Some of the tech service companies interviewed here are taking a wait and see attitude about AI agents doing shopping for their customers, but then Amazon and a few other big tech companies are...
So what, exactly, is the DoorDash problem? Briefly, it’s what happens when an AI interface gets between a service provider, like DoorDash, and you, who might send an AI to go order a sandwich from the internet instead of using apps and websites yourself.
That would mean things like user reviews, ads, loyalty programs, upsells, and partnerships would all go away — AI agents don’t care about those things, after all, and DoorDash would just become a commodity provider of sandwiches and lose out on all additional kinds of money you can make when real people open your app or visit your website.
Some of the tech service companies interviewed here are taking a wait and see attitude about AI agents doing shopping for their customers, but then Amazon and a few other big tech companies are going straight for lawsuits against the AI browsers
I don't personally know or care much about AI browsers, as I'm capable of ordering through an app myself, but it could become a thing eventually, as some companies fear, and others don't. I found this behind the scenes and future-thinking line of questioning really interesting
Amazon made their success taking competitors (small mom and pop shops moving online) to court over any of their ridiculous early patents. Amazon have never been about playing a fair game, and have...
Amazon made their success taking competitors (small mom and pop shops moving online) to court over any of their ridiculous early patents. Amazon have never been about playing a fair game, and have never prioritized the consumer, which is arguably why they're the winner of capitalism.
Exactly. It's one of those rare situations where we can sit back and watch our enemies fight each other. The winner will eat our souls, but for now we can enjoy the mess.
Exactly. It's one of those rare situations where we can sit back and watch our enemies fight each other. The winner will eat our souls, but for now we can enjoy the mess.
Patents are particularly unfair. They're abused to hell and back. I honestly believe we'd be better off without copyright and patents. Ideally, they'd be restricted to 5-10 years to encourage...
Patents are particularly unfair. They're abused to hell and back. I honestly believe we'd be better off without copyright and patents. Ideally, they'd be restricted to 5-10 years to encourage creativity.
Copyright was made precisely because large companies would take some new invention and outscale the inventor with no compensation. No copyright would benefit big companies more. But yes, that's...
Copyright was made precisely because large companies would take some new invention and outscale the inventor with no compensation. No copyright would benefit big companies more.
But yes, that's why copyright pretty much everywhere else was only for a certain time or less time after the death of the author. It's for the inventor to benefit from (and their immediate family), not giant corporations. A return to something closer to the 14+ 14 (or 10 years after the death of the author, whichever comes first) would be nice. I thought 20+20 would fit the modern workforce expectations, so an author benefits a career's worth from their spoils.
Actually, copyright came out of a British system for government censorship of printing press works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Conception Before copyright, intellectual and artistic...
Copyright was made precisely because large companies would take some new invention and outscale the inventor with no compensation. No copyright would benefit big companies more.
Before copyright, intellectual and artistic works were considered truly free and open. Copyright exists exclusively to create "intellectual property" and protect profit.
I agree it'd be a massive improvement to shorten copyright terms.
That's fair. I should have specified that the US Copyright system was intended to try and safeguard against the British system, which did not recognize the colonies' contributions:...
That's fair. I should have specified that the US Copyright system was intended to try and safeguard against the British system, which did not recognize the colonies' contributions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790
Another small part of what caused the colonies to break off of Britain. The Copyright Act was intended to be made as a rejection of the practices made by Britain. But as we all know, all systems can be gamed (or lobbied to make derail its original intention).
How does it exist exclusively to protect profit if it's the only thing that prevents capital from exploiting intellectual labor without compensation? If I spend time creating a song that people...
How does it exist exclusively to protect profit if it's the only thing that prevents capital from exploiting intellectual labor without compensation?
If I spend time creating a song that people like, the only thing preventing Spotify from just uploading it and profiting from letting everyone stream it without compensating me is copyright law.
Because piracy exists. How would Spotify beat out free music with zero ads? Piracy is a service problem, but when the cost of distributing and replicating something is effectively zero then the...
Because piracy exists. How would Spotify beat out free music with zero ads?
Piracy is a service problem, but when the cost of distributing and replicating something is effectively zero then the dynamics radically change.
There are also ways to earn money without intellectual property. Today, it's easy to pirate a lot of Patreon content, yet artists still have fans sign up. Commissions are widely shared, yet people pay for them.
In general, I do think there's a happy middle ground with shorter copyright terms. I want people to be paid for their labor. I don't like how extraordinarily long copyright terms have led to stifled creativity. Historically, artists were more likely to riff off one another's work.
I mean, they do beat out free music with zero ads. People can pirate music pretty easily, but Spotify still exists and compensates artists for their songs, because ultimately artists need to agree...
I mean, they do beat out free music with zero ads. People can pirate music pretty easily, but Spotify still exists and compensates artists for their songs, because ultimately artists need to agree to have their songs on Spotify. (The music industry is incredibly exploitative towards artists and has been forever, but that's due to much larger systemic issues)
If copyright law didn't exist though, there'd be no legal reason for that compensation. Spotify could put whatever they wanted on their service and artists would have no say in the matter. It wouldn't technically be piracy, because the concept of piracy only exists in the framework of copyright law. It would be deeply unethical though.
I agree that there are problems with the current implementation of copyright in the US, but there's absolutely a good reason for the concept to exist, and even in its current state it does more good than harm.
If you’re an artist, you want to be paid for your work. If you don’t care, then copyright doesn’t matter either way, you’re more than free to release your work in the public domain. If you are an...
If you’re an artist, you want to be paid for your work. If you don’t care, then copyright doesn’t matter either way, you’re more than free to release your work in the public domain.
If you are an artist who does want to be paid for your work, what can stop a platform with a larger reach from scooping it up with no copyright?
There’s no point talking about history. In the past, there wasn’t the internet. Now there is.
I think people underestimate how important copyright is. You often see examples of abuse of copyright, but that's because most copyright enforcement is unseen. The fact that all authors of any...
I think people underestimate how important copyright is. You often see examples of abuse of copyright, but that's because most copyright enforcement is unseen. The fact that all authors of any creative work automatically have implicit copyright over their work is why you don't need to constantly be worried about a bigger fish taking your idea and taking it over.
