Amazon unveils shopping cart that knows what you're buying

Amazon unveils shopping cart that knows what you're buying

...before you do?

i constantly use the cart as a PDA holder. the PDA has my grocery list and gets picked up and put down in the cart at least 20 times in a typical shopping trip, especially in the produce area.

So if you know somebody’s Amazon password, you have free shopping for life?

I prefer to do my shopping dumb and pay cash. No thanks, Amazon.

This is so cool! I have always felt the need for a way faster method to pay for my groceries, especially in these times, where we need to do social distancing and refrain from staying in closed environments with strangers for long.

Really excited to see this tech grow and be the norm in as early as the next year. Surely as with any other tech this one also has some downsides, but for me the positives outweigh those pitfalls.

And as far as people working in the stores are concerned, I am optimistic that the industry will find a new way to employ them. Similar ground breaking tech will directly or indirectly create new opportunities for these people, though they will definitely need to up their skills too.

A shopping cart that you give your shopping list to and it drives itself in the fastest route to stop in front of each item on your list, going to the first item until you place it in the trolley. Then it moves itself to the next item on your list. That would be helpful.

I'm okay with this so long as the Cart doesn't make an audible ( verbal ) sound indicating what you've dropped in the basket. If I want to slip some snacks or cheese into the basket without the significant other catching on, that thing had better be quiet.

We all do it at some point. The wife says you can't eat those red hot sausages. So you slip them into the basket under something so she doesn't see. You know she's going to run off somewhere while you are at the register.

I have to have my Lady Borden strawberry ice cream. That cart better be quiet or it just might find itself rolling down a hill.

Some people will fight change until the day they die. I'm not one of them (unless this brings about new ethical questions about advertising or workers' rights).

Uniqlo has this new automatic self-checkout system, and it works brilliantly. The store can be jam packed with customers but the lines are kept to a minimum. You drop your basket and the items within on the scanner, and everything you're about to pay for is shown on the screen. If everything's in order, you pay, and you're on your merry way.

You can complain all you like and try to fight it, but the future really, really does not care what you think. It's happening.

And please, just check your receipts like you normally would if a human were to handle your payment. Human error is more likely than computer error.

I would miss the human contact.

Just another way they spy on you.

I'm okay with this so long as the Cart doesn't make an audible ( verbal ) sound indicating what you've dropped in the basket.

And some people like to buy condoms discreetly.

No. Amazon doesn't need to know what I'm buying. Nobody does. People constantly express fear of being spied on by "the government" while blithely letting some very big and powerful corporations know the most intimate details of your life. And worse yet they sell what they know about you at considerable profit to anyone willing to pay. Siri and Alexa know what is going on in your home. Unless you use something like TOR and/or a secure VPN, Google, Apple and every other firm knows what you do on-line. If you don't pay cash the merchants you frequent know your buying history. Have you ever wondered why ads pop up on your "smart" phone for stuff in the isle of the store you are in? They know where you are in the store by tracking your cell phone. It's too much. Don't let the seeming convenience fool you. Nothing good comes from big corporations knowing about you.