It’s certainly an unusual role at Sainsbury’s. “We’re hiring,” reads the job ad poster – which has been seen on the noticeboards at supermarkets and on bus stops. “Staff needed to work inside our new AI-powered self-service checkouts.”
That means literally inside, judging by the image on the official-looking poster.
It depicts a staff member encased in the machine, operating it from within like the Mechanical Turk.
It is, of course, not a genuine Sainsbury’s communication, but the work of satirical artist Darren Cullen. The point, he says, is so much of what big tech companies call AI is “frequently revealed to be no more than thousands of low-paid workers in a trench coat”.
It’s not clear why Sainsbury’s specifically has been skewered – Amazon would have been a more obvious choice, given its Amazon Fresh ‘Just Walk Out’ stores reportedly relied heavily on thousands of humans to verify purchases.
The supermarket – like its rivals – is certainly adding AI capabilities to its unmanned tills, although there’s been no suggestion yet of Cullen’s claim that it is “tens of thousands of remote workers doing ‘automated’ tasks the AI can’t”.
But it does make you stop and think. Which is Cullen’s main aim. Some of his other works – in which stickers reading “please export me to be burned abroad” were added to Coca-Cola bottle caps at supermarkets, and “Proud Sponsor of Daily Mail” badges were put on M&S ads – do a similar job.
An impactful bit of – free-to-download – brandalism.
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