The fact that copyright exists inherently changes how people and companies interact with respect to creative works, and in my opinion, mostly in positive ways, at least for the smaller fish. There's also a reason why copyright has become so important in the AIpocalpyse. In a world without or with weak copyright, why hire an artist? Just yoink some artwork from google images.
For patents, that's a different story, but in practice in a world without patents you would just have more corporate secrets. It's better for patents to exist, and therefore for people to collaborate on their inventions after agreements are made, than for people to spend a lot of time and effort obfuscating their "secret sauce".
Depends on how you define capitalism, which nobody can be bothered to do it seems. Worker cooperatives, for example, can participate in capitalism without prioritizing profits over everything else.
Depends on how you define capitalism, which nobody can be bothered to do it seems. Worker cooperatives, for example, can participate in capitalism without prioritizing profits over everything else.
I have been interested in a post-ad-ai-browsing world since the idea came up that ad based marketing wouldn’t be effective with AI browsing. So this article interests me, thank you! I guess the...
I have been interested in a post-ad-ai-browsing world since the idea came up that ad based marketing wouldn’t be effective with AI browsing. So this article interests me, thank you!
I guess the “solution” (note I use this word from the perspective of giant corps not of consumers) would be flooding the internet with text based ads that get sucked up by llms and influence their responses slightly? E.g. you ask to order a sandwich and somewhere in all that training it says “ordered a sandwich from shop A. It should be good based on reviews, very similar to the more desirable shop B.” Then next time you order you’ll ask to order specifically from shop B?
(Just spitballing about this silly little consumer nightmare)
I don't understand the problem agents are solving here. Is clicking "buy it now" on Amazon so difficult for the modern idiot that they need an AI agent to do it for them?
I don't understand the problem agents are solving here. Is clicking "buy it now" on Amazon so difficult for the modern idiot that they need an AI agent to do it for them?
It's probably not the buying but the finding. If there are 10,000 different mostly equivalent brands of batteries out there, not having to make a decision about brand, storefront, or price...
It's probably not the buying but the finding. If there are 10,000 different mostly equivalent brands of batteries out there, not having to make a decision about brand, storefront, or price comparisons would be great. Telling your AI that you need AA batteries and letting it solve that problem for you sounds nice, if you trust it to do well and have your best interests at "heart".
I broke a shoe lace the other day. I have the Amazon phone app and I tried to find a replacement. I knew the exact length and color and shape of the item. I simply could not find it in the app...
I broke a shoe lace the other day. I have the Amazon phone app and I tried to find a replacement. I knew the exact length and color and shape of the item.
I simply could not find it in the app using the regular search. The main problem is that 2/3 of the screen was taken by promoted items and ads for similar products. I finally had to use the stupid Rufus AI to find the item.
So one reason people may start using AI is because the the regular sites which used to work fine completely suck now.
The Amazon phone app is notoriously bad. There's a reason I only use the website. They make money off the search and UI getting worse. More searches means more opportunities to show ads!
The Amazon phone app is notoriously bad. There's a reason I only use the website. They make money off the search and UI getting worse. More searches means more opportunities to show ads!
This is very similar to what Amazon has tried with Alexa voice shopping. The difference is they own Alexa and have an opportunity to shoehorn ads and their own products.
This is very similar to what Amazon has tried with Alexa voice shopping. The difference is they own Alexa and have an opportunity to shoehorn ads and their own products.
And Alexa has an immense built in conflict of interest. Trusting the system to have your best interests in mine rather than the creators' is to me the biggest reason I wouldn't trust one to shop...
And Alexa has an immense built in conflict of interest. Trusting the system to have your best interests in mine rather than the creators' is to me the biggest reason I wouldn't trust one to shop for me.
If I'm understanding this whole agentic AI stuff, I think you have to imagine something like Star Trek: "Computer, order me 6 LED light bulbs and some AA batteries off Amazon," and then the...
If I'm understanding this whole agentic AI stuff, I think you have to imagine something like Star Trek: "Computer, order me 6 LED light bulbs and some AA batteries off Amazon," and then the computer, or AI agent in this case, goes off and orders it on Amazon.
Or another might be that an AI agent reads your emails and notices your receipts from Amazon. The AI notices that you seem to order a pack of toilet paper every couple of months. So then it asks you "Hey, want me to order more toilet paper? We're coming up on two months since your last order." You say yes, and then it does.
I spend a lot of time, sometimes too much time, on Amazon and other sites looking at stuff, comparing things, trying to find the "best" form of whatever items I'm looking for, comparing price, etc. So I can imagine telling an AI, "Hey, I'm looking for this thing. Search Amazon, ebay, and Target, find me the 3 best things by price and reviews." The AI does, I choose one, and it places the order at whatever stores it's at.
It's not the people are too stupid. It's that shopping is sometimes a pain. Or it's just another thing to do in the neverending list of things that need to be done.
I'm not saying I want all this. That I want more AI in everything. But just giving examples of how it might be beneficial to some people.
I actually did this last week. I need to transport some Cosplay to a convention, but need a container that fits within airline checked luggage restrictions. So I told Claude to go find a container...
I actually did this last week. I need to transport some Cosplay to a convention, but need a container that fits within airline checked luggage restrictions. So I told Claude to go find a container that was lockable with the maximum possible volume that was below 62 linear inches.
I then verified it's suggestion, but it did save me searching through multiple websites and brands all with similar but crucially different specifications.
As long as you just need "something" that meets your requirements, this works. But my stumbling block is that I know that the AI's exclusion criteria is a black box, and I don't know what...
As long as you just need "something" that meets your requirements, this works. But my stumbling block is that I know that the AI's exclusion criteria is a black box, and I don't know what potentially great options it's decided not to show me, for whatever reason.
At this point it's rare to come across easily digestible product reviews/recommendations with no agenda too. Reddit is filling up with increasingly subtle promotional posts/comments that are...
