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Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

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Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#281

Post by zymhan »

keeda wrote: post #242
oofbaroomf wrote: post #223

ChatGPT recommended me some good hard drives for price per TB, and one particularly cheap one had direct checkout with Walmart, so I tried it, because why not? It let me get all the way to the payment step before it told me it was out of stock. Walmart's website told me it was out of stock when I decided to click on the link. This is probably part of why it doesn't convert.

On a related note, I think that's a good monetization vector for chatbots. Long back I asked ChatGPT to recommend a few USB hard drives with very specific requirements -- including a small size and weight ("can be duct-taped to a tablet form-factor device without being obtrusive and constantly falling off"), low cost, and speed fast enough to boot an OS from. After a pretty technical conversation, it came up with 3 v…

> I came away thinking if those were presented as affiliated links, that conversation could have been monetized in a mutually beneficial way.

Have you considered a world where the ideal outcome _doesn't_ involve making the most money?

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#282

Post by notepad0x90 »

65 wrote: post #261
notepad0x90 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, walmart's website isn't nice. a lot of commerce sites are cancer! if i can just ask chatgpt or gemini to shop I'd love that. Just navigating their sites for items is a pain, I can imagine an LLM being great at finding items, and facilitating the browsing experience. My only concern would be having to chat with it a lot, and any dark patterns coercing impulse purchases.

Clicking buttons is easier than writing a prompt.

to buy a toilet paper, you have to click 2-3 buttons or type out toilet paper in a search bar and hit a button. and then you have to scroll around, hit more buttons, filter, sort, then click through to the product page, review details, add it to your cart, start the checkout and select a payment method, confirm the order, and purchase.

compared to prompts:

"Show me toilet paper that has good reviews for being soft and that doesn't clog"

"I'll buy the first option, just use the card I used last time for payment"

What saves time with an LLM is being able to communicate what you want in natural language. with the normal experience, you're pressing lots of buttons and other inputs to get some results so you figure it out yourself. You will get results, and you will pick what you think is the best option for you (but chances are it isn't, since the site didn't know exactly what you wanted).

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#283

Post by _heimdall »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #107
_heimdall wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a more narrow version of my belief that general AI tools like LLMs fundamentally don't fit as additions to products, but rather subsume products That seems reasonable, its just yet to be seen if LLMs are a form of artificial intelligence in any meaningful sense of the word. They're impressive ML for sure, but that is in fact different from AI despite how companies building them have tried to merge the terms…

What I'm saying is not (directly) related to whether or not LLMs are "true AI" or not. It's sufficient that they are fully general problem solvers. A software product (whether bought or rented as a service) is defined by its boundaries - there's a narrow set of specific problems, and specific ways it can be used to solve those problems, and beyond those, it's not capable (or not allowed ) to be used for anything else…

I hasn't said anything about true AI though, and I'm not sure how we would define that.

That's part of the problem, we as an industry have dove straight into the deep end without pausing for even the basics like agreeing on definitions.

What is intelligence, and how do we recognize it? What is consciousness, if it even exists? How do we measure intelligence - is it really just economic value as OpenAI argues, and if so can that only be measures 6+ months after we unleash it on society?

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#285

Post by GorbachevyChase »

mooreds wrote: post #201
acedTrex wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the most telling example of this is ilya himself being confused about why the "economic impact" of these ultra smart models is lagging where he thought it would be. All the silicon valley pie in the sky elites seemingly completely missed the innately HUMAN nature of our systems. The system was never predicated primarily on raw logic or intelligence. Its always been primarily about people.

If you're interested in an economist's take on AI, I enjoyed this podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-ai-gets-hired-ameri... It takes a long time for technology to diffuse through businesses. A long time.

Enormous amounts of money could be saved with plain old Python and shell scripts anybody could learn… but then management wants you bolt on telemetry for a dashboard nobody will look at to prove it’s a good idea. Then they want you to promise your work is in their GitHub. Then their idiot CISO who can’t program has to pretend he’s auditing your work. Then the change management council needs a say… then you decide that profitability and efficiency isn’t your problem and you hobby code for toy problems.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#286

Post by keeda »

zymhan wrote: post #281
keeda wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a related note, I think that's a good monetization vector for chatbots. Long back I asked ChatGPT to recommend a few USB hard drives with very specific requirements -- including a small size and weight ("can be duct-taped to a tablet form-factor device without being obtrusive and constantly falling off"), low cost, and speed fast enough to boot an OS from. After a pretty technical conversation, it came up with 3 v…

> I came away thinking if those were presented as affiliated links, that conversation could have been monetized in a mutually beneficial way. Have you considered a world where the ideal outcome _doesn't_ involve making the most money?

It doesn't have to be the most really, but it's fair that they get some monetary returns commensurate with the value provided. All human society is based on an exchange of value, after all.

But realistically speaking, billions of investor money means that nothing short of the "most money" will be good enough.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#287

Post by castigatio »

Wow - an open ended discursive AI that can help you refine your needs doesn't convert as frequently as a website promoting products? Go figure. This is ultimately a win for shoppers because AI gets in the way of the impulse to buy retailers spend so much money planting in people's minds.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#288

Post by throwaway290 »

recursive wrote: post #200
throwaway290 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we know it and it's obvious.

Within a few years people will be accustomed to the idea of AI chatbots selling them stuff and it will be obvious then too. The first time paid placements appeared in a catalog, it was probably also not obvious then.

catalog ads are labeled. "what's the best something I can buy?" is begging for unlabeled ads that go against your interest. if you literally cannot tell between ad and not ad, you can't skip to actual results, it's useless.

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#289

Post by porridgeraisin »

janalsncm wrote: post #231
porridgeraisin wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No... I'm not saying chatgpt will do better than amazon. >> passed in full to the e-commerce website that will use it to... I'm saying Amazon+chat data will do better than amazon. Thats the agentic shopping play. In the process note that the chat host also gets a lot of info over time.

Ok fair point, and the general principle of “more data=higher accuracy” probably applies. I think the issue is the tradeoff between accuracy and cost (on the seller’s side). If you get more accurate and convert more but your costs go up too much, you actually lose money. Current systems are basically in a sweet spot of speed, cost, and accuracy. And I will go back to my previous point that I believe there is simply a…

> limit to how much people will buy

Yeah, this is true even today. Many advertisers are competing to be the thing that people buy. This is why many ad systems have naturally evolved into a bidding based system.

All of this just increases the base bid. If you don't pay the ad platform whatever they ask, you are simply invisible to whoever uses chatgpt to search for things they want to buy.

This is true for all improvements in targeting ads. Because the platform is in a position where they can rent-seek.

The marketing costs of running any consumer company simply "inflates". For example with LLMs, people can control the number of results they see, which is a stark difference from previous ad serving systems. Meaning the bids get even more fierce since if you're not in the top three, you might as well not exist.

The question is whether or not increasingly better targeted ads provide increasing value to the consumer. If it does, then great, the ever "inflating" ad economy is justified. But my opinion is that they don't. This is why I think major ad agencies have to bolt it on to an existing useful service. Amazon, instagram, google's services, etc,. In that sense, it is unaccounted inflation. A "correct" economy would involve paying directly for the service they are using based on what they value that service at. Instead of a random disconnected marketing economy inflating without account to cover their costs. If someone is actually keeping track of this.. and increase in cost or reduction in quality of every product we buy (due to the company passing on marketing costs to us...) actually is <= the cost we would otherwise pay instagram, google, etc,. then great. I think it would be wildly off the mark though!

Re: Walmart: ChatGPT checkout converted 3x worse than website

#290

Post by TZubiri »

goostavos wrote: post #126
TeMPOraL wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chat bots don't belong to an e-commerce site; chat bots belong on the outside, specifically to comparison-shop and pull in some external information to de-bullshitify offers, correct "mistakes" and "accidental omissions" in the listings, resolve the borderline-fraudlent crap companies play these days with store-specific and season/promotion-specific SKUs with different parameters all resolving to same model/make name…

Agree. AI is (currently) fantastic at "de-bullshitifying" the internet. "Give me a table that compares Products A & B by z, y, and z." Companies have gone out of their way to make comparison shopping near impossible. Specs are hidden, if they're shown at all. Just figuring out if a certain TV had an ARC-HDMI out required downloading the manual. I dread the day when ads inevitably make their way into the main AI model…

But the chatbot will take as a source the comparision data provided by companies! It's very common practice for a company to do some SEO articles with comparing them to their competitor like "FooSoft vs BarSoft", with things like "FooSoft has instant support 24/7, Barsoft has tickets that take 24 hours.."
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