> I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us.

Why not? Offload the entire task, not just one half of it. It's why many well-off people have accountants, assistants, or servants. And no one says "you know, I'm glad you prepared my taxes, but let me file the paperwork myself".

I think what you're saying isn't that you like going through checkout flows, just that you don't trust the computer to do it. But the approach the AI industry is "build it today and hope the underlying tech improves soon". It's not always wrong. But "be dependable enough to trust it with money" appears to be a harder problem than "generate images of people with the right number of fingers".

No doubt that some customers are going to get burned. But I have no doubt that down the line, most people will be using their phones as AI shoppers.

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tsimionescu 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

Comparing regular people's shopping to the super-wealthy is absurd. Regular people care, possibly quite a lot, about costs and cost/benefit ratios. To the super wealthy the cost of most regular goods is entirely irrelevant. Whether their yogurt supply is 10 dollars a month or 200 dollars a month makes no difference to them. But it makes a huge difference to the vast majority of people. Even people who would be happy to pay the premium for very good yogurt will want a very good experience from this.

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AlexandrB 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> It's why many well-off people have assistants or servants.

AI agents have only one master - the AI vendor. They're not going to make decisions based on your best interests.

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xenotux 4 days ago | parent [-]

You can say that about 99% of the tech that people use today. Windows and MacOS don't serve you. Your browser doesn't serve you. Heck, Hacker News doesn't serve you - it serves a bunch of VCs!

But the reality is that most of the time, this is not an adversarial relationship; and when it is, we see it as an acceptable trade-off ("ok, so I get all this stuff for free, and in exchange, maybe I buy socks from a different company because of the ads").

I'm not saying it's an ideal state or that there are no hidden and more serious trade-offs, but I don't think that what you're saying is a particularly compelling point for the average user.

	▲	supriyo-biswas 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Many people on this forum might agree with the statements that Windows (increasing ads, tracking and bloat) and your browser not serving you (Chrome Manifest V3, etc.) Adversarial relationships can and will happen given the leverage and benefits; one only need to look at streaming services where some companies have introduced low-tier plans that is paid for but also has ads.