Somehow I was envisioning more than this. I heard some buzz about AI-powered grocery carts. First of all, the engineer who programmed these things ain’t from around here, or he’d know ten out of ten Alabamians call them buggies.
Secondly, what they do is not exactly what I would categorize as artificial intelligence. They apparently detect what you’re putting in your buggy, scan it, and add it to your running total. That’s called four cameras, a scanner, a calculator, and a screen.
I can’t remember, in the news story I saw on this, if it does this out loud. That would be pretty embarrassing. I mean like, “Strawberries. Three. Ninety. Nine” would be okay. But then you get to personal hygiene items that you even looked both ways to see if anyone you knew was around before you put it in there, even in the old-fashioned buggies-can’t-read-or-do-math-out-loud days. I’m just not game for announcing it to complete strangers (and even less of a fan of friends and family being privy).
I mean can you imagine if your name’s been on the prayer list in the church bulletin for three weeks about your diabetes, and then the thing announces in a voice that wakes a dog with asthma and hearing loss “LITTLE DEBBIE OATMEAL CREAM PIES. TWO. EIGHTY. SEVEN.”? Or worse, if your fitness coach was on the same aisle.
Well, that’s the first problem. The second one is that they need to do a whole lot more than this to qualify as AI for me. Isn’t the point of AI technology to replace all the things you would have to do if you were using human intelligence, so that the artificial kind does the work, and you just get to sit back and go, “Wow, I think I’ll just have a Slurpee, if I could remember how to slurp on my own.”
So going into the grocery store, the first thing I should be able to watch the AI buggy do is free itself from the other buggies. This takes a while because the part that’s supposed to drop down to form the back panel of the buggy only drops down far enough to get stuck into the buggy right in front of it. Don’t tell me this only happens to me. About the time it appears that you are going to be able to lift the panel from the first buggy high enough to clear the top of the second buggy while pushing them apart without jamming your fingers in them too bad, that little black plastic part of the safety belt for a toddler you don’t own gets stuck between the grates of the other buggy you’re trying to pull the first buggy from. This is precisely why it is called a buggy! Because if you get past the door with the thing, you’ll be it - BUGGY!
And about the time you do get past the door, you realize you’ve got one of the buggies with the ornery wheel. Either one wheel is dragging and won’t turn with the others, or it’s wobbling and making so much noise that people you don’t know are laughing and pointing at you. You’re torn between just abandoning it in the middle of the store or trudging through like the little engine that could, determined to finish this thing, and pretty much looking like the after pictures of a scout leader on a rainy campout when you do. There’s not much worse than a bad buggy. I believe if you can survive one, you’ve got an edge on boot camp.
So if an AI buggy can check all the wheels on the buggies, and pick the best one for me to navigate, I’ll buy into the technology. If it can levitate all the chocolate cereal and powdered donuts that the toddler has been more in reach of than you realized back on the shelves, if it can find the quarter that I’ve never been able to find to actually have something to put my groceries in at ALDI, instead of walking around carrying gallons of milk and pork chops in my armpits, hanging a bag of apples from my teeth, and scooting a thirty-two pack of spring water with my foot, then okay, I’ll let you help me out here, AI. If you can find which buggy I left my phone in out of hundreds in the buggy terminal, so that my husband doesn’t have to climb on top of them all, hoping for one of them to light up when he calls me -- If you can do that, I’ll invest in the company.
Feeling a little bit like I’m questioning Job here, but where were you when they laid the foundation for Kroger? Tell me if you know, how do you keep the three year old from climbing out in the parking lot while you’re bench-pressing potatoes without breaking the eggs? That would have saved an emergency room visit. Where were you when the six-year-old rear ended the seventy-year-old, who then turned around and slapped him on aisle 3?
I’ve had a lifetime of trauma with dumb buggies, so I’m not sure I’m ready for the smart ones. I just now figured out you could hang the gatorade on the side of the thing, okay? I just now got the high school graduate to quit laying down to read in the part where the dog food goes. I’m still not able to see myself coming in the store mirror without swerving my cart, and saying, “Excuse me, maam.” So if artificial intelligence can truly step up and take care of everything, I’ll embrace it. Actually, I’ll just sit in the van and play Wordle.
Truly, if you can do this for me, I will love you, AI, I will make your favorite foods and send you cards on special occasions and rub your shoulders after a long day. I will tell others about your supportive strengths and your intelligence. I will do it, but it will all feel so ... so … artificial.
Comments