At this point it's rare to come across easily digestible product reviews/recommendations with no agenda too. Reddit is filling up with increasingly subtle promotional posts/comments that are designed to appear organic. The lists and blogs that appear in the top of search results are often only there due to SEO manipulation and/or have affiliate links. I think YouTube is one of the last places remaining to get less biased information. But even that approach usually requires you to seek out specific creators and watch long videos.
I'm not sure I would trust AI's product searches as a result. It gets a lot of information from Reddit's ads-disguised-as-comments I've noticed.
Right, I don't usually trust the biggest YouTube channels surrounding a particular topic, as they tend to turn into biased/promo-heavy channels over time. So you often have to seek out smaller or...
Right, I don't usually trust the biggest YouTube channels surrounding a particular topic, as they tend to turn into biased/promo-heavy channels over time. So you often have to seek out smaller or particularly trustworthy channels. And I don't think the LLMs have the proper judgment mechanisms to filter through mixed-trust information like that yet.
Agreed, I'm also uncomfortable granting the AI that level of autonomy. In my example I very explicitly asked the AI for a list of options, and then double checked it's work because I don't fully...
Agreed, I'm also uncomfortable granting the AI that level of autonomy. In my example I very explicitly asked the AI for a list of options, and then double checked it's work because I don't fully trust it. Even if a fully automated option existed right now to go buy something I'm not sure what is going to take for me to trust that system.
Yeah, probably depends on the thing, right? Like I have spent a stupid amount of time looking at LED light bulbs for the lamps around my place. I still ended up going with some non-name brand...
Yeah, probably depends on the thing, right? Like I have spent a stupid amount of time looking at LED light bulbs for the lamps around my place. I still ended up going with some non-name brand option. Like I can and should pass that off to AI. I'm sure LED bulbs are not vastly different per brand. For all I know, they're all made at the same place and then are white-label branded.
I was looking at DDR4 RAM recently. I didn't spend a lot of time looking, but still some time. I looked on eBay and Amazon and Micro Center. For this, I was looking at mainly price, reviews, and whether it was new or used. Like RAM is so ubiquitous, I don't really care. Especially since this is for an older computer.
But like USB-C cables? Especially if I'm looking for something specific? Given how confusing USB-C protocols are, I might want to look at that myself. Or like I was recently looking at toaster ovens. Aside from features, I want one that looks "nice." I'm looking for a certain aesthetic that I didn't know I wanted until I started looking at various models, that I don't how to describe.
Your examples are funny to me because I actually view them mostly opposite. LED bulbs can vary massively; do they flash, have the right color temp, last a long time, etc. RAM is pretty easy to...
Your examples are funny to me because I actually view them mostly opposite. LED bulbs can vary massively; do they flash, have the right color temp, last a long time, etc. RAM is pretty easy to shop for as long as you pick the right criteria around timings and clock speed. USB-C on the other hand is super easy if you know what protocol you want and whether you want a USB-IF certified cable.
I agree with you on aesthetics being particularly difficult to describe in advance. It's hard for me to trust an LLM will be able to select the same filters I value and identify the ideal product. Although, "fine" is good enough for plenty of products.
100%. I sometimes think that as techy or data-driven people -- I'm assuming you're one; at this point, I'm assuming most people on this site are! -- we have a tendency to overthink things. That we...
Although, "fine" is good enough for plenty of products.
100%. I sometimes think that as techy or data-driven people -- I'm assuming you're one; at this point, I'm assuming most people on this site are! -- we have a tendency to overthink things. That we need to pour through all the available data to come to the best conclusion, or in this case, the best item. Or else woe be upon us.
Or maybe that's just me.
But before Amazon, if I needed bulbs, did I physically go to Target and Wal-Mart and Home Depot and spend 3hrs comparing bulbs? No. I spent maybe 10min at most at a single store, before selecting one -- or the only option -- that was the right color and socket I needed, (gently) tossed them in my cart, and continued my shopping. And my experience with these bulbs were fine. So now that I have all these options and data via the Internet, and I can and do spend 3hrs looking at bulbs, has my life vastly improved because of this? No. As long as they turn on and off when I want them to, and they're the right color for the room (which for replacements, I'd already know), that's all I care about.
So why do I do this? Am I broken? Am I looking for some deeper validation of my self and my choices through my shopping experience? For someone to tell me I can pick good? That I'm a good capitalist boy? Oh god...Someone help me!
...Sorry. That got dark.
Good thing I got light bulbs! ;)
Anyway, I shudder to think about how much time I've wasted trying to hunt down the perfect product online, when it reality, it didn't matter at all what I got, as long as it worked (and it did). Because, as you say, fine is good enough for plenty of products.
Maybe I'm wrongfully connecting two things here. My "need" to analyze all the options and data to find the perfect, and then saying AI is the solution. I can stop that without AI, right? I can just stop being obsessive about having perfect information. And I do try. But that's effort in itself. So if the AI can help me here...why not?
Satisfiers vs optimizers as someone on Tildes said! I have this compulsion to find "the best" thing too, and I've successfully fought it by deciding to buy a cheap or mediocre version of something...
Satisfiers vs optimizers as someone on Tildes said!
I have this compulsion to find "the best" thing too, and I've successfully fought it by deciding to buy a cheap or mediocre version of something then replace it if that's insufficient.
If I'm shopping for expensive or long-term things, I'll do more research, but my stress really dropped when I realized the cost of switching is usually very low!
As long as the cheap bulb doesn't set my home on fire, I can always buy a better one later. Or if it turns out I don't need rain pants as often as I expected, I've saved myself a lot of time and money!
It seems to me like a lot of people’s perception of how an AI assistant can’t work comes from a place of not having had an actual human personal assistant before. With USB cables, it’s not like...
It seems to me like a lot of people’s perception of how an AI assistant can’t work comes from a place of not having had an actual human personal assistant before.
With USB cables, it’s not like you don’t have any control. You ask for a thing, it asks you if it found what you want. For a toaster, it can show you a selection of options — if you don’t like them, you can do your own search. Or tell it to go look again with guidance.
I'm glad you mentioned the human assistant. I was writing up a reply to someone else and I thought that exact thing. Plenty of people over the ages have had human assistants. Do these PAs always...
