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Hiawatha Bray | Tech lab

Can Amazon revolutionize the supermarket?

Amazon is testing its Amazon Go store in Seattle.David Ryder/New York Times

There were about 3.4 million cashiers in the United States in 2005, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are roughly as many today. And, whether Amazon.com likes it or not, there will probably be about the same number a decade from now.

The giant retailer earlier this week announced Amazon Go , an ambitious plan to build thousands of a radically new type of grocery store: one without any checkout counters. It’s thrilling stuff, and I hope they pull it off. But I doubt it would lead to the mass extinction of retail clerks anytime soon.

Amazon Go is just one of many efforts along similar lines — self-checkout, for instance, or using smartphones to scan the groceries before we bag them ourselves. So far, none of these innovations have bought us close to clerk-free shopping.

Amazon has successfully reengineered the way we buy books, electronics, clothing, and countless other products. But groceries are different. Most of us still buy our food in person, where we can look, touch, and sniff. And we like having lots of choices. So supermarkets today still look and work the way they did a couple of decades ago.

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The typical supermarket stocks about 45,000 items from around the world. They’re marvels of logistics technology. But they also suffer from a common weak point — a bottleneck at the checkout counter, where impatient shoppers are funneled to overworked cashiers. While each worker isn’t paid much, their wages are a major cost for retailers.

Amazon would do away with checkout workers. Instead, shoppers will check in at the front of the store with a smartphone app. Then they simply walk the aisles, take whatever they want, and leave. The Go store will tally each item they’ve chosen and bill the shopper’s Amazon account.

To make it work, Amazon must figure a way to identify individual shoppers and track their purchases, so you could stick a candy bar in your pocket and be billed for it when you hit the door.

A promotional video for Amazon Go doesn’t provide much detail. Still, a patent application filed by Amazon in 2014 offers some clues: The company may use cameras equipped with facial recognition to “follow” customers through the store, or track them using Bluetooth radio signals from their phones. In addition, Amazon could use cameras and “smart” pressure-sensitive shelves to detect when a customer picks up an item.

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Amazon is testing the technology at a small store in Seattle that it plans to open to the public in 2017. It eventually hopes to open 2,000 such stores, but hasn’t revealed a timetable. At 1,800 square feet, the first Go facility is about the size of a convenience store. In principle there should be no limit to how large such a store could be.

This bold plan will take years to play out, precisely because it’s so bold. The company compares it to the effort to build self-driving cars, and with good reason. Like creating a fleet of self-driving vehicles, building thousands of checkout-free retail stores won’t happen quickly.

Meanwhile, it’s hard to see other grocery companies trying to beat Amazon to the punch. Imagine the cost of installing such a system in every supermarket. Grocers work on notoriously thin profit margins — about a penny on the dollar. And they don’t share Amazon.com’s willingness to lose money for years. So they’ll be slow to retrofit America’s 38,000 supermarkets.

Self-checkout kiosks are the next best thing. They’ve been around for years, but haven’t taken over the world, for a number of reasons. Laziness, for instance. Self-checkout is fine for two or three items, but when you shop for a cartload, you probably want help with the bagging.

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Besides, too many of us are thieves. A two-year survey of American and European retail stores, conducted by the University of Leicester in England, found that nearly 4 percent of the goods hauled away by self-checkers hadn’t been paid for. That’s twice the ripoff rate when human clerks are around. So, many theft-wary retailers don’t offer self-checkout, and others are backing off, such as giant retailer Albertsons LLC, which has pulled self-checkout kiosks from many stores, including its Boston-area Shaw’s supermarkets. Even companies that use the kiosks, like Quincy-based Stop & Shop, have only a few in each store, while most checking is still done by humans.

Many Stop & Shop stores also feature a scan-as-you-go system that lets shoppers use a hand-held device or smartphone to check out their own groceries as they roam the aisles. Walmart is installing a similar system at its Sam’s Club stores. The technology is proven, but requires a bit of effort, and the cameras on some cheap smartphones aren’t up to the job of reading product barcodes. It’s easier to let a human checker do the work.

Amazon Go looks to be easier still. If Amazon can make it work on a large scale, it will be the biggest innovation in retail technology since credit cards. Don’t forget that Visa and MasterCard were invented in the mid-60s, but took about 20 years to catch on. Instant shopping is another fine idea that won’t happen instantly.

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Hiawatha Bray can be reached at hiawatha.bray@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeTechLab.