AI Has A Massive Human Problem
AI doesn’t actually replace human workers; it just makes their lives miserable.
Do you remember Amazon’s “just walk out” grocery stores? The idea was that facial-recognition cameras, shelf sensors, and AI would track what items a customer has taken, then charge their Amazon account once they left, negating any need for a cashier or self-check-out. This innovation was hailed as one of the first cases of AI directly replacing human workers and a way to lower the cost of operating a store. But, in reality, it really wasn’t. A recent report found that over a thousand remote workers had to be hired to monitor the video feeds and verify 70% of the customer’s purchases, as the AI was consistently getting it wrong. This amount of labour isn’t cheap, even if it is outsourced overseas, and Amazon’s “just walk out” AI became significantly more expensive than simply hiring regular cashier staff. As such, Amazon has struggled to sell the system to third parties and has had to switch its own grocery stores to a fancy non-AI self-scan system instead. This tale is far from unique in the AI world, but it perfectly highlights a massive problem with AI that no one is talking about. It simply cannot fully replace humans, even in the most simple of tasks. Let me explain.
