An anonymous reader shares a report: Geoffrey Hinton accepted a Nobel Prize this week, recognizing the foundational work on artificial neural networks that earned him the nickname "godfather of AI." In a speech Tuesday, Professor Hinton praised one student -- alluding to OpenAI's former Chief Scientist, Ilya Sutskever -- for revolting against OpenAI's CEO. "I was particularly fortunate to have many very clever students -- much cleverer than me -- who actually made things work," said Hinton. "They've gone on to do great things. I'm particularly proud of the fact that one of my students fired Sam Altman."

Zoom is getting one step closer to letting AI avatars attend meetings for you. As part of a broader AI expansion, Zoom announced it will soon let you create an AI avatar of yourself that you can use to send brief messages to your team. From a report: To create a digital avatar, you'll need to record an initial video of yourself that Zoom's AI will use to make an avatar that looks -- and even sounds -- like you. From there, you can write the message you want your AI avatar to say and then have it do all the talking for you. This feature will only work with Zoom's Clips feature, allowing you to record brief video updates for your colleagues.

OpenAI said a group with apparent ties to China tried to carry out a phishing attack on its employees, reigniting concerns that bad actors in Beijing want to steal sensitive information from top US artificial intelligence companies. From a report: The AI startup said Wednesday that a suspected China-based group called SweetSpecter posed as a user of OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT earlier this year and sent customer support emails to staff. The emails included malware attachments that, if opened, would have allowed SweetSpecter to take screenshots and exfiltrate data, OpenAI said, but the attempt was unsuccessful.

"OpenAI's security team contacted employees who were believed to have been targeted in this spear phishing campaign and found that existing security controls prevented the emails from ever reaching their corporate emails," OpenAI said. The disclosure highlights the potential cybersecurity risks for leading AI companies as the US and China are locked in a high-stakes battle for artificial intelligence supremacy. In March, for example, a former Google engineer was charged with stealing AI trade secrets for a Chinese firm.

Three scientists won the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry on Wednesday for their groundbreaking work in predicting and designing protein structures, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced in Stockholm. David Baker of the University of Washington shares the prize with Demis Hassabis and John Jumper of Google DeepMind. Baker pioneered the creation of novel proteins, while Hassabis and Jumper developed AlphaFold, an AI model that predicts protein structures from amino acid sequences.

The laureates will split the 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) award for their contributions to computational protein design and structure prediction. Baker's team has produced proteins with applications in medicine and materials science since his initial breakthrough in 2003. Hassabis and Jumper's AlphaFold, announced in 2020, has predicted structures for nearly all 200 million known proteins. "We glimpsed at the beginning that it might be possible to create a whole new world of proteins that address a lot of the problems faced by humans in the 21st century," Baker said at a press briefing.

"Now it's becoming possible," Heiner Linke, chair of the Nobel chemistry committee, called the discoveries "spectacular," noting they fulfilled a 50-year-old dream of predicting protein structures from amino acid sequences. The breakthroughs have wide-ranging implications, from understanding antibiotic resistance to developing enzymes that decompose plastic. Over 2 million researchers worldwide have already utilized AlphaFold in various applications.

Researchers at BitEnergy AI, Inc. have developed Linear-Complexity Multiplication (L-Mul), a technique that reduces AI model power consumption by up to 95% by replacing energy-intensive floating-point multiplications with simpler integer additions. This method promises significant energy savings without compromising accuracy, but it requires specialized hardware to fully realize its benefits. Decrypt reports: L-Mul tackles the AI energy problem head-on by reimagining how AI models handle calculations. Instead of complex floating-point multiplications, L-Mul approximates these operations using integer additions. So, for example, instead of multiplying 123.45 by 67.89, L-Mul breaks it down into smaller, easier steps using addition. This makes the calculations faster and uses less energy, while still maintaining accuracy. The results seem promising. "Applying the L-Mul operation in tensor processing hardware can potentially reduce 95% energy cost by element wise floating point tensor multiplications and 80% energy cost of dot products," the researchers claim. Without getting overly complicated, what that means is simply this: If a model used this technique, it would require 95% less energy to think, and 80% less energy to come up with new ideas, according to this research.

