[HN Gopher] When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse exp...
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When a stadium adds AI to everything, it's worse experience for
everyone
Author : wawayanda
Score : 89 points
Date : 2025-10-20 19:38 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (a.wholelottanothing.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (a.wholelottanothing.org)
| s17n wrote:
| The article starts by blaming AI for the reduced food menu, a
| speculative claim which the author made no attempt to validate
| and which is almost certainly incorrect. I stopped reading right
| there.
| TSUTiger wrote:
| You should've read further.
|
| In reality, when getting out first to market, it might be
| difficult for "AI" to decipher if a user added 1 of 5 available
| sauces to their chicken wings, so to reduce the likelihood of
| this error, you remove it until the technology is more mature.
| Speculative sure, but a strong assumption, and I doubt Mashgin
| would confirm this.
| s17n wrote:
| Its definitely wrong - I've used these exact checkout systems
| at places with way longer menus than any stadium has ever or
| will ever have. Even if that wasn't the case, it would still
| be way too speculative of premise to be worth seriously
| discussing, especially when the Occam's Razor "they reduced
| the menu size because its easier, they have a captive market,
| and why try to make good food when you can just charge $20
| for a beer" explanation is right there in front of you.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > You place all your items on the white shelf with some space
| between them. Although they were clearly designed to be a self-
| checkout experience, the stadium had a staff member rearrange
| your items, then for about 30 seconds the kiosk would be
| thinking. After, it would pop up all items on the menu, and the
| staff member would have to tap to confirm what each item was.
|
| Maybe we're just calling all forms of automation and computer
| vision "AI" these days because it's sexy. Anyway: any automation
| that requires a human staff member to intervene to complete every
| run is not automation: It's just adding unnecessary technology
| and making the process worse. Imagine if each grocery store self-
| checkout required a human staff member to scan items, re-arrange
| things, and confirm checkout.
| mablopoule wrote:
| > Maybe we're just calling all forms of automation and computer
| vision "AI" these days because it's sexy.
|
| Funny thing is, at first it was the other way around! 'Computer
| Vision' has always been a sub-field of AI, but the term was
| more widely used by academics during a previous AI winter as a
| way to avoid the tainted 'AI' label.
| baggachipz wrote:
| > Imagine if each grocery store self-checkout required a human
| staff member to scan items, re-arrange things, and confirm
| checkout.
|
| They always have at least one person going between each self-
| checkout kiosk helping confused and upset customers. Meanwhile,
| 1 traditional checkout lane is open with a long line. Self
| checkout is great to use if you know how and have a handful of
| items, but it sucks with a full cart due to space constraints
| and the bag scales being finicky.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Meanwhile, 1 traditional checkout lane is open_
|
| I wish. The Wal-Mart near me no longer has staffed checkouts
| between 6am (opening time) and 8am. That's two hours in the
| morning of robots-only. I don't know about in the evenings.
|
| _traditional checkout lane is open with a long line._
|
| I use the traditional check-out line whenever I can because
| where I live, the self-check line is almost always longer.
| It's not hard to keep an eye on the last person in the self-
| check line when you go to a real register to see which is
| faster.
|
| I'm not a fireman on call. I'm OK spending an extra 45
| seconds in a traditional line to keep a low-skilled human
| being employed.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I don't even think it's about going faster. In my
| experience, a traditional checkout staff is much faster
| than the self-check out. First of all, it's fantastically
| batched and pipelined. While the person in front of me is
| being checked out, I load all of my groceries onto the
| conveyer. Then, when it's my turn, the clerk does one
| motion over and over very quickly, and puts it on another
| conveyer that whisks it out of the way. When there's
| dedicated bagging staff, it's even more parallel.
|
| Contrast that with self-checkout: There is no conveyer. You
| have to reach into your cart, grab one item, run it across
| the scanner, and place that item in a bag, then reach back
| over into the cart, grab one item, and so on. No pipelining
| at all.
|
| I go the traditional staffed checkout route for the speed.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > It's just adding unnecessary technology and making the
| process worse.
|
| Oh it's not JUST that, I'm sure it's also a data-harvesting
| scheme, because what _isn 't_ these days?
| russdill wrote:
| I've used one of these at Lihue airport. It was slightly
| finicky, but fine and required no staff member assistance.
| TSUTiger wrote:
| They do that at Circle K[0] today using the same tech from
| Mashgin. It's meant to be a self-checkout, but you literally
| have one employee standing and watching this one checkout
| (sometimes 2-3, but usually 1-2). It's not always accurate,
| requires some hand-holding at times, and slows down the already
| slow lines at Circle K. It's a bit faster than the article
| implies and does not require a staff member, but still slower
| than a human would be.
|
| Meanwhile over at QuikTrip, there's one person checking out two
| people at a time. Suffice to say, if both stores are available,
| I will always choose the QT.
|
| [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c1kbWAttus
| neilv wrote:
| I came here to paste that quote. It sounds like a disaster of
| poor HCI around not-ready-for-prime-time tech implementation.
