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A college is removing its vending machines after a student discovered they were using facial recognition technology
(www.businessinsider.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
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
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.
Just capitalism things
There is a valid reason. It's easier. You don't need to get a person to watch/count/analyse the inventory.
The machine can also just count what it sells. It doesn't need to do facial recognition to see who's buying it