Back in the Summer of 2019, I was in Seattle doing customer interviews for work, and I stopped by a friend's apartment in downtown Seattle. I spent a

Feeling duped by Amazon's "magical AI" bullshit

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2024-04-17 22:00:03

Back in the Summer of 2019, I was in Seattle doing customer interviews for work, and I stopped by a friend's apartment in downtown Seattle. I spent a few hours there while using his wifi along with a spare desk. Nothing was too unusual until I went to buy a USB cable I needed back at home so I pulled up Amazon.com.

I was surprised to see—due to my temporary local downtown Seattle IP address—my Amazon home page had new options. I showed my friend and he spun his laptop around to show his homepage, which had even more options for products and services only available within Seattle proper.

Most of it was stuff like groceries delivered within minutes, or headphones you could get in an hour instead of relying on overnight shipping. Some of it was experimental betas of pet products and healthcare but then I saw a banner for the Amazon Go store.

I remembered it had launched the year before and I was curious about this weird new store concept. The conceit was: you walk in, grab what you need, then walk out and as you hit the sidewalk you get charged on the Amazon app for any items you took with you. Seamless, fast, and the ultimate in convenience was the promise.