| That's not even a great PoC demo to get funding, much less
| deploy into production.
|
| Maybe they were emboldened because many companies still can't
| even do decades-old UPC barcode scanner self-checkouts well?
|
| The closest self-checkout to working reasonably well I see
| regularly would be at Whole Foods Market, at least just using
| the low-tech UPC and scale. I only have a few nits about it.
|
| (Though, within the last week, the usual duct-taped-on off-the-
| shelf hand scanner apparently saw the wrong barcode on the
| front of the product label (yes, some brand did that), which
| wedged the station, and the employee who came over seemed like
| they might think I was trying to defraud the store. I've coded
| for a few of those scanners before, and they provide a mix of
| automagical easy high-value behavior and major pitfalls. There
| are a few kinds of interfaces, and a large fleet of settings,
| and you really have to wrestle the device to the ground, to
| make every scenario bulletproof. If the integrator wasn't
| careful, for some of them, you can even reprogram or brick them
| with an in-band barcode, and disabling this feature is buried
| among the numerous settings.)
|
| The worst self-checkout I'm currently exposed to is the
| dumpster-fire of a major chain, which goes out of its way to
| fill the UI with garbage, and then doesn't do even basic
| sensing and state flow right. They really need to look at WFM
| design, and then go even further in that direction, and get the
| state model right. While making sure that no one's bonus is
| tied to garbage and dark patterns on the screen.
|
| (Also, for return customers who nope right out of the self-
| checkout headache, and go to the human checkout, or get
| directed to it by the attendant who's glaring at all the self-
| checkouts, they need clean their CC terminal keypad that's
| visibly caked with crud, like maybe it hasn't been disinfected
| in a year. Especially since they mandate repeated use of it
| when it should default to working with just a card tap/swipe,
| for a high-traffic location for many sick people.)
| olliepro wrote:
| > any automation that requires a human staff member to
| intervene to complete every run is not automation
|
| Not strictly true. Barcode readers are used by humans and are
| definitely automation. The ironic part though is that the
| automation going on here is literally object classification,
| which humans are good at.
|
| The play may be to collect data and make their system better.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Isn't this the _purpose_ of a lot of AI? To provide "good
| enough" alternatives to human labor. Why would anyone expect AI
| to make things _better_ rather than _cheaper_ or _more
| profitable_?
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Except there's still a human that has to confirm everything the
| computer did
| esafak wrote:
| Computers can do some things better than humans; recognize and
| generate speech, when accents are involved at either end.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I was recently at an events center, that has replaced all of
| their vending machines with machines that require me to install
| an app(!) to purchase a product. Literally, didn't take cash or
| credit - just via app.
|
| Per the marketing on the side, this is meant to be for my
| _benefit_ in order to earn "points" and get offered "deals." I
| don't think I have to tell you that I did NOT install the app,
| and just walked further to buy one from a vendor.
|
| There is a massive arrogance problem within tech. Everyone thinks
| their product should be the center of everyone else's universe.
| The best products are invisible/get out of the way.
| frogperson wrote:
| I agree with the arrogance. I am just so tired of poor software
| consuming hours to troubleshoot. technology was supposed to
| makes things easier, not turn every interaction into a chore or
| a debug session.
| clan wrote:
| The arrogance is not that they think they're the center of the
| universe. It is much worse.
|
| I hear a lot of talk about how much pain you can inflict on
| people and how to extract the most value from that. Last I
| heard it was from a couple of media types discussing radio
| commercials. No care for their actual product for the end user
| - but an evaluation of how much people would suffer before
| tuning away.
|
| Actual professional pride and care is sooo last century.
| svachalek wrote:
| Sadly. It's like how modern bridges can be built with less
| materials than old ones, now that we can calculate precisely
| the minimum we use pretty much exactly that. Things have gone
| exactly the same way with consumers over the past 30 years,
| businesses have learned exactly how badly they can treat you
| and step up to that line at every opportunity.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Bridges are public goods. If the public spends less on
| material they can afford to build additional bridges and
| create value for more people.
| GLdRH wrote:
| You're right. If the minimum amount is actually the
| minimum and not less than necessary, you don't need to
| exceed that.
|
| What the poster before wanted to imply was that we
| sacrifice safety or sustainability or some value other
| than material/money (which may well be true).
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Usually something is sacrificed in the name of extractive
| profit. With public spending it's just less taxes.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >If the public spends less on material they can afford to
| build additional bridges
|
| Except what happens is that now that we can build them
| cheaply they waste the same amount of money by turning
| what could have been simple I beams into a mirror finish
| exercise in "art" nobody asks for and was bike-shed into
| oblivion until the whole budget and more was used up. So
| the public doesn't actually reap any benefit. It just
| makes work for more parties on the dole. We don't
| actually get more bridges. We get a bigger racket.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| Its not the fault of the engineers, they just did a job.
| The parasites come from elsewhere. I read that in order
| to build a reactor in the UK they spent 350 pages in the
| plan discussing how jobs would be given to various
| minority groups. Everything government touches is a
| racket now.
