A college is removing its vending machines after a student discovered they were using facial recognition technology::A photo shared on Reddit showed one of the vending machines with an error code suggesting it used facial recognition tech.

  • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    You don’t need to add features to a vending machine though, it just needs to take currency in exchange for snacks and drinks. Any metrics of what sells better/worse can be done by watching inventory like we’ve done all of commercial history. They’re over complicating this for no valid reason

    • nymwit@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      It’s not just what sells, but who buys what. “Demographic X buys this one product more than others so how can we advertise this product to them where they will see it?” Growth is their “valid” reason, you know, like malignant cancer cells.

    • Cringe2793@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      There is a valid reason. It’s easier. You don’t need to get a person to watch/count/analyse the inventory.

      • ReveredOxygen
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        9 months ago

        The machine can also just count what it sells. It doesn’t need to do facial recognition to see who’s buying it

        • Cringe2793@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Yeah I think you’re just paranoid. Maybe you need to understand how this works better before making a snap judgement. No personally identifying pictures are stored. What’s wrong with a bit of market research? Knowing which (estimated) gender buys what is not that big a deal.

          Y’all can downvote me and argue till the cows come home, but y’all are just paranoid. I see nothing wrong with this.