I'm glad you mentioned the human assistant. I was writing up a reply to someone else and I thought that exact thing. Plenty of people over the ages have had human assistants. Do these PAs always get it right? No, of course not. How about even spouses or your kids or a friend? How many of us have asked someone to pick something up for us at the store, gave them some parameters, sometimes explicit, yet they still didn't get exactly what was desired?
So to me, it comes off as a trust issue. Unless you do something yourself, there's always a chance someone or something will mess up. Is a human messing up inherently better than AI messing up? What's if it's your spouse or SO, someone who supposedly knows you deeply, that still buys the wrong thing? Is that less bad than an AI doing it? I would almost think it's worse. Feel like some people have gotten divorced or broken up over that...
Sure, on a computer or phone or tablet. But you might not be able to check out the item if you're using a voice assistant! For the most obscure niches (say, an espresso machine, or a mountain...
Sure, on a computer or phone or tablet. But you might not be able to check out the item if you're using a voice assistant!
For the most obscure niches (say, an espresso machine, or a mountain bike, or an ereader), it might be both difficult to articulate your preferences and hard to assess the quality of a product without deep knowledge of the space. But I suppose those are also categories where I wouldn't trust a human assistant -- the only way to make a good decision is to deeply research the space yourself so you understand the tradeoffs, which likely involves practical experience.
I will say that with bicycles, there's still a network of skilled professionals whose main job is to help you find the right one for you and your use case, and they're at your local bike shop....
I will say that with bicycles, there's still a network of skilled professionals whose main job is to help you find the right one for you and your use case, and they're at your local bike shop. It's true that when buying an espresso machine or an ereader you may be at the whims of the SEO infested hellscape that is a Google search, but for a bicycle all of the major manufacturers have continued to essentially subsidize retail locations with a combination of exceptionally forgiving payment timelines so shops can sell the bikes well before the bill to the manufacturer comes due and restrictions on selling bicycles online. They recognize the value of the network of shops to ensure that their consumers have a good buying and riding experience, and have continued to support the retail shops that make it possible.
I do want more AI in everything. My most valuable asset is time, and I love it when I find a way to waste less of it. My biggest concern is keeping the AI assistants aligned with me and not...
I'm not saying I want all this. That I want more AI in everything.
I do want more AI in everything. My most valuable asset is time, and I love it when I find a way to waste less of it. My biggest concern is keeping the AI assistants aligned with me and not co-opted by business interests.
Right now perplexity is in the pre-enshittification stage. Their agents are aligned with their users. In five years (or likely even now, in private discussions), businesses will be cutting deals directly with them to screw customers.
How do we bridge that gap? Open sourced local agents have a lot of promise but I suspect they will not be able to compete with the type of compute needed. Possibly publicly owned government backed services could have a role, but I’m hesitant to give governments that kind of power and access.
I think it's more to avoid spending time comparing options. I have personally spent a lot of time browsing listings on Amazon for relatively simple products before just removing it from the cart...
I think it's more to avoid spending time comparing options. I have personally spent a lot of time browsing listings on Amazon for relatively simple products before just removing it from the cart entirely and resolving to buy it at a store because there's just too many options. Something about being able to see the reviews just adds to the choice paralysis because I get in the mindset of finding something that's a good quality and affordable.
That, and it also lets people just avoid browsing the sites for other products, or feel compelled to buy more so they can qualify for free shipping or some other deal the site tells you about. I won't use AI, but I get the convenience it can provide some people.
Wow that's an awful example. Why do I want an AI to order my sandwich? Or do any kind of financial transaction on my part. This gives me vibes of [Amazon Dash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon...
Wow that's an awful example. Why do I want an AI to order my sandwich? Or do any kind of financial transaction on my part.
This gives me vibes of [Amazon Dash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon Dash). Where apparently executives completely gobbled up the idea that consumers would want a button to push to instantly order more laundry detergent when they run low. Regardless of deals, coupons, if you need to buy in bulk or just need a short supply before you travel, etc. You can't automate that experience unless you truly don't care and live an extremely consistent lifestyle. A very disconnected point of view from the common person.
wow so this is where we’re at now, So it’s too much effort to tap a few spots on the phone screen, while sitting like a blob on the couch, to order the zero nutrition “food” you want from the fast...
wow so this is where we’re at now,
it’s what happens when an AI interface gets between a service provider, like DoorDash, and you
So it’s too much effort to tap a few spots on the phone screen, while sitting like a blob on the couch, to order the zero nutrition “food” you want from the fast food place a few blocks away.
In ten years, a scene right out of Idiocracy, there’s a big brown button built into your recliner that just says FOOD, and you lean over and smack it and a loose rolling fart slides out, and then the delivery boy drops your order into a chute that empties the flavoured sluice right into your unshaven green-flecked mouth and you don’t even need to take your eyes off whatever screen is feeding you your constant dopamine drip..
Taking a slightly different view on this : if we want to live in a neo-liberal capitalist society, don't we want a single unified marketplace ? Isn't that the basic foundation that enables...
Taking a slightly different view on this : if we want to live in a neo-liberal capitalist society, don't we want a single unified marketplace ? Isn't that the basic foundation that enables competition between actors, an open market where you can compare prices and quality ? It seems liberals should be up in arms about it.
In practice you could have e.g. a public marketplace for the EU (maybe one for goods, one for food, one for services, one for culture), anything you want to sell/give public access needs to be registered and available there. Alternative marketplace could still be available if you want to provide customized experiences.
From Amazon's perspective, they want that but want it to be them. They simply compromise by tracking and ading other places to avoid anti-trust. From the people's perspective, well: we've seen...
From Amazon's perspective, they want that but want it to be them. They simply compromise by tracking and ading other places to avoid anti-trust.
From the people's perspective, well: we've seen enough monopolistic entities and how they behave when they achieve such a status. They become a vector to exploit and the exploiter at the same time. Thrres no truly fair unifiier.
At least when that unifiier is the government for public spaces they are beholden to the voters and not the money. Donors can only corrupt a politician for as long as their term is running.