The algorithm's impact extends beyond energy savings. L-Mul outperforms current 8-bit standards in some cases, achieving higher precision while using significantly less bit-level computation. Tests across natural language processing, vision tasks, and symbolic reasoning showed an average performance drop of just 0.07% -- a negligible tradeoff for the potential energy savings. Transformer-based models, the backbone of large language models like GPT, could benefit greatly from L-Mul. The algorithm seamlessly integrates into the attention mechanism, a computationally intensive part of these models. Tests on popular models such as Llama, Mistral, and Gemma even revealed some accuracy gain on certain vision tasks.

At an operational level, L-Mul's advantages become even clearer. The research shows that multiplying two float8 numbers (the way AI models would operate today) requires 325 operations, while L-Mul uses only 157 -- less than half. "To summarize the error and complexity analysis, L-Mul is both more efficient and more accurate than fp8 multiplication," the study concludes. But nothing is perfect and this technique has a major achilles heel: It requires a special type of hardware, so the current hardware isn't optimized to take full advantage of it. Plans for specialized hardware that natively supports L-Mul calculations may be already in motion. "To unlock the full potential of our proposed method, we will implement the L-Mul and L-Matmul kernel algorithms on hardware level and develop programming APIs for high-level model design," the researchers say.

Foxconn has chosen Mexico for the site of the world's largest manufacturing facility for Nvidia's GB200 superchips. These chips are a "key component of the U.S. firm's next-generation Blackwell family computing platform," notes Reuters. From the report: "We're building the largest GB200 production facility on the planet," said Benjamin Ting, Foxconn senior vice president for the cloud enterprise solutions business group. Nvidia said in August that it had started shipping Blackwell samples to its partners and customers after tweaking its design, and expected several billion dollars in revenue from these chips in the fourth quarter. Ting said the partnership between his company and Nvidia was very important and everyone was asking for Nvidia's Blackwell platform. "The demand is awfully huge," Ting said at the company's annual tech day in Taipei, standing next to Nvidia's vice president for AI and robotics, Deepu Talla.

Speaking to reporters later, Foxconn Chairman Young Liu said the plant was being built in Mexico, and that the capacity there would be "very, very enormous". He did not elaborate. Foxconn already has a large manufacturing presence in Mexico and has invested more than $500 million to date in the state of Chihuahua. Liu said the company's supply chain was ready for the AI revolution, adding its manufacturing capabilities include the "advanced liquid cooling and heat dissipation technologies necessary to complement the GB200 server's infrastructure."

A long-shot congressional challenger in Virginia is so determined to debate the Democratic incumbent one more time that he created an AI chatbot to stand in for the candidate in case he's a no-show. From a report: Less than a month from election day, the race for Virginia's 8th congressional district is all but decided. The sitting congressman in this deeply Democratic district, Don Beyer, won handily in 2022 with nearly three-quarters of the vote. Bentley Hensel, a software engineer for good government group CivicActions, who is running as an independent, said he was frustrated by what he said was Beyer's refusal to appear for additional debates since September. So he hatched a unique plan that will test the bounds of both propriety and technology: a debate with Beyer's artificial intelligence likeness. And the candidate has created the AI chatbot himself -- without Beyer's permission.

Call it the modern-day equivalent of the empty chair on stage. DonBot, as the AI is playfully known, is being trained on Beyer's official websites, press releases, and data from the Federal Election Commission. The text-based AI is based on an API from OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. The bot is not intended to mislead anyone and is trained to provide accurate answers, said Hensel, who has raised roughly $17,000 in outside contributions and personal loans to his campaign, compared to Beyer's $1.5 million fund.

Samsung has issued a rare apology after saying it expected to post just $6.78 billion in operating profit for the most recent quarter, about $900 million short of analyst expectations. From a report: "We have caused concerns about our fundamental technological competitiveness and the future of the company due to our performance falling short of the market's expectations," reads the statement attributed to Samsung Vice Chairman Jun Young-hyun. "Many people are talking about Samsung's crisis. We, who are leading the business, are responsible for all of this." Bloomberg adds: In another filing, Korea's largest company confessed to delays in delivering a key type of chip used with Nvidia processors for training AI -- allowing SK Hynix to dominate the so-called high-bandwidth memory arena. Apart from lagging SK Hynix in HBM, it's also shown little progress against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. in the outsourced production of custom-made chips. Samsung warned about "inventory adjustments" by unspecified customers, as well as increasing competition from a legacy or less-advanced Chinese memory chipmaker.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Wikipedia's "Timeline of the Far Future" is one of my favorite webpages from the internet's pre-slop era. A Londoner named Nick Webb created it on the morning of December 22, 2010. "Certain events in the future of the universe can be predicted with a comfortable level of accuracy," he wrote at the top of the page. He then proposed a chronological list of 33 such events, beginning with the joining of Asia and Australia 40 million years from now. He noted that around this same time, Mars's moon Phobos would complete its slow death spiral into the red planet's surface. A community of 1,533 editors have since expanded the timeline to 160 events, including the heat death of the universe. I like to imagine these people on laptops in living rooms and cafes across the world, compiling obscure bits of speculative science into a secular Book of Revelation.

