There is a recent strong rally cry that artificial intelligence leads humans to immoral and unethical behaviour.
But the path to decline has been widely demonstrated with the simpler intelligence systems. In particular, self-checkout. There are articles dating from 2012 highlighting how cheating at checkouts turns us into a nation of self-service shoplifters. And it came up immediately in 2007 articles describing the introduction.
The Banana - that lowly fruit - plays a key role in the headlines - manually punching in the code for cheap products such as bananas when weighing expensive ones like steaks.
And the internet amplifies the "cheat the system" supporters:
“Anyone who pays for more than half of their stuff in self checkout is a total moron,” asserts one of the many anonymous comments on a Reddit discussion about self-checkout cheating." “There is no moral issue [in the view of cheaters] with stealing from a store that forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT THEIR STORE.” Articles are keen to describe the motivations. There's the thrill factor: “Shopping can be quite boring because it’s such a routine, and this is a way to make the routine more interesting [for] risk-taking, stimulation-seeking people.”
Articles describe up to 7 methods of scamming. Here are some of them: 1. Buy a large quantity of the same item but scan/pay only for a portion 2. No security guard? Walk through the self-checkout and leave the store 3. Pass-around - just pass the item into the bagging without scanning 4. That banana trick - change the scan sticker for a cheap item - a variation is the switcheroo where cheaper item of the same weight is scanned, but the expensive item goes in the bag. 5. Accidentally forget things at the bottom of the cart
"Cheat the system" seems to be right at the core of the issue. And that's been around as long as there are people. Look at all the variations there are for the activity: there are 135 synonyms, antonyms and words related to beat the system. If you look up the word cheat, there are 267 words.
"Gaming the system (also rigging, abusing, cheating, milking, playing, working, or breaking the system, or gaming or bending the rules) can be defined as using the rules and procedures meant to protect a system to, instead, manipulate the system for a desired outcome."
We conclude with a bit of Toronto retail history - Honest Eds. I wonder how much cheating there would be at self-serve checkouts if the store was still with us. |