Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI agents can fix it
marianogappa.github.io
Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI agents can fix it
1–10 of 17 posts
Re: Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI agents can fix it
#2One area where AI agents can help, is in going to the supermarket! many times what look like competing brands, are all owned by the same people, like Kellogg's or Procter & Gamble. they just create different packaging to appeal to different people. branding is just obfuscation. it'd be great to have the veil taken off, and every time you look at a product it shows you how the marketing team who made it, placed it in the market, should be cheaper than this other product but more expensive than something else, and so they created a new image in order for it to find a place in the market. market. But underneath the colorful ink, it's all the same crap
Re: Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI agents can fix it
#3You can’t write that “indirection” is the “root of all evil” and then in the conclusion claim that capitalism and tings like the nation state are one of our greatest inventions. But the fact that they chose a programming concept as their metaphor tells me enough about this wide-sweeping narrative.
Re: Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI agents can fix it
#4One area where AI agents can help, is in going to the supermarket! many times what look like competing brands, are all owned by the same people, like Kellogg's or Procter & Gamble. they just create different packaging to appeal to different people. branding is just obfuscation. it'd be great to have the veil taken off, and every time you look at a product it shows you how the marketing team who made it, placed it in…
This human intelligent agent specializes in that, quite impressively, and has 897k followers. Not a bad start on a movement.
Re: Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI agents can fix it
#5You can’t write that “indirection” is the “root of all evil” and then in the conclusion claim that capitalism and tings like the nation state are one of our greatest inventions. But the fact that they chose a programming concept as their metaphor tells me enough about this wide-sweeping narrative.
Great inventions can be used in good or bad ways.
What does the metaphor tell you? And are you sure it's only the metaphor doing the "telling"?
Re: Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI agents can fix it
#6One area where AI agents can help, is in going to the supermarket! many times what look like competing brands, are all owned by the same people, like Kellogg's or Procter & Gamble. they just create different packaging to appeal to different people. branding is just obfuscation. it'd be great to have the veil taken off, and every time you look at a product it shows you how the marketing team who made it, placed it in…
Why do we need an AI agent for this?
Re: Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI agents can fix it
#7One area where AI agents can help, is in going to the supermarket! many times what look like competing brands, are all owned by the same people, like Kellogg's or Procter & Gamble. they just create different packaging to appeal to different people. branding is just obfuscation. it'd be great to have the veil taken off, and every time you look at a product it shows you how the marketing team who made it, placed it in…
> One area where AI agents can help, is in going to the supermarket!
No need for AI there - there already are apps that you can use to scan the barcodes of products to filter for Nestle [1].
> But underneath the colorful ink, it's all the same crap
Not exactly. There are definitely differences between brand-name products and whitelabel ones... in food, for example, substituting actual sugar for cheaper HFCS, or industrial farming produce and meat as ingredients instead of certified-organic ones free from pesticides, or different ratios between "valuable" ingredients (meat) vs filler (grain), or legit aroma/flavour instead of synthetic. In non-food, product quality (plastic parts vs metal), repairability or stuff like warranty / support / security update availability.
[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buycott.an...
Re: Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI agents can fix it
#8One area where AI agents can help, is in going to the supermarket! many times what look like competing brands, are all owned by the same people, like Kellogg's or Procter & Gamble. they just create different packaging to appeal to different people. branding is just obfuscation. it'd be great to have the veil taken off, and every time you look at a product it shows you how the marketing team who made it, placed it in…
Does any of that matter if the consumer consistently chooses the cheapest product? If the shopper chooses the soap with lowest price per gram, what does it matter what brand it is or who owns what brands? An AI assistant might be much faster and directly relevant to the consumer by finding the best deal than investigating the irrelevant history of brands and marketing and shell corporations.
Re: Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI agents can fix it
#9[dead]
Re: Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI agents can fix it
#10The art documentary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation_(2003_film) (available on YouTube...) is basically about how the distant separation of employees from the consequences of their decisions naturally leads nice, regular people to behave effectively like psychopaths and not realize it. Highly recommended.