Like the best sci-fi world building, the Timeline of the Far Future can give you a key bump of the sublime. It reminds you that even the sturdiest-seeming features of our world are ephemeral, that in 1,100 years, Earth's axis will point to a new North Star. In 250,000 years, an undersea volcano will pop up in the Pacific, adding an extra island to Hawaii. In the 1 million years that the Great Pyramid will take to erode, the sun will travel only about 1/200th of its orbit around the Milky Way, but in doing so, it will move into a new field of stars. Our current constellations will go all wobbly in the sky and then vanish.

Some aspects of the timeline are more certain than others. We know that most animals will look different 10 million years from now. We know that the continents will slowly drift together to form a new Pangaea. Africa will slam into Eurasia, sealing off the Mediterranean basin and raising a new Himalaya-like range across France, Italy, and Spain. In 400 million years, Saturn will have lost its rings. Earth will have replenished its fossil fuels. Our planet will also likely have sustained at least one mass-extinction-triggering impact, unless its inhabitants have learned to divert asteroids.

Wired: Last spring, At an event in New York City, Robert Triefus, then Gucci's CEO of Vault -- the brand's virtual marketplace -- argued the recent deflation in hype around the metaverse was just a brief hiccup. "I see it more as a correction," he told the crowd. "We're now at a much more sensible place, where you've got individuals [and] companies ... who are very serious about what they're doing." When asked how buying real estate in The Sandbox aligned with Gucci's broader goals as a brand, he responded with quasi-mystical language: "The metaverse is an opportunity to embrace the digital self."

The following month, Triefus left Gucci "abruptly," according to Vogue Business. He was off "to pursue other opportunities," the brand said at the time. A month later, Vogue Business revealed that Triefus was to be the new Stone Island CEO. Immediately there was speculation on whether Stone Island would enter the metaverse. So far it has not. Triefus' public zeal for all things virtual and his short-lived tenure as the head of Gucci's metaverse strategy are both part of a broader trend that briefly convulsed the private sector starting in late 2021: the hastily recruited "chief metaverse officer."

Following a wave of excitement around the metaverse as a golden new opportunity for commerce, a legion of brands rushed to launch their own virtual storefronts. Three quarters of CEOs surveyed by Russell Reynolds in 2022 said they were hiring dedicated talent to lead in the space, or expanding current roles to cover it. While the actual titles varied, their main role seemed to involve helping their respective brands devise new strategies with then-buzzy technologies such as NFTs and crypto. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has quietly shifted focus from virtual reality to augmented reality, signaling a retreat from the company's ambitious metaverse plans. At Meta's recent developer conference, Zuckerberg mentioned "metaverse" only three times in his hour-long keynote, instead highlighting AR innovations like smart glasses.

The move follows a broader cooling of corporate enthusiasm for the metaverse. Luxury brands that once rushed to establish virtual presences have scaled back efforts, with some chief metaverse officers pivoting to AI-focused roles. "Many brands were quick to experiment -- there was a sense of a land grab," said Matthew Ball, tech investor and author. "They didn't want to be last, and they were excited to try and be first." Wired notes that the shift reflects disappointing user engagement with existing metaverse platforms and growing interest in more accessible AR technologies.

John J. Hopfield of Princeton University and Geoffrey E. Hinton of the University of Toronto were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on Tuesday for their groundbreaking work in machine learning. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences recognized the scientists for developing artificial neural networks capable of recognizing patterns in large data sets, laying the foundation for modern AI applications like facial recognition and language translation.

