Illinois Grocery Chain Dumping Cashiers and Checkouts

I am not anti-tech and I can prove it, but I am concerned about what an Illinois grocery chain is doing that includes doing away with cashiers and the traditional checkout process and allowing stores to be run completely by artificial intelligence. Yes, the robots are taking over.

Food and Wine are reporting about a drastic tech overhaul that Aldi in Illinois is doing. It's easier to show you than tell you, but I'll do both. The simple explanation is their Aurora, Illinois store allows you to check in as you walk in and then shop and leave without any interaction with a cashier or checkout lane.

You can either pick up a cart with a card reader and swipe your debit card before you shop or use digital payment on your phone like the woman in the video did.

I have some questions for you, Aldi in Illinois.

What happens if artificial intelligence charges you for an item that you picked up, but didn't leave with? I don't doubt that the process doesn't plan to charge you until you leave, but machines can make mistake and I'm paranoid.

Also, what happens if there's a network outage where the payment points can't access point of sale servers? Internet outages happen all the time in the real world and it would be a deal killer if you walk out of a store thinking you've paid, but get accused of shoplifting.

Finally, what about all the cashiers who had the checkout jobs? I know this is a corporate money-saver that will hypothetically lower food prices, but I fear that's gonna hurt a lot of people who need those jobs.

I admire Aldi for leading the way and trying new technical things to make shopping easier, but I'm concerned about the human element being completely left behind.