This morning the first Amazon Go store opened to the public in downtown Seattle. It’s more convenience store than grocery store, but the big deal is that there are no cashiers and no lines.

You enter the store through a gate and with your phone and Amazon’s app. As you walk around the store and pick up items they get automatically added to your online cart on Amazon. So everything goes right into the offline bag you’ll be leaving the store with. Place an item back on the shelf and it is instantly removed from your “cart.” Walk out of the store and you’re automatically charged.

It’s not yet clear how exactly the technology works, but Amazon says that all of this is accomplished through sophisticated computer vision (cameras), machine learning, and lots of sensors. 

What’s really remarkable is that it doesn’t rely on every product having a special chip or sensor attached to it. I would think that was one of the biggest hurdles to overcome in order to remove the pain point of grocery store lines.

Now that this is up and running, I can only imagine the customer behavior data that they must be collecting. Heat maps of every shelf showing conversion rates for every imaginable customer segment. (Are tall people more likely to buy products displayed higher up?) Correlating people’s food purchases to their broader Amazon shopping habits. And the list, I’m sure, goes on. 

There is even speculation that Amazon will begin licensing this technology to other retailers, similar to what it does with Amazon Web Services. That seems like a reasonable assumption given the data play we just talked about. Assuming the tech works, it’ll get copied. So they may as well embed themselves.

In case you were wondering, the Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the number of cashiers in the US at about 3,555,500 (2016 number). And this number is projected to remain more or less flat until 2026.

That doesn’t feel right to me.

Between 2001 and 2010, Detroit lost more than 200,000 jobs. It went from over 900,000 jobs to a low of about 690,000 jobs. All of this was happening while the United States was experiencing – up until 2008 at least – an economic growth cycle.

But we all know that Detroit is now a city on the move. According to City Observatory, Detroit has exhibited 5 consecutive years of job growth. And 2016 looks to be no different. Since bottoming out, Detroit has added more than 50,000 jobs.

The above chart is based on federal data for Wayne County, Michigan. It includes Detroit, Dearborn, and Livonia, but does not include any other counties within the Detroit metro area. (The above chart and stats are all via City Observatory.)

Of course, the big question is: Has Detroit made the requisite structural changes to its economy to keep this trend line continuing or is this simply a case of a rising tide lifting all boats?

I have visited Detroit basically every two years since 2009 and you can certainly feel the change, even in that short period of time.

And if you look at total non-farm employment growth over the last year (June 2015 to June 2016) for the entire Detroit metro area, you see that some of the fastest growing industries include: professional and business services (+14,200 jobs); leisure and hospitality (+10,500 jobs); education and health services (+9,300 jobs); and financial activities (+5,500 jobs). In fact, many of these industries are growing faster than national averages.

In case you were wondering, manufacturing added 1,200 jobs and government lost 1,800 jobs.

I’ve heard some people complain that the city, at least downtown, is now too controlled by one entity (Dan Gilbert). But that’s probably what had to happen to really kickstart the city’s renaissance. Somebody had to seed it before you could get the cool coffee shops, bars, restaurants, and coworking spaces.

There’s still heavy lifting to do, but the data suggests that the city is now headed in the right direction.

What are your thoughts? Also, if any of you are working on interesting projects in Detroit, I would love to hear from you.