Cashiers should not, and will not prevent theft. They're not paid nearly enough to get in danger, and it is not their job.

I'm sure you can find videos of thefts in San Francisco if you need a visual demonstration. No cashier is going to jump in front of someone to stop a theft.

True, but having a cashier standing there waiting to scan your items will prevent most normal people from stealing. Sure, some will brazenly walk right past with a TV on their shoulder, but most people won't.

If there's no cashier and you're doing it yourself, a whole lot more people will "forget" to scan a couple items, and that adds up.

There's usually a security person or two in the store, looking over the self checkouts. I agree that job prevents a lot of people from becoming opportunistic thiefs, but I'm making a distinction between cashiers and security. Today the store needs both.

Pretty sure if a "security person" worked so well, Walmart wouldn't be severely reducing self checkouts at their stores to Walmart Plus members only.

That might be regional, then. I wouldn't say $COUTNRY is exactly a high-trust society, but it's not quite that bad for us over here.

I haven't observed this happening here (Toronto, Canada).

That's not the type of theft they were talking about. Rather, self scanners purposely not scanning items to get them for free, etc

I had a roommate in college who used to stuff containers of beef into produce bags full of kale, and weigh that on the self-service scanner.

A thief doesn't know what a cashier will do. And a cashier is an eye witness or can yell "hey stop them!"

You're doing the all or nothing fallacy. The fact that a cashier does not prevent all thefts does not mean a cashier does NOTHING for theft.

They absolutely do. It’s not the cashiers being security, it’s having adequate staffing making people less likely to steal. Its not stopping crimes that have occurred it’s just reducing opportunistic theft.

Is the theft really happening at the checkout?

And if so, why can't we detect it via camera + AI?

Detecting theft does not mean theft is prevented. You then need the government to prosecute, and impose sufficient punishment to deter theft. This is not cheap, nor a given that it will happen.

You detect someone leaving your store with a 4€ item. What then?

You ban them from coming back in after a few warnings. Stores seem really icy about facial recognition right now though. The optics are pretty bad (a play on words pun?)

Who is going to stop them from coming back in?

There have been a few stores that won't really stop people from coming back, they just quietly file charges, and then the person finds out next time they get pulled over or something along those lines.

No one, they get automatically flagged, and then someone asks them to leave. Or the police are called and they are trespassed.

You install AI-powered turnstiles at the entrance. Come on haven't you seen or read any dystopian media? :)

Use your army of lawyers to help file misdemeanor theft charges of course. Then get one out of 100 of the defendants who actually has something to lose to pay big damages to fund it to happen again the next time.

There are stores that are abandoning self-checkouts completely and going back to cashiers as the theft rose to unsustainable numbers.

Checkouts are often only egress points. So having pair of eyes over them does have some effect compared to having none at all.

So take the broken god awful experience of self checkout and add another layer of “I think you did something wrong so now you have to stand around waiting for an actual person”?

No thanks.