I think most neo liberal capitalists aren't really dedicated to that ideology. The support it because it favors them most of the time. When it stops favoring them they go back to rent-seeking....
I think most neo liberal capitalists aren't really dedicated to that ideology. The support it because it favors them most of the time. When it stops favoring them they go back to rent-seeking. It's never been an ideology that's had particularly passionate advocates besides libertarians, but libertarians are usually just poor people who got tricked into advocating against themselves instead of the wealthy capitalists who actually benefit from neoliberalism.
If the value of the AI is figuring out what to purchase, maybe this ends up like flight search? There's a search engine that lets you do price comparisons, but at the end, they send you to the...
If the value of the AI is figuring out what to purchase, maybe this ends up like flight search? There's a search engine that lets you do price comparisons, but at the end, they send you to the airline's web page to finish the transaction. Maybe some things get filled in for you. If the AI takes the place of flight search, it's just the start of the transaction.
What would a good user experience look like? The AI figures it out, you get a confirmation page from the seller with the transaction details and if it looks okay then you press "Buy."
(And sure, there would inevitably be upsells on that page.)
I don’t entirely agree with the premise. For me, I think there are other aspects which are comparable in importance. like you said, upsells. Insulating me from upsells and advertising on that “buy...
If the value of the AI is figuring out what to purchase
I don’t entirely agree with the premise. For me, I think there are other aspects which are comparable in importance.
like you said, upsells. Insulating me from upsells and advertising on that “buy now” page is something i want.
that last mile of completing the purchase is still something I don’t want to have to do
privacy and profiling — I think there are ways agentic buying can operate that preclude websites from associating my agent’s browsing from profiling me. All the stores know is that some cloud entity with a clean cookie jar was looking for X product.
I’m unwilling to give an AI a credit card and let it buy things automatically, so I would want that confirmation page. I imagine that will be a common attitude. Perhaps someday that will change,...
I’m unwilling to give an AI a credit card and let it buy things automatically, so I would want that confirmation page. I imagine that will be a common attitude. Perhaps someday that will change, but it would take time to build that trust.
Adblocking or similar software might help with the upsells on the confirmation page for people who care about that. However, that’s an adversarial relationship, and I wanted to imagine how the relationship between AI agents, vendors, and end users might be more cooperative. It makes sense for the vendor to have some way to communicate directly with the end user, in case the AI gets it wrong.
I don’t think it makes sense to use vendors you completely distrust. After all, you’re buying the product from them, so you need to trust either that they ship you the right thing or their return policy.
I can also imagine a system where the AI is the vendor, but then it needs to do all the things vendors do, including handling returns. It needs to basically be a company that can pay the cost of satisfying angry customers if it screws up some transactions.
This is giving me Costco vibes. For years I've hated shopping there. Everything is in a different place every time I visit. Nothing is labeled and even the people that work there often don't seem...
This is giving me Costco vibes. For years I've hated shopping there. Everything is in a different place every time I visit. Nothing is labeled and even the people that work there often don't seem to be sure where anything is.
Then I found out that they deliberately hide the most useful products so that people will buy more stuff as they randomly wander throughout the store. The CEO has the nerve to call it a "treasure hunt".
They would hate a service that tells you exactly where everything is since they benefit from confusing the customer.
I found this quite interesting, to think of Amazon as the one that is most easily replaceable. However, most big companies are creating a marketplace for third party sellers, so it is not the most...
It’s weird to think of Amazon as having one of the least defensible moats in tech, but AI scrambles everything, and it feels like Amazon has a lot at stake if the courts ultimately side with Perplexity.
I found this quite interesting, to think of Amazon as the one that is most easily replaceable. However, most big companies are creating a marketplace for third party sellers, so it is not the most surprising.
Some of the tech service companies interviewed here are taking a wait and see attitude about AI agents doing shopping for their customers, but then Amazon and a few other big tech companies are going straight for lawsuits against the AI browsers
I don't personally know or care much about AI browsers, as I'm capable of ordering through an app myself, but it could become a thing eventually, as some companies fear, and others don't. I found this behind the scenes and future-thinking line of questioning really interesting
Amazon made their success taking competitors (small mom and pop shops moving online) to court over any of their ridiculous early patents. Amazon have never been about playing a fair game, and have never prioritized the consumer, which is arguably why they're the winner of capitalism.
Never thought I'd be rooting for the AI companies but here we are...
You don't have to. There's no good guys here.
Exactly. It's one of those rare situations where we can sit back and watch our enemies fight each other. The winner will eat our souls, but for now we can enjoy the mess.
Has any big company under capitalism played a fair game? Its inherently an unfair system designed to be abused as much as possible.
Patents are particularly unfair. They're abused to hell and back. I honestly believe we'd be better off without copyright and patents. Ideally, they'd be restricted to 5-10 years to encourage creativity.
Copyright was made precisely because large companies would take some new invention and outscale the inventor with no compensation. No copyright would benefit big companies more.
But yes, that's why copyright pretty much everywhere else was only for a certain time or less time after the death of the author. It's for the inventor to benefit from (and their immediate family), not giant corporations. A return to something closer to the 14+ 14 (or 10 years after the death of the author, whichever comes first) would be nice. I thought 20+20 would fit the modern workforce expectations, so an author benefits a career's worth from their spoils.
Actually, copyright came out of a British system for government censorship of printing press works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright#Conception
Before copyright, intellectual and artistic works were considered truly free and open. Copyright exists exclusively to create "intellectual property" and protect profit.
I agree it'd be a massive improvement to shorten copyright terms.
That's fair. I should have specified that the US Copyright system was intended to try and safeguard against the British system, which did not recognize the colonies' contributions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Act_of_1790
Another small part of what caused the colonies to break off of Britain. The Copyright Act was intended to be made as a rejection of the practices made by Britain. But as we all know, all systems can be gamed (or lobbied to make derail its original intention).
How does it exist exclusively to protect profit if it's the only thing that prevents capital from exploiting intellectual labor without compensation?
If I spend time creating a song that people like, the only thing preventing Spotify from just uploading it and profiting from letting everyone stream it without compensating me is copyright law.