Hopfield, 91, created an associative memory system for storing and reconstructing data patterns. Hinton, 76, invented a method for autonomous data property identification. "This year's physics laureates' breakthroughs stand on the foundations of physical science," the Nobel Committee stated. "They have shown a completely new way for us to use computers to tackle many of society's challenges." The laureates will share the 11 million Swedish kronor ($1.1 million) prize.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Jason Allen-a synthetic media artist whose Midjourney-generated work "Theatre D'opera Spatial" went viral and incited backlash after winning a state fair art competition-is not giving up his fight with the US Copyright Office. Last fall, the Copyright Office refused to register Allen's work, claiming that almost the entire work was AI-generated and insisting that copyright registration requires more human authorship than simply plugging a prompt into Midjourney. Allen is now appealing (PDF) that decision, asking for judicial review and alleging that "the negative media attention surrounding the Work may have influenced the Copyright Office Examiner's perception and judgment." He claims that the Examiner was biased and considered "improper factors" such as the public backlash when concluding that he had "no control over how the artificial intelligence tool analyzed, interpreted, or responded to these prompts."

As Allen sees it, a rule establishing a review process requiring an Examiner to determine which parts of the work are human-authored seems "entirely arbitrary" since some Copyright Examiners "may not even be able to distinguish an artwork that used AI tools to assist in the creation from one which does not use any computerized tools." Further, Allen claims that the denial of copyright for his work has inspired confusion about who owns rights to not just Midjourney-generated art but all AI art, and as AI technology rapidly improves, it will only become harder for the Copyright Office to make those authorship judgment calls. That becomes an even bigger problem if the Copyright Office gets it wrong too often, Allen warned, running the risk of turning every artist registering works into a "suspect" and potentially bogging courts down with copyright disputes. Ultimately, Allen is hoping that a jury reviewing his appeal will reverse the denial, arguing that there is more human authorship in his AI-generated work than the Copyright Office considered when twice rejecting his registration.

TechCrunch's Paul Sawers reports: Fledgling fintech startup OpenBB is revealing the next step in its plans to take on the heavyweights of the investment research world. The company is launching a new, free version of a product that will open its arsenal of data and financial tooling to more users. OpenBB is the handiwork of software engineer Didier Lopes, who launched the Python-based platform back in 2021 as a way for amateur investors and enthusiasts to do investment research using different datasets for free, via a command line interface (CLI). The company went on to raise $8.5 million in seed funding from OSS Capital and angel investors such as Ram Shriram, an early backer of Google. While the community-based, open source project has amassed some 50,000 users, OpenBB has also been building an enterprise incarnation called Terminal Pro. This paid version gives teams access to an interface, pre-built database integrations, an Excel add-in, and various security and support bolt-ons that would appeal to larger businesses. [...]

The all-new OpenBB Terminal -- not to be confused with the previous CLI-based OpenBB Terminal that the startup sunsetted in March -- is a full-fledged web app, though it strips out many of the premium features of Terminal Pro. It's fully customizable, can run on any operating system or platform, and provides access to an AI-enabled OpenBB copilot. Like the previous OpenBB Terminal, the all-new web app is also free to use. OpenBB Terminal is perhaps something of a middle ground between the CLI centricity of the open source project and the bells-and-whistles feature set of the enterprise product.

The OpenBB Terminal serves as a single end point for accessing financial information from some 100 data sources, spanning equity, options, forex, the macro economy, and more. Users can also throw all their new data into the mix -- the community has previously contributed financial datasets such as historical currency exchange rates and crypto pricing data. There are also a slew of extensions and toolkits to bring more functionality to OpenBB -- such as an AI stock analysis agent. Users are free to incorporate their own AI systems and large language models (LLMs), which might be particularly important for security and compliance use cases. But with the OpenBB Copilot, categorized as a "compound AI system," users can run natural-language queries about their data out of the box. While OpenBB has been likened to an "open-source Bloomberg," TechCrunch notes that it's not a direct competitor due to Bloomberg's massive data resources and built-in chat functionality. OpenBB, however, offers flexibility with its open-source platform and customization options.

OpenBB filed for a trademark, but Bloomberg has requested an extension to potentially oppose it, despite the company asserting there's no link between OpenBB and Bloomberg's abbreviation "BBG". Lopes says the name originates from BlackBerry stock, where the founders had lost money during the meme stock craze.

Global semiconductor sales recorded a 20.6% year-on-year increase in August to $53.1 billion, according to the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA). The Register reports: The Americas led the way, with sales up 43.9 percent to $15.4 billion over last year to notch up what may be the highest on record for August, the SIA said. This comes on the back of swelling demand from sectors such as AI, cloud computing, and automotive. Over in Asia-Pacific sales grew year-on-year by 17.1 percent to $10.95 billion, according to the World Semiconductor Trade Statistics organization, which compiles these stats for the SIA. China was up 19.2 percent to $13 billion and Japan grew two percent to $4 billion.

Europe was the outlier, recording a nine percent drop to $4.7 billion. No reason was given for this decline. However, on a worldwide basis, all continents returned positive month-on-month numbers in August for the first time since October 2023, indicating that the semiconductor industry is on a path to recovery.

The decline of journalism has been attributed to many factors, from slow adaptation to the internet to the dominance of tech giants in advertising. But a veteran journalist offers a new perspective: the death of the hyperlink could be changing the fundamental nature of the internet, with significant implications for the news industry. Matt Pearce: There is a real bias against hyperlinking that has developed on platforms and apps over the last five years in particular. It's something that's kind of operating hand-in-hand with the rise of algorithmic recommendations. You see this on Elon Musk's version of Twitter, where posts with hyperlinks are degraded. Facebook itself has decided to detach itself from displaying a lot of links. That's why you get so much AI scum on Facebook these days. Instagram itself has always been kind of hostile to linking. TikTok as well...

If you degrade hyperlinks, and you degrade this idea of the internet as something that refers you to other things, you instead have this stationary internet where a generative AI agent will hoover up and summarize all the information that's out there, and place it right in front of you so that you never have to leave the portal... That was a real epiphany to me, because the argument against one form of this legislation was, "My God, you'll destroy this fundamental way of how the internet works." I'm like, dude, these companies are already destroying the fundamental way of how the internet works.

[...] If you look at what technology has done to journalism over the last 10 years, it was journalists who figured out how to make Twitter work for them. It was journalists who figured out how to be really good on Instagram and Tik Tok. I know there's this argument about content creators and versus journalists, but I'm like, we're all in the same ecosystem. If you're performing the functions of a journalist, you're a journalist. Some people are really good on different platforms. But it's hard to imagine a scenario where Google is going to be the party that creates a more humane, intelligent, responsive form of journalism.

Tech giants Amazon and Microsoft have inked major deals with U.S. nuclear power plants to fuel their energy-hungry data centers, marking a shift in the industry's power sourcing strategy. The move comes as AI-driven facilities strain companies' climate goals, pushing them towards carbon-free electricity sources.

Microsoft plans to revive the shuttered Three Mile Island plant by 2028, while Amazon secured power from Pennsylvania's Susquehanna Nuclear facility in a $650 million deal. Google is also exploring nuclear options, including small modular reactors still under development. This trend could potentially triple U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050, according to a Department of Energy report.

Google's grip on the nearly $300 billion search advertising business is loosening. From a report: For years, the tech giant has seemed invincible in this corner of the ad market, which is the foundation of its business. Now, rivals are beginning to eat into its lead, and new offerings -- fueled by the rise of artificial intelligence and social video -- threaten to reshape the landscape. TikTok, the wildly popular short-form video platform, has recently started allowing brands to target ads based on users' search queries -- a direct challenge to Google's core business.

Perplexity, an AI search startup backed by Jeff Bezos, plans to introduce ads later this month under its AI-generated answers. Until now, it has made revenue mostly from a $20-a-month subscription offering that grants access to more-powerful AI technology. The new initiatives add to the pressure on Google from the rise of Amazon.com, which has taken a chunk of search ad spending. Many consumers begin product searches on the e-commerce platform.

Google's share of the U.S. search ad market is expected to drop below 50% next year for the first time in over a decade, according to the research firm eMarketer. Amazon is expected to have 22.3% of the market this year, with 17.6% growth, compared with Google's 50.5% share and its 7.6% growth.

Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from Australia's public broadcaster ABC: Ecovacs robot vacuums, which have been found to suffer from critical cybersecurity flaws, are collecting photos, videos and voice recordings — taken inside customers' houses — to train the company's AI models.

The Chinese home robotics company, which sells a range of popular Deebot models in Australia, said its users are "willingly participating" in a product improvement program.

When users opt into this program through the Ecovacs smartphone app, they are not told what data will be collected, only that it will "help us strengthen the improvement of product functions and attached quality". Users are instructed to click "above" to read the specifics, however there is no link available on that page.

Ecovacs's privacy policy — available elsewhere in the app — allows for blanket collection of user data for research purposes, including:

- The 2D or 3D map of the user's house generated by the device
- Voice recordings from the device's microphone
— Photos or videos recorded by the device's camera

"It also states that voice recordings, videos and photos that are deleted via the app may continue to be held and used by Ecovacs..."

