When Amazon came out with the "dash" button and then the "Alexa" speakers, I figured they must have expected they'd get some unintended purchases, and that they'd make more profit from those than they'd lose in the people going through the refund process. (That, or they'd learn whether it was profitable, and eat it as an R&D cost if it turned out to be unprofitable.)

I think this might be similar. In short, it's not consumers who want robots to buy for them, it's producers who want robots to buy from them using consumers dollars.

I think more money comes from offering this value to every online storefront, so long as they pay a fee. "People will accidentally buy your coffee with our cool new robot. Research says only 1% of people will file a return, while 6% of new customers will turn into recurring customers. And we only ask for a 3% cut."

I want an AI agent that returns stuff that my other AI agent bought.

> When Amazon came out with the "dash" button and then the "Alexa" speakers

Both of those things failed, tho.

It's kinda funny how so much "capitalist innovation" turns out to be basically fraud lol.

That only really follows if you look at "producers" as a homogenous unit, but the companies hyping up their AI browser agents aren't really in the business of running online goods stores

The real answer here is the same as every other "why is this AI shit being pushed?" question: they want more VC funding.

> In short, it's not consumers who want robots to buy for them, it's producers who want robots to buy from them using consumers dollars.

This. Humans are lazy and often don’t provide enough data on exactly what they are looking for when shopping online. In contrast, Agents can ask follow up questions and provide a lot more contextual data to the producers, along with the history of past purchases, derived personal info, and more. I’d not be surprised if this info is consumed to offer dynamic pricing in e-commerce. We already see dynamic pricing being employed by travel apps (airfare/uber).