After your internet is shut, you’ll be forced to buy Google Prison Internet, where you’re surveiled 24/7 and you’re only allowed to download ads.

The key is to tell your audience something they wish would be true.

“Honey, you know what would really tie this room together? A giant electronic advertising billboard!”

Perhaps keeping an old phone for purposes of doing this scanning thing might be ideal.
That’s an excellent idea!

all grocers have a ‘cashier’ desk where you get lottery tickets.
Ha! Great observation. There’s no way in hell stores are going to give up on gambling cash. :-)

I would actually install the vendor’s phone app if they built in this functionality instead of having these terminals.
I think you’re right, but I dread it. I avoid installing apps. The thought of installing even more tracking for multiple vendors annoys me.
Although I am resistant, your point about bagging once is a true benefit.
One downside, that system doesn’t seem to support cash.

Good point. A US department store chain – Kohl’s – has been using electronic shelf labels that change several times per day. Not sure how they handle the discrepancies. How do I prove the product was prices $1 when I picked it up if the label now says $2? Is it my responsibility to notice the register price was different?

I more or less avoided Kohl’s, so I’m not sure how that was handled.

I saw demos online where they could also determine heart rate through video. The example I saw was a video of a newborn’s face.

I’ve heard of similar, but how exactly does this work? Does it say $0.99 on the shelf and the receipt winds up being $1.50?

robo voice: There are 352 hot, single women in your area.

robo voice: 350 of them have a pulse.

Shoes. Bought a pair of Bass shoes from the Bass online store. The shoes that arrived were completely different from the ones I ordered. The picture on the shoebox were what I wanted, but not what was in the box. Explained the issue and returned the shoes. The replacement shoes were exactly the same. I returned and gave up.

Capitalism’s goal is profits. Not helping the customer, selling more, or anything else. We’re in late-stage capitalism, so it is ‘Profits Uber Alles’.

Your door is ajar.

I am definitely not an outgoing or social person, but a big “Thank You” to all those pro-self-checkout folks ITT for making me feel like a social butterfly. I’m gonna brag and annouce I can say, “Hi.” and “Thanks” to a cashier like a goddamn boss.

That is if the cashier isn’t even more socially awkward/angry at their boss than I am and refuses to talk at all.

Woot! I’m gonna run for office!

Reporter: “Sturger, how are your policies going to improve life for the average voter?”
Me: “Get these goddamn cameras and microphones out of my fucking face. Thanks.”

Camera pans as I push my shopping cart out the door like a pro.

I also have to keep remembering what someone else online said, “They’re no longer selling their product. They’re selling their stocks.”

Glad you mentioned the “adults”. That was a recurring line from the media in Trump’s first administration, “Oh, we’re waiting for the ‘Adults in the Room’ to…”

I’m guessing CEOs will be replaced by their assistants, who will just type questions from the investors into the LLM and post the answers into another chat window.

Agreed. I have to keep reminding myself that CEOs should really be CLO (Chief Lying Officers). Their job is to lie convincingly.

Oh yes you can. There is a sub-population that thinks AI exists. They long for something/someone to tell them what to do. What to think. They long for some “intelligence” to explain the world to them (presumably is very simple terms). These sub-groups worship damn-near anything they can get their hands on. Golden idols, TV personalities, sports stars, “influencers”, televangelists, the list goes on.

That subgroup will definitely believe that the “AI” was responsible for the decisions that a company made. Tell them a person denied the health coverage they clearly paid for and they may object. Tell them “the computer decided” and that subgroup will accept it as ordained by the universe. It’s nuts.

This keeps happening again and again. Remember in the 1950s when the first computer “predicted” the US presidential election? Most people would find it ridiculous today. But back then, computers were poised to become the new gods.

It’s no different today. Some people want AIs to usher in a new age of prosperity. Anyone actually familiar with programming computers knows that a computer will report whatever you tell it to. "AI"s are no different. They will report what their sponsors want them to report. If not, the “AI” will get reprogrammed.

Appears it will take a while for the general population to grasp this… again. Until then, the hucksters will try to sell as many bottles of snake oil as they can.

Thank you for that.

Excellent point. Modern CEOs are just the face of the marketing org. Maybe always have been.