of Amazon.

Thus, the allegations that the Just Walk Out technology turned out to be a fake and that there was no artificial intelligence, and a thousand Indians worked instead of it, do not correspond to reality. Employees (how many of them were completely incomprehensible, but most of them were really in India) carried out the usual work on data markings, training of the model and correct the errors made. The decision to abandon Just Walk Out in Amazon Fresh stores was due to many inaccuracies in the operation of AI and the high cost of equipment. At the same time, the model successfully showed itself in small stores, so it will continue to work in dozens of locations in the USA, Great Britain, Canada and Australia.

Photo on the cover: Wikimedia Commons

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