Because piracy exists. How would Spotify beat out free music with zero ads?
Piracy is a service problem, but when the cost of distributing and replicating something is effectively zero then the dynamics radically change.
There are also ways to earn money without intellectual property. Today, it's easy to pirate a lot of Patreon content, yet artists still have fans sign up. Commissions are widely shared, yet people pay for them.
In general, I do think there's a happy middle ground with shorter copyright terms. I want people to be paid for their labor. I don't like how extraordinarily long copyright terms have led to stifled creativity. Historically, artists were more likely to riff off one another's work.
I mean, they do beat out free music with zero ads. People can pirate music pretty easily, but Spotify still exists and compensates artists for their songs, because ultimately artists need to agree to have their songs on Spotify. (The music industry is incredibly exploitative towards artists and has been forever, but that's due to much larger systemic issues)
If copyright law didn't exist though, there'd be no legal reason for that compensation. Spotify could put whatever they wanted on their service and artists would have no say in the matter. It wouldn't technically be piracy, because the concept of piracy only exists in the framework of copyright law. It would be deeply unethical though.
I agree that there are problems with the current implementation of copyright in the US, but there's absolutely a good reason for the concept to exist, and even in its current state it does more good than harm.
If you’re an artist, you want to be paid for your work. If you don’t care, then copyright doesn’t matter either way, you’re more than free to release your work in the public domain.
If you are an artist who does want to be paid for your work, what can stop a platform with a larger reach from scooping it up with no copyright?
There’s no point talking about history. In the past, there wasn’t the internet. Now there is.
I think people underestimate how important copyright is. You often see examples of abuse of copyright, but that's because most copyright enforcement is unseen. The fact that all authors of any creative work automatically have implicit copyright over their work is why you don't need to constantly be worried about a bigger fish taking your idea and taking it over.
The fact that copyright exists inherently changes how people and companies interact with respect to creative works, and in my opinion, mostly in positive ways, at least for the smaller fish. There's also a reason why copyright has become so important in the AIpocalpyse. In a world without or with weak copyright, why hire an artist? Just yoink some artwork from google images.
For patents, that's a different story, but in practice in a world without patents you would just have more corporate secrets. It's better for patents to exist, and therefore for people to collaborate on their inventions after agreements are made, than for people to spend a lot of time and effort obfuscating their "secret sauce".
Depends on how you define capitalism, which nobody can be bothered to do it seems. Worker cooperatives, for example, can participate in capitalism without prioritizing profits over everything else.
I have been interested in a post-ad-ai-browsing world since the idea came up that ad based marketing wouldn’t be effective with AI browsing. So this article interests me, thank you!
I guess the “solution” (note I use this word from the perspective of giant corps not of consumers) would be flooding the internet with text based ads that get sucked up by llms and influence their responses slightly? E.g. you ask to order a sandwich and somewhere in all that training it says “ordered a sandwich from shop A. It should be good based on reviews, very similar to the more desirable shop B.” Then next time you order you’ll ask to order specifically from shop B?
(Just spitballing about this silly little consumer nightmare)
I don't understand the problem agents are solving here. Is clicking "buy it now" on Amazon so difficult for the modern idiot that they need an AI agent to do it for them?
It's probably not the buying but the finding. If there are 10,000 different mostly equivalent brands of batteries out there, not having to make a decision about brand, storefront, or price comparisons would be great. Telling your AI that you need AA batteries and letting it solve that problem for you sounds nice, if you trust it to do well and have your best interests at "heart".
I broke a shoe lace the other day. I have the Amazon phone app and I tried to find a replacement. I knew the exact length and color and shape of the item.
I simply could not find it in the app using the regular search. The main problem is that 2/3 of the screen was taken by promoted items and ads for similar products. I finally had to use the stupid Rufus AI to find the item.
So one reason people may start using AI is because the the regular sites which used to work fine completely suck now.
The Amazon phone app is notoriously bad. There's a reason I only use the website. They make money off the search and UI getting worse. More searches means more opportunities to show ads!
Tech companies finding an obnoxiously carbon intensive and ethically questionable solution to a problem they themselves created. I hate the future.
Which I absolutely do not. This will go down exactly like search engines. The worst garbage will be optimized to grab the attention of LLMs.
Yeah, it's definitely a load-bearing "if."
This is very similar to what Amazon has tried with Alexa voice shopping. The difference is they own Alexa and have an opportunity to shoehorn ads and their own products.
And Alexa has an immense built in conflict of interest. Trusting the system to have your best interests in mine rather than the creators' is to me the biggest reason I wouldn't trust one to shop for me.
If I'm understanding this whole agentic AI stuff, I think you have to imagine something like Star Trek: "Computer, order me 6 LED light bulbs and some AA batteries off Amazon," and then the computer, or AI agent in this case, goes off and orders it on Amazon.
Or another might be that an AI agent reads your emails and notices your receipts from Amazon. The AI notices that you seem to order a pack of toilet paper every couple of months. So then it asks you "Hey, want me to order more toilet paper? We're coming up on two months since your last order." You say yes, and then it does.
I spend a lot of time, sometimes too much time, on Amazon and other sites looking at stuff, comparing things, trying to find the "best" form of whatever items I'm looking for, comparing price, etc. So I can imagine telling an AI, "Hey, I'm looking for this thing. Search Amazon, ebay, and Target, find me the 3 best things by price and reviews." The AI does, I choose one, and it places the order at whatever stores it's at.
It's not the people are too stupid. It's that shopping is sometimes a pain. Or it's just another thing to do in the neverending list of things that need to be done.
I'm not saying I want all this. That I want more AI in everything. But just giving examples of how it might be beneficial to some people.
I actually did this last week. I need to transport some Cosplay to a convention, but need a container that fits within airline checked luggage restrictions. So I told Claude to go find a container that was lockable with the maximum possible volume that was below 62 linear inches.
I then verified it's suggestion, but it did save me searching through multiple websites and brands all with similar but crucially different specifications.
As long as you just need "something" that meets your requirements, this works. But my stumbling block is that I know that the AI's exclusion criteria is a black box, and I don't know what potentially great options it's decided not to show me, for whatever reason.
