Fatimata Sall

One facet that must be considered is the line between troubling tweets and freedom of speech. Developing the perfect system to weed out negativity can be dependent upon a few engineers. I wonder where the line will be drawn to preserve the company, but eliminate negativity. It is uneasy grounds to trek upon.

This is called “Trolling”. There are a number of individuals out there in the world who do this deliberately, going through the internet and posting hate filled messages. Some people are just generally sad and want others to feel the same way that they do. I find this all very interesting. Social media can be a blessing and a curse. Sometimes I find some awesome posts scrolling through social media and other days I find myself disappointed that I wasted time doing it.

I agree with this post that there needs to be a solution brought about to control posts. However, as Craig has said above, this needs to be done while keeping in mind the freedom of speech which is such an integral part of being an American. Social media gives people with hate in their minds a platform to speak, but unlike in the real world there is no real entity to police it. This burden is on the companies who run the social media for now, but in the future I can see some sort of government entity stepping in and mandating it. They will no doubt use the help of AI technologies in their effort to find and mitigate these posts.

I feel like this is a very sensitive topic because how much can you truly monitor/censor everything that is being put out on social media before it violates people’s freedom of speech? Especially in today’s world, where it seems as if almost everyone is offended by everything, how can these companies decide what is “good” or “bad”? Most social media allows you to report a post if you find it hateful or offensive, so maybe developing more features like that might be a good way to monitor the material that is being posted. Like Terry mentioned, I feel like once companies start monitoring this information then I do not think it’ll be too long before the government gets involved as well and then I can definitely see our freedom of speech becoming an issue, considering that social media platforms are used heavily to share/express political beliefs. It just seems like a terrible idea to have the government play any part in censoring platforms that allows people to express their opinions.

I think this is a really interesting concept and something we will definitely see in the future pretty regularly. It would be interesting to see how this idea would work in a store that has tons of people in it like Walmart or Target rather than a small Amazon store. I agree that if Microsoft could patent this cashier-less technology they could sell it to a lot of other companies but doesn’t cashier-less technology already exist? I can use the self checkout at my local grocery store so if Microsoft’s tech isn’t better than the Amazon version which allows me to simply walk out of the store with all of my products, I find it hard to believe Microsoft or anyone could compete with Amazon.

Why do you think Amazon is doing this? There is a clear strategic objective behind the move, I think.

It is really amazing to see how innovative Amazon really is, they are changing retail as a whole, online and physical stores. Do you think Amazon should have ditched their Amazon Go stores, and instead just sold the idea as a services to larger chains such as Walmart, Target, Home Depot, etc?

It is interesting to consider the future of brick and mortar stores. Considering the online retailing industry has completely reshaped the average consumer shopping experience, Amazon is taking on innovative initiatives to expand into the physical shopping experience aside from the virtual one. Amazon is truly determined to become the alpha of retail and this initiative is exacerbated through innovative technology. Although online retail is a giant industry, according to Forbes, 9 out of 10 dollars spent in the US is at physical stores. Offline retail is clearly an uncharted territory for Amazon which is probably the greatest driver for the company. With the introduction of this technology, it will also show how fast-paced society is becoming with the increase in efficiency of shopping and elimination for the need of long lines at registers, or registers altogether. This seems appropriate given Amazon’s speedy service.

I think if Amazon Go becomes successful and is a groundbreaking method in retail, it will be interesting to see how disruptive innovation takes form within the retail market. I, personally, don’t believe that it will be much of a factor due to the uniqueness and groundbreaking idea that Amazon has. Although I think it is not likely that this will succeed because no retailer has been able to make a dent in this specific retail market. I wouldn’t put anything past Amazon since they continue to amaze with their technology, but I believe there are too many challenges for now.