| kulahan wrote:
| Who even reads all of that? Is it just all in there so
| someone who says "I really care about <extremely rare
| ethnic minority>, so I want to make sure they're
| represented", or is someone actually sitting down and
| reading 350 pages of job allocations??? I can't imagine a
| worse punishment, honestly.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| And
|
| > businesses have learned exactly how badly they can
| treat you and step up to that line at every opportunity.
|
| Will help numbers in your 401k or pension plan go up.
| m463 wrote:
| it's like bridge constructor, real life entertainment...
|
| https://www.gog.com/en/game/bridge_constructor
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| I call it the 3M strategy. Misery Makes Money
| goda90 wrote:
| >a couple of media types discussing radio commercials
|
| Relevant Simpsons clip:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdMjqcjMVTc
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Those two discussing it probably felt a great deal of
| professional pride they can get the volume to within a tenth
| of a decibel of the maximum tolerable volume before someone
| changes the channel
| influx wrote:
| Lumen Field in Seattle just installed some Amazon Just Walk Out
| vendors this year. I'm happy to report you don't need to be
| logged into Amazon or have an app. I double clicked my phone to
| swipe my Apple Pay before I walked in, grabbed a beer and
| walked out.
|
| It was fantastic.
| robotnikman wrote:
| At the very least the is how it should be done. Having to
| download and install an app, then login, then connect payment
| info, etc... Sounds like such a pain I wouldn't even bother.
| bgirard wrote:
| The big issue I have with this experience is that you don't
| get a clear charge price before you leave. So you have to
| check a page either some minutes or hours later and hope that
| the total is correct. Like the article said, I don't love the
| idea of being charged for 3 overpriced bottles of water when
| I only took two. I'd rather just settle my transactions in
| the moment than try to remember what my total was and dispute
| things later from memory on the occasional times it's wrong.
| sleazebreeze wrote:
| Aren't all these transactions checked by a human after the
| fact? IIRC I interviewed someone who worked on this and thats
| what they said.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| Climate Pledge Arena has these too. I love them! No lines, no
| human interaction. Grab your M&M's and beer and GTFO.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _replaced all of their vending machines with machines that
| require me to install an app(!) to purchase a product_
|
| I saw this at a Simon mall recently.
|
| I took a picture of the machine. Across the front of the door
| is a banner which reads: 1. Scan the QR code
| 2. Create profile 3. Scan again to unlock door 4.
| Close the door 5. You're one drink closer to a free
| drink!
|
| I'm not going to jump through hoops like a circus animal for a
| Mr. Pibb. I used the water fountain instead.
| m463 wrote:
| I think of a friend who worked at a bank, and a colleage
| decided to show him "how the world really worked"
|
| He got out a big printout and started showing the different
| demographics and their habits.
|
| "<ethnic> woman, with a little bit of college" - she will get a
| credit card, charge it up to the limit, then make the minimum
| payment... forever.
|
| "<ethnic> man, no college" - he will get a credit card, charge
| it up to the limit, might make one payment, never make another
| payment ever.
|
| Then he went on to say, corporations will slant their
| advertising to target demographic #1 with credit card
| advertisements. They will make their advertisements disappear
| from view from demographic #2.
|
| I kind of wonder if the whole vending system is slanted around
| these kinds of things. Sports fan, uses phone indiscriminately
| for everything, sell him an impulse snickers bar with an app,
| then load him down with ads for payday loans.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Nothing against sports fans, but your comment made me wonder
| if all the grocery stores hopping on the "game day" wave for
| advertising campaigns are doing so bc their data shows that
| sports fans are easier to sell to.
| OptionOfT wrote:
| It's all about the pop-ups & tracking. The same reason that
| McDonald's wants you to install their app.
| lykahb wrote:
| Once you enter the stadium or a concert, you become a part of the
| captive market. There exists an incentive to limit your choices
| and extract as much value out of you as possible. The limit to
| that is mostly defined by the organizer decency and the amount of
| pushback.
|
| The experience is usually better at the smaller venues that
| aren't a part of strong fandom and more sensitive to the customer
| sentiment: indie cinemas, comedy clubs, etc.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| By "Everything" I guess the author means "Concessions checkout"?
| I was looking for another example and never got one.
| heyheyhey wrote:
| And that wasn't really AI, it was more like automation.
|
| Was hoping the article would be about stadium experiences like
| the announcer, jumbotron, etc. all being AI-driven. When I
| judge the experience of gameday, concessions are like third on
| that list. Disappointed with the content.
| bgirard wrote:
| > The person in front of me bought two items and saw she got
| charged for three. Since there were no paper receipts, she took a
| photo of the machine before going to the guest services to
| complain. I missed ten minutes of the game getting water.
|
| I wish payment processors / consumer protection would have a
| significant penalty for sloppy overcharges. I've had to deal with
| sloppy overcharges like this (one for over $1,000) and you lose a
| lot of time and the outcome is just 'oppsies, my bad'. There's
| very little repercussion for sloppy overcharges so it's easy for
| them to perpetuate.
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