Tag: labeling

Gizmodo: Amazon Fresh’s AI Was Indians Watching the Cameras…And It Still Didn’t Work

I’m sensationalizing a bit this time.

Gizmodo notes that though the Just Walk Out technology seemed completely automated, there were actually 1,000 people in India watching the cameras and labeling videos. The whole idea was you could walk in, scan a QR code, take what you want, and leave. They’d track what you were buying.

Now Amazon wants to use Dash Carts, “smart” shopping carts.

What can I say? When you have effectively unlimited money you can spend your time dreaming up ways to replace people who work for a living. And if that’s your job, screw you.

Let’s just state what the writer, Maxwell Zeff, seems to go to great lengths not to say in the Gizmodo article. They had to walk out “Just Walk Out” because it was running away with their money. Otherwise, they would have kept it. Though one of my people on social media said it might be kind of mocking them in a way that I just didn’t perceive in the way it was written.

Don’t you love how they’d rather employ a thousand Indians than a few cashiers in each store?

Don’t you love that even abject failures of AI are spun by media to be positive stories? Even if it’s correct that it was some kind of joke, it was totally believable.

The level of self-delusion in this country rivals my medical episode. These people wouldn’t say a bad word about big business if it was pointing a gun in their face.

I guess it’s close enough. According to a Siena College Research Institute poll in 2022, 84% say Americans being afraid to exercise freedom of speech is a serious problem.

Having your ability to make money and provide for your family hampered by your pro-business boss because you might say the wrong thing is kind of like having a gun to your head. It’s just a bullet that would kill much slower and much more painfully as your family descended from middle class to poverty or poverty to homelessness, if you couldn’t bounce back fast enough.

Growing wealth disparity in this country ensures there will be more stories like that. My family could no longer afford a home that had been in the family for 60 years in part because the policy in this country had largely been engineered to drain as much money as possible from the middle class. Call me a has-been homeowner. I lost the game as gracefully as I could at the time.

But back to that Siena poll, retaliation was just one fear. People were also afraid of things like being criticized and causing conflict. Something like 94% avoided conflict.

The people of the past rebelled because taxes on tea were too high, and our docile little hearts can’t even be bothered to hear mean words and fight back against our most basic freedoms being stripped in increasingly creative ways — in this case by Indians dressed as technology. No offense to Indians.

Steal from people and they’ll form neighborhood watches to hunt you down and lynch you. We know that from history. Well, if we’re really honest, we’d lynch even if there was no crime committed, if circumstances were right. (Yeah. Those circumstances. May we never forget.)

Write laws to steal from people and they’ll let you do it unabated for decades. And defend you doing it.

The people reading this blog might be in the top 6%.

Thanks for being there.

Court bans use of AI-enhanced video.

P.S.

I wanted a permanent place on the internet for my wedding vow so the bottom of this article now becomes that place.

Contrary to the rumors, ChatGPT did not write this. I poured my heart into it, and everyone at my wedding really loved it.

“There are many things I can tell you that could never be shared with another soul. But this is something that I need to say now in front of all the souls here today. I had never met someone with a heart so big it could hug the world. I had no experience knowing someone with so much compassion, creativity, intelligence, beauty, and kindness. That is, of course, until I met you. Now we are making a promise that will stretch into eternity. In front of all these people, let me promise that I will love and protect you always. Every step I take will advance our bond. Every minute without you will be fleeting. Every second with you will be cherished. 

And every time we close our eyes, let us dream of a future that is as strong and radiant as your smile. When those eyes open, let us wake to find our dreams a reality. Francesca, my beautiful wife, you taught me love, I love you, and I will love you for the rest of my life.”

Shortage Solutions 3: Private Labeling

One shortage concern is a stenographic (stenographers’) aversion to the colloquial big-box companies. Some reporters have reported that even when the company acquiesces and pays proper rates, they don’t want to take it for whatever perceived reasons. The other day I was lucky enough to catch a profound and interesting idea put out there by MA Payonk on her current blog space, Steno Jewels.

To put it in simple terms it’s the age-old idea of private labeling. Example: Imagine all the resellers out there that take Coke, slap their label on it, and sell it away. Perfectly legal, functional, conceptual example of private labeling. You see this all day, every day in probably every store you walk into.

How would this work in steno? Well, if an agency is asking you to cover and they’ve agreed to pay what you want paid, but you have an aversion to building their brand for whatever reason, it’s perfectly sensible and allowable for you to make an agreement with them that you will cover production, and/or billing, and/or read & sign or services that are normally under their purview. Imagine a world where it’s your name, transcript cover, brand, on all the materials. That’s what we’re talking about here.

Succinctly whatever their cut is, it is for the marketing side of what they’ve done. In this private label example, the reporter is becoming more of a focal point, face, and name attached to the full service.

There is some merit to this idea. Many steno and reporting companies today follow a strict corporate brand strategy where their name is on every transcript, and this is something you see all over the country from McDonald’s to From You Flowers. That said, money is money, business is business, and if you can sell the idea of the private label strategy or an alternative branding strategy, you can take advantage of this novel shortage solution. As a matter of fact, we have seen this strategy before in reverse. For example, if ABC Company asks CBA Company to cover, CBA often goes “as” ABC. This idea would be the company “going as” Reporter Doe.

The only real question is: Would a company agree? And my money is on yes. I truly believe that companies would agree, especially if there was a dialogue or agreement. Maybe the answer would be middle of the road: We want to handle production but you can put all your contact information on the certification. In this country there is literally no limit to what can be in an agreement except that an agreement may not be illegal, so it is a sincere hope that every freelance reporter would read this and maybe come to their own conclusions or come up with their own ideas about being a self-employed person and the advertisement decisions that need to go along with that. It’s a hell of a lot more corporate friendly than my previous suggestion to poach clients, and you can bet that given the option, these companies will choose to work with us.