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The Age of Agent Experience

stytch.com

21–30 of 45 posts

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the underlying assumption in this is an important question to consider. Should we treat agents as we would have treated bots over the decades. I do believe that treating agents like traditional bots of old misses an important aspect. Traditional bots are doing something with the intent to serve some external entities gain (scraping content, attacks, etc.). Agents, while leveraging similar systems, are serving…

I think economic incentives are going to get in the way of that, as is tradition. Amazon’s dev teams in charge of the retail web interface might want to make it easier to sell you more products regardless of interface but there’s always a competing VP with more influence that wants to juice their KPIs by stuffing more advertising down the user’s throat, so they drive top down decisions that impede agents. It’s almost…

I agree! That said, they won't turn down the money through affiliate systems and resellers either.

The economic incentives, the brand control needs, etc. are important dynamics and I don't think it's all in their court alone. It's a combination of where the market goes (the platforms and systems they prefer) and the capabilities unlocked by those platforms.

With that, this evolution will follow the propagation of agent usage. So we will see a lot more initial adoption of AX principles and patterns from developer tools because the software industry has be the most infiltrated by the rise of agentic workflows. As that expands, the nature of markets and meeting user needs will drive adoption of AX.

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#22
post #4

The popularity of agents that run from users' devices is going to push sites that don't have logins to add them and sites with logins to add tougher captchas.

Wouldn't the agent just send a notification to the user's phone and say "can you solve this please?"

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#23
post #20
post #4

The popularity of agents that run from users' devices is going to push sites that don't have logins to add them and sites with logins to add tougher captchas.

Ya, webauthn with hardware requirement would kill it too. Gotta physically touch it. It’ll be gross when someone starts to automate that too.

One time I duct taped a cooked sausage to a USB fan and arranged it so the sausage was continually slapping my passive touch two-factor authenticator. Is that the kind of gross you were talking about?

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the underlying assumption in this is an important question to consider. Should we treat agents as we would have treated bots over the decades. I do believe that treating agents like traditional bots of old misses an important aspect. Traditional bots are doing something with the intent to serve some external entities gain (scraping content, attacks, etc.). Agents, while leveraging similar systems, are serving…

I think economic incentives are going to get in the way of that, as is tradition. Amazon’s dev teams in charge of the retail web interface might want to make it easier to sell you more products regardless of interface but there’s always a competing VP with more influence that wants to juice their KPIs by stuffing more advertising down the user’s throat, so they drive top down decisions that impede agents. It’s almost…

Yes, but competing with that -- imagine how much easier it would be to phish an agent into buying a product on the user's behalf.

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#25
post #4

The popularity of agents that run from users' devices is going to push sites that don't have logins to add them and sites with logins to add tougher captchas.

Captcha solvers are already quite cheap. AI could make it cheaper, but for a single user, I don't think it would make a difference.

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#26
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ya, webauthn with hardware requirement would kill it too. Gotta physically touch it. It’ll be gross when someone starts to automate that too.

One time I duct taped a cooked sausage to a USB fan and arranged it so the sausage was continually slapping my passive touch two-factor authenticator. Is that the kind of gross you were talking about?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/this-piece-of-meat-just-swip...

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#27
AI agents do not have agency. This is just another sloppy and disturbing way that AI people show their disrespect or incompetence about the nature of humans.

If you think AI has agency then you must think all software has agency. AI is just software.

To those of you who say humans are just software: try deactivating a human and see what happens. Note that this is a different experience than deactivating AI.

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#28
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think economic incentives are going to get in the way of that, as is tradition. Amazon’s dev teams in charge of the retail web interface might want to make it easier to sell you more products regardless of interface but there’s always a competing VP with more influence that wants to juice their KPIs by stuffing more advertising down the user’s throat, so they drive top down decisions that impede agents. It’s almost…

Yes, but competing with that -- imagine how much easier it would be to phish an agent into buying a product on the user's behalf.

That's my reaction to the GP's comment. Shop owners will not optimize for agent ease of use. They will optimize for convincing agents to make a purchase. This will play out like SEO, with everyone other than the bad actors losing out.

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#29
post #20
post #4

The popularity of agents that run from users' devices is going to push sites that don't have logins to add them and sites with logins to add tougher captchas.

Ya, webauthn with hardware requirement would kill it too. Gotta physically touch it. It’ll be gross when someone starts to automate that too.

It would also kill it for 99% of humans.

My entire extended family has two yubikeys: My key and my spare key.

Re: The Age of Agent Experience

#30
post #4

The popularity of agents that run from users' devices is going to push sites that don't have logins to add them and sites with logins to add tougher captchas.

This is why I'm so bullish on OAuth for sites with logins - you get a strong real user identity to tie the agent's behavior back to. This means you have (some) proof that the agent is helping your end users consume more of your site, and you can also revoke access to agents that misbehave.
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