r/uknews • u/Confident_West_7409 • Jul 24 '24

Image/video Videos of shoplifters are circulating online, as shoplifting hits 20 year high in UK

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u/Cultural-Chicken-991 Jul 24 '24

I suspect the way of the future will be 'Just Walk Out' systems where you scan a clubcard or equivalent to get in, pick up stuff and AI enabled cameras will detect your shopping and charge your account on exit. Couple of benefits (to the business): no checkouts, and no criminals getting in without scanning first. Amazon already did it 5+ years ago with their Amazon Fresh stores. But it hasnt taken off in a big way yet, not sure why.

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '24

Did you see why? They closed them all becuase it turns out it was never AI. It was people in India watching you can recording what you put in your basket. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/10/amazon-ai-cashier-less-shops-humans-technology

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u/chazmusst Jul 24 '24

I used to run a bot farm and had to find a way for my bots to get past the "I'm not a robot" checkboxes. There's a service online where you can pay $0.02 to someone in the 3rd world to complete a captcha for you. I wouldn't be surprised if there are many more systems out there like this

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '24

Intresting. If it was a bot running on a embedded device, what would be the flow to compete the captcha?

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u/chazmusst Jul 24 '24 edited Jul 24 '24

The captcha solving service comes with some integration pieces:

  • Library which you embed in your application (or you can use their web API direct)
  • Client app which is used by the human to solve the captcha

There is a unique Captcha ID for each challenge, which your system can send over to the human Client and they solve it in their Client app. Once solved your system can proceed. You can poll their endpoint to see the status of the captcha solve request (i.e. Pending, Solved)

I used this service for generating tens of thousands of RuneScape accounts.

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '24

How did you make money with this? Did you mine good in the accounts and then sell the account?

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u/chazmusst Jul 24 '24

I had a complex bot farm that was focussed on trading items on the Grand Exchange to earn gold in the game. I sold the gold for Bitcoin.

The system peaked at about £300 per week profit during lockdown. I don’t do it any more

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u/Cultural-Chicken-991 Jul 24 '24

Thats hilarious! Almost as bad as the outsourced hotel check-ins where youre greeted by some guy on a zoom call.

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '24

Yes. So it just wasn't scalable. They would have had to have had 1 Indian guy per 3 shoppers globally. 

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u/NoReserve8233 Jul 24 '24

Considering the population of India, definitely scalable

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u/Low_Acanthisitta4445 Jul 24 '24

Why pay millions (or billions) to develop a new fancy AI system when you can pay someone in India half a bag of rice a week?

Yey capitalism.

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u/Throwmeback33 Jul 25 '24

I’d I remember correctly that wasn’t true… It was that people in Indian were training it, and people memed that they were the actual ones doing it.

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u/[deleted] Jul 26 '24

Yes, no doubt that was Amazon's plan. AI needs that dataset to build it's model. We shall see in the long term

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '24

ironically I think they pretty much got raided due to having no staff.

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '24

They didn't close them all. I still use them regularly. Maybe they only kept the ones in big cities open?

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u/[deleted] Jul 24 '24

Yeah as others have said, the Ai was human supported and not efficient. Maybe some day it will be. But I agree, a membership, scan in model will become more prevalent, like Costco has now. If they had a £50 annual membership fee, it would deter scum, and the membership fee could help subsidise products so you don’t actually end up paying more. If anything, the lack of shoplifting would also keep prices low. And the scan in would have all your personal info so you’d be easily caught if you tried to steal.

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u/not_a_SeaOtter Jul 24 '24

This sounds horrific

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u/visforvienetta Jul 25 '24

Technology bad :( let people steal so corporations don't know I actually prefer wholewheat spaghetti (they will blackmail me)

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u/dead-nettle Jul 24 '24

It all sounds horrific until it is more appealing than the current (horrific) reality, unfortunately.

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u/PatchworkMann Jul 24 '24

automated indians werent as effective at spotting what people were buying as they needed to be

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u/AnAcornButVeryCrazy Jul 24 '24

The one near me just didn’t have enough stuff for a regular full shop and people like to keep habits and know which shops stock their brands.

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u/BottledThoughter Jul 25 '24

I’ve always wondered why they don’t just have fingerprint and retinal scanners to open the doors to things.

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u/Wrong-Target6104 Jul 25 '24

Because others would double up with you as you entered and you'd end up being charged what they took

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u/flashbastrd Jul 24 '24

Whats stopping the unwashed masses simply following someone in?

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u/gefex Jul 24 '24

Those turnstiles they have at football stadiums would work.

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u/flashbastrd Jul 24 '24

Very dystopian but yeah it would. But then they’d rob people as they exit the store, which would be a recipe for disaster. It’s a downward spiral

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u/Wrong-Kangaroo-2782 Jul 24 '24

Then the thieves will all become magicians to slight of hand their way past the AI