An anonymous reader shared this report from the Washington Post: Hundreds of Americans have been arrested after being connected to a crime by facial recognition software, a Washington Post investigation has found, but many never know it because police seldom disclose their use of the controversial technology...

In fact, the records show that officers often obscured their reliance on the software in public-facing reports, saying that they identified suspects "through investigative means" or that a human source such as a witness or police officer made the initial identification... The Coral Springs Police Department in South Florida instructs officers not to reveal the use of facial recognition in written reports, according to operations deputy chief Ryan Gallagher. He said investigative techniques are exempt from Florida's public disclosure laws... The department would disclose the source of the investigative lead if it were asked in a criminal proceeding, Gallagher added....

Prosecutors are required to inform defendants about any information that would help prove their innocence, reduce their sentence or hurt the credibility of a witness testifying against them. When prosecutors fail to disclose such information — known as a "Brady violation" after the 1963 Supreme Court ruling that mandates it — the court can declare a mistrial, overturn a conviction or even sanction the prosecutor. No federal laws regulate facial recognition and courts do not agree whether AI identifications are subject to Brady rules. Some states and cities have begun mandating greater transparency around the technology, but even in these locations, the technology is either not being used that often or it's not being disclosed, according to interviews and public records requests...

Over the past four years, the Miami Police Department ran 2,500 facial recognition searches in investigations that led to at least 186 arrests and more than 50 convictions. Among the arrestees, just 1 in 16 were told about the technology's use — less than 7 percent — according to a review by The Post of public reports and interviews with some arrestees and their lawyers. The police department said that in some of those cases the technology was used for purposes other than identification, such as finding a suspect's social media feeds, but did not indicate in how many of the cases that happened. Carlos J. Martinez, the county's chief public defender, said he had no idea how many of his Miami clients were identified with facial recognition until The Post presented him with a list. "One of the basic tenets of our justice system is due process, is knowing what evidence there is against you and being able to challenge the evidence that's against you," Martinez said. "When that's kept from you, that is an all-powerful government that can trample all over us."

After reviewing The Post's findings, Miami police and local prosecutors announced plans to revise their policies to require clearer disclosure in every case involving facial recognition.
The article points out that Miami's Assistant Police Chief actually told a congressional panel on law enforcement AI use that his department is "the first to be completely transparent about" the use of facial recognition. (When confronted with the Washington Post's findings, he "acknowledged that officers may not have always informed local prosecutors [and] said the department would give prosecutors all information on the use of facial recognition, in past and future cases".

He told the Post that the department would "begin training officers to always disclose the use of facial recognition in incident reports." But he also said they would "leave it up to prosecutors to decide what to disclose to defendants."

Amazon launched "cashierless checkout" stores In 2018, reports CNBC — but by 2020 it was licensing the "Just Walk Out" technology to other stores in airports, hospitals, and stadiums. In April, Amazon announced it was removing cashierless checkout from its U.S. Fresh stores and Whole Foods locations... In place of Just Walk Out, which typically requires ceiling-mounted cameras, shelf sensors and gated entry points, Amazon Fresh stores and Whole Foods supermarkets will feature Dash Carts. The carts track and tally up items as shoppers place them in bags, enabling people to skip the checkout line. Amazon continues to use Just Walk Out in its grab-and-go marts and UK Fresh stores...

While it's no longer featuring Just Walk Out as prominently in its own stores, Amazon says it has inked deals with a growing list of customers. More than 200 third-party stores have paid Amazon to install the cashierless system. The company expects to double the number of third-party Just Walk Out stores this year, Jon Jenkins, who previously served as vice president of Amazon's Just Walk Out technology, said in a recent interview... Amazon's "primary focus" is selling the technology to third-party businesses and deploying it in small to medium-sized store formats, where the system "tends to generate a little better [return on investment]," Jenkins said...

At one Just Walk Out store, inside Seattle's Lumen Field, home to the NFL's Seahawks, the company said it boosted sales by 112% last season, with 85% more transactions during the course of a game.
Two interesting points from the article:

• "Earlier this year, Amazon also began selling its connected grocery carts to third parties."

• "With Just Walk Out, Amazon faces the challenge of convincing retailers that they can trust one of their biggest competitors with handling valuable shopper data..."