At this point it's rare to come across easily digestible product reviews/recommendations with no agenda too. Reddit is filling up with increasingly subtle promotional posts/comments that are designed to appear organic. The lists and blogs that appear in the top of search results are often only there due to SEO manipulation and/or have affiliate links. I think YouTube is one of the last places remaining to get less biased information. But even that approach usually requires you to seek out specific creators and watch long videos.
I'm not sure I would trust AI's product searches as a result. It gets a lot of information from Reddit's ads-disguised-as-comments I've noticed.
And even supposedly trustworthy Youtube influencers are notorious for being exposed for taking kickbacks and otherwise being corporate shill.
Right, I don't usually trust the biggest YouTube channels surrounding a particular topic, as they tend to turn into biased/promo-heavy channels over time. So you often have to seek out smaller or particularly trustworthy channels. And I don't think the LLMs have the proper judgment mechanisms to filter through mixed-trust information like that yet.
Agreed, I'm also uncomfortable granting the AI that level of autonomy. In my example I very explicitly asked the AI for a list of options, and then double checked it's work because I don't fully trust it. Even if a fully automated option existed right now to go buy something I'm not sure what is going to take for me to trust that system.
Yeah, probably depends on the thing, right? Like I have spent a stupid amount of time looking at LED light bulbs for the lamps around my place. I still ended up going with some non-name brand option. Like I can and should pass that off to AI. I'm sure LED bulbs are not vastly different per brand. For all I know, they're all made at the same place and then are white-label branded.
I was looking at DDR4 RAM recently. I didn't spend a lot of time looking, but still some time. I looked on eBay and Amazon and Micro Center. For this, I was looking at mainly price, reviews, and whether it was new or used. Like RAM is so ubiquitous, I don't really care. Especially since this is for an older computer.
But like USB-C cables? Especially if I'm looking for something specific? Given how confusing USB-C protocols are, I might want to look at that myself. Or like I was recently looking at toaster ovens. Aside from features, I want one that looks "nice." I'm looking for a certain aesthetic that I didn't know I wanted until I started looking at various models, that I don't how to describe.
Your examples are funny to me because I actually view them mostly opposite. LED bulbs can vary massively; do they flash, have the right color temp, last a long time, etc. RAM is pretty easy to shop for as long as you pick the right criteria around timings and clock speed. USB-C on the other hand is super easy if you know what protocol you want and whether you want a USB-IF certified cable.
I agree with you on aesthetics being particularly difficult to describe in advance. It's hard for me to trust an LLM will be able to select the same filters I value and identify the ideal product. Although, "fine" is good enough for plenty of products.
100%. I sometimes think that as techy or data-driven people -- I'm assuming you're one; at this point, I'm assuming most people on this site are! -- we have a tendency to overthink things. That we need to pour through all the available data to come to the best conclusion, or in this case, the best item. Or else woe be upon us.
Or maybe that's just me.
But before Amazon, if I needed bulbs, did I physically go to Target and Wal-Mart and Home Depot and spend 3hrs comparing bulbs? No. I spent maybe 10min at most at a single store, before selecting one -- or the only option -- that was the right color and socket I needed, (gently) tossed them in my cart, and continued my shopping. And my experience with these bulbs were fine. So now that I have all these options and data via the Internet, and I can and do spend 3hrs looking at bulbs, has my life vastly improved because of this? No. As long as they turn on and off when I want them to, and they're the right color for the room (which for replacements, I'd already know), that's all I care about.
So why do I do this? Am I broken? Am I looking for some deeper validation of my self and my choices through my shopping experience? For someone to tell me I can pick good? That I'm a good capitalist boy? Oh god...Someone help me!
...Sorry. That got dark.
Good thing I got light bulbs! ;)
Anyway, I shudder to think about how much time I've wasted trying to hunt down the perfect product online, when it reality, it didn't matter at all what I got, as long as it worked (and it did). Because, as you say, fine is good enough for plenty of products.
Maybe I'm wrongfully connecting two things here. My "need" to analyze all the options and data to find the perfect, and then saying AI is the solution. I can stop that without AI, right? I can just stop being obsessive about having perfect information. And I do try. But that's effort in itself. So if the AI can help me here...why not?
Satisfiers vs optimizers as someone on Tildes said!
I have this compulsion to find "the best" thing too, and I've successfully fought it by deciding to buy a cheap or mediocre version of something then replace it if that's insufficient.
If I'm shopping for expensive or long-term things, I'll do more research, but my stress really dropped when I realized the cost of switching is usually very low!
As long as the cheap bulb doesn't set my home on fire, I can always buy a better one later. Or if it turns out I don't need rain pants as often as I expected, I've saved myself a lot of time and money!
It seems to me like a lot of people’s perception of how an AI assistant can’t work comes from a place of not having had an actual human personal assistant before.
With USB cables, it’s not like you don’t have any control. You ask for a thing, it asks you if it found what you want. For a toaster, it can show you a selection of options — if you don’t like them, you can do your own search. Or tell it to go look again with guidance.
I'm glad you mentioned the human assistant. I was writing up a reply to someone else and I thought that exact thing. Plenty of people over the ages have had human assistants. Do these PAs always get it right? No, of course not. How about even spouses or your kids or a friend? How many of us have asked someone to pick something up for us at the store, gave them some parameters, sometimes explicit, yet they still didn't get exactly what was desired?
So to me, it comes off as a trust issue. Unless you do something yourself, there's always a chance someone or something will mess up. Is a human messing up inherently better than AI messing up? What's if it's your spouse or SO, someone who supposedly knows you deeply, that still buys the wrong thing? Is that less bad than an AI doing it? I would almost think it's worse. Feel like some people have gotten divorced or broken up over that...
Sure, on a computer or phone or tablet. But you might not be able to check out the item if you're using a voice assistant!
For the most obscure niches (say, an espresso machine, or a mountain bike, or an ereader), it might be both difficult to articulate your preferences and hard to assess the quality of a product without deep knowledge of the space. But I suppose those are also categories where I wouldn't trust a human assistant -- the only way to make a good decision is to deeply research the space yourself so you understand the tradeoffs, which likely involves practical experience.
