At several of its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go stores, shoppers can just pick up their items and then leave thanks to the AI-powered system.
To determine what you have selected, the AI consults a multitude of sensors. Then, a bill is automatically sent to you.
But in April, it was publicly revealed that Just Walk Out required almost 1,000 staff in India to manually review nearly 75% of the transactions, as opposed to relying only on AI.
Amazon swiftly refuted the accusations, stating that employees in India were not watching CCTV footage from every store and that they were “erroneous.”
It stated, instead, that the Indian laborers were merely going over the system. Amazon went on to say, “This is no different from any other AI system where human reviewers are common and where accuracy is highly valued.”
Regardless of the specifics of the Amazon case, it serves as a prominent illustration of a recent and expanding inquiry into whether businesses are exaggerating the extent of their usage of artificial intelligence. Referring to the environmental “green washing,” this phenomena has been called “AI washing.”
Let’s review the definition of artificial intelligence first. AI, which defies precise definition, enables computers to learn and solve issues. AI can accomplish this after undergoing extensive training on vast volumes of data.