I will say that with bicycles, there's still a network of skilled professionals whose main job is to help you find the right one for you and your use case, and they're at your local bike shop. It's true that when buying an espresso machine or an ereader you may be at the whims of the SEO infested hellscape that is a Google search, but for a bicycle all of the major manufacturers have continued to essentially subsidize retail locations with a combination of exceptionally forgiving payment timelines so shops can sell the bikes well before the bill to the manufacturer comes due and restrictions on selling bicycles online. They recognize the value of the network of shops to ensure that their consumers have a good buying and riding experience, and have continued to support the retail shops that make it possible.
I do want more AI in everything. My most valuable asset is time, and I love it when I find a way to waste less of it. My biggest concern is keeping the AI assistants aligned with me and not co-opted by business interests.
Right now perplexity is in the pre-enshittification stage. Their agents are aligned with their users. In five years (or likely even now, in private discussions), businesses will be cutting deals directly with them to screw customers.
How do we bridge that gap? Open sourced local agents have a lot of promise but I suspect they will not be able to compete with the type of compute needed. Possibly publicly owned government backed services could have a role, but I’m hesitant to give governments that kind of power and access.
I think it's more to avoid spending time comparing options. I have personally spent a lot of time browsing listings on Amazon for relatively simple products before just removing it from the cart entirely and resolving to buy it at a store because there's just too many options. Something about being able to see the reviews just adds to the choice paralysis because I get in the mindset of finding something that's a good quality and affordable.
That, and it also lets people just avoid browsing the sites for other products, or feel compelled to buy more so they can qualify for free shipping or some other deal the site tells you about. I won't use AI, but I get the convenience it can provide some people.
Wow that's an awful example. Why do I want an AI to order my sandwich? Or do any kind of financial transaction on my part.
This gives me vibes of [Amazon Dash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon Dash). Where apparently executives completely gobbled up the idea that consumers would want a button to push to instantly order more laundry detergent when they run low. Regardless of deals, coupons, if you need to buy in bulk or just need a short supply before you travel, etc. You can't automate that experience unless you truly don't care and live an extremely consistent lifestyle. A very disconnected point of view from the common person.
wow so this is where we’re at now,
So it’s too much effort to tap a few spots on the phone screen, while sitting like a blob on the couch, to order the zero nutrition “food” you want from the fast food place a few blocks away.
In ten years, a scene right out of Idiocracy, there’s a big brown button built into your recliner that just says FOOD, and you lean over and smack it and a loose rolling fart slides out, and then the delivery boy drops your order into a chute that empties the flavoured sluice right into your unshaven green-flecked mouth and you don’t even need to take your eyes off whatever screen is feeding you your constant dopamine drip..
Critical support to AI browsers for this one thing only
Mirror: https://archive.is/lCbHg
Taking a slightly different view on this : if we want to live in a neo-liberal capitalist society, don't we want a single unified marketplace ? Isn't that the basic foundation that enables competition between actors, an open market where you can compare prices and quality ? It seems liberals should be up in arms about it.
In practice you could have e.g. a public marketplace for the EU (maybe one for goods, one for food, one for services, one for culture), anything you want to sell/give public access needs to be registered and available there. Alternative marketplace could still be available if you want to provide customized experiences.
From Amazon's perspective, they want that but want it to be them. They simply compromise by tracking and ading other places to avoid anti-trust.
From the people's perspective, well: we've seen enough monopolistic entities and how they behave when they achieve such a status. They become a vector to exploit and the exploiter at the same time. Thrres no truly fair unifiier.
At least when that unifiier is the government for public spaces they are beholden to the voters and not the money. Donors can only corrupt a politician for as long as their term is running.
I think most neo liberal capitalists aren't really dedicated to that ideology. The support it because it favors them most of the time. When it stops favoring them they go back to rent-seeking. It's never been an ideology that's had particularly passionate advocates besides libertarians, but libertarians are usually just poor people who got tricked into advocating against themselves instead of the wealthy capitalists who actually benefit from neoliberalism.
If the value of the AI is figuring out what to purchase, maybe this ends up like flight search? There's a search engine that lets you do price comparisons, but at the end, they send you to the airline's web page to finish the transaction. Maybe some things get filled in for you. If the AI takes the place of flight search, it's just the start of the transaction.
What would a good user experience look like? The AI figures it out, you get a confirmation page from the seller with the transaction details and if it looks okay then you press "Buy."
(And sure, there would inevitably be upsells on that page.)
I don’t entirely agree with the premise. For me, I think there are other aspects which are comparable in importance.
I’m unwilling to give an AI a credit card and let it buy things automatically, so I would want that confirmation page. I imagine that will be a common attitude. Perhaps someday that will change, but it would take time to build that trust.
Adblocking or similar software might help with the upsells on the confirmation page for people who care about that. However, that’s an adversarial relationship, and I wanted to imagine how the relationship between AI agents, vendors, and end users might be more cooperative. It makes sense for the vendor to have some way to communicate directly with the end user, in case the AI gets it wrong.
I don’t think it makes sense to use vendors you completely distrust. After all, you’re buying the product from them, so you need to trust either that they ship you the right thing or their return policy.
I can also imagine a system where the AI is the vendor, but then it needs to do all the things vendors do, including handling returns. It needs to basically be a company that can pay the cost of satisfying angry customers if it screws up some transactions.
This is giving me Costco vibes. For years I've hated shopping there. Everything is in a different place every time I visit. Nothing is labeled and even the people that work there often don't seem to be sure where anything is.
Then I found out that they deliberately hide the most useful products so that people will buy more stuff as they randomly wander throughout the store. The CEO has the nerve to call it a "treasure hunt".
They would hate a service that tells you exactly where everything is since they benefit from confusing the customer.
I found this quite interesting, to think of Amazon as the one that is most easily replaceable. However, most big companies are creating a marketplace for third party sellers, so it is not the most surprising.
My sincerest thoughts, prayers and middle fingers to DoorDash, Amazon, and their fellow corpulent swine.