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Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

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Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#51

Post by s1mplicissimus »

jordanb wrote: post #43
jaimebuelta wrote: post #23

I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us. I understand, for example, search with intent to buy "I want to decorate a room. Find me a drawer, a table and four chairs that can fit in this space in matching colours for less than X dollars" But I want to do the final step to buy. In fact, I want to do the final SELECTION of stuff. How is agent buying groceries superior to have a grocery list…

I suspect part of this is rich people coming up with use cases. If you're rich enough money means nothing but product selection feels like a burden so you have an assistant who does purchasing on your behalf. You want your house stocked with high quality items without having to think of it. For the rest of us, the idea of a robot spending money on our behalf is kinda terrifying.

Also, consider what enshittification in this area will look like: First year, all the choices are good, second year, it starts picking worse price/value items, then it goes downhill until you finally do it yourself again. Nope thanks

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#52

Post by kjok »

lynndotpy wrote: post #35
jaimebuelta wrote: post #23

I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us. I understand, for example, search with intent to buy "I want to decorate a room. Find me a drawer, a table and four chairs that can fit in this space in matching colours for less than X dollars" But I want to do the final step to buy. In fact, I want to do the final SELECTION of stuff. How is agent buying groceries superior to have a grocery list…

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…

> 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).

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#53

Post by singleshot_ »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #23

I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us. I understand, for example, search with intent to buy "I want to decorate a room. Find me a drawer, a table and four chairs that can fit in this space in matching colours for less than X dollars" But I want to do the final step to buy. In fact, I want to do the final SELECTION of stuff. How is agent buying groceries superior to have a grocery list…

If you were a lawyer, you’d think something slightly different when you heard the word agent than you would if you were a computer guy. The delta is the fact that under the law of agency, an agent has the power to bind the principal to a contract.

If the lawyers didn’t have this definition in their head there would be no drive to make the software agent a purchaser, because it’s a stupid idea.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#54

Post by dumbfounder »

AlexandrB wrote: post #48
dumbfounder wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agent, I need some vitamin D, can you find me the best deal for some rated in the top 5? Agent deployed. Ok we found a bottle with a 30 day supply of Nature’s Own from a well respected merchant. It can be here in 2 days and it is $12. Should I buy? Yes. Or you could add some other parameters and tell it to buy now if under $15. Agent, I need a regular order for my groceries, but I also need to make a pumpkin pie so c…

Enjoy it while you can. Messing with which products get purchased by these agents is such a no-brainer revenue stream for AI companies.

Then I will use a different service. I think this will be harder to monopolize than search.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#55

Post by AlexandrB »

xenotux wrote: post #50
jaimebuelta wrote: post #23

I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us. I understand, for example, search with intent to buy "I want to decorate a room. Find me a drawer, a table and four chairs that can fit in this space in matching colours for less than X dollars" But I want to do the final step to buy. In fact, I want to do the final SELECTION of stuff. How is agent buying groceries superior to have a grocery list…

> 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…

> 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.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#56

Post by dumbfounder »

everdrive wrote: post #39
dumbfounder wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agent, I need some vitamin D, can you find me the best deal for some rated in the top 5? Agent deployed. Ok we found a bottle with a 30 day supply of Nature’s Own from a well respected merchant. It can be here in 2 days and it is $12. Should I buy? Yes. Or you could add some other parameters and tell it to buy now if under $15. Agent, I need a regular order for my groceries, but I also need to make a pumpkin pie so c…

>Agent, I need some vitamin D, can you find me the best deal for some rated in the top 5? "I have picked the best reviewed vitamin D on Amazon." (and, it's a knockoff in the mixed inventory, and now you're getting lead-laced nothing)

Yes, if it’s bad it will do that. I can see a path to it being good.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#57

Post by _Algernon_ »

benterix wrote: post #5

This should hit the headlines. I was always of the opinion that AI of all kinds is not a threat unless someone decides to connect it to an actuator so that it has direct and uncontrolled effect on the external world. And now it's happening en masse with agents, MCPs etc. I don't even mention things we don't know about (military and other classified projects).

Can't wait for the stochastic parrot to press the "launch nukes" button. We deserve it at this point.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#58

Post by achierius »

padolsey wrote: post #19
roxolotl wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea I’ve been surprised about the risk conversations because they cannot do anything if you run them in a sandbox. But it seems like for many the assumed part was we’d hook LLMs into everything asap. It’s absolutely mind boggling.

This is why I've found the safety research conducted by the likes of Anthropic and OAI to be so confusing. Like when they said that models are likely to blackmail developers in order to avoid being 'turned off' [1]. What an utterly and obviously contrived and inevitable derivation of narratives from humans (science fiction and others) in the corpus. Nothing surprising or interesting. However, their hypothesis is pres…

So you don't think that we'll need to turn off AIs? Regardless of where their impulse to avoid such comes from, the fact that they'll attempt to avoid that is important.

I think you haven't thought about this enough. Attempting to reduce the issue to cyber security basics betrays a lack of depth in either understanding or imagination.

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#59

Post by AlexandrB »

dumbfounder wrote: post #54
AlexandrB wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enjoy it while you can. Messing with which products get purchased by these agents is such a no-brainer revenue stream for AI companies.

Then I will use a different service. I think this will be harder to monopolize than search.

How so? Search was way less capital intensive than AI to develop. We started with dozens of search engines back in the 90s and we still ended up with a near monopoly.

Edit: All major AI companies have millions if not billions of funding either from VCs or parent companies. You can't start an AI company "in your garage" and be "ramen profitable".

Edit 2: You don't even need to monopolize anything. All major search engines are ad-driven and insert sponsored content above "organic" search results because it's such an obvious way to make money from search. So even if there wasn't a product monopoly, there's still a business model "monopoly". Why would the same pattern not repeat for "sponsored" purchases for agentic shopping?

Re: Scamlexity: When agentic AI browsers get scammed

#60

Post by takinola »

jaimebuelta wrote: post #23

I don't understand why we would ever want an agent to buy stuff for us. I understand, for example, search with intent to buy "I want to decorate a room. Find me a drawer, a table and four chairs that can fit in this space in matching colours for less than X dollars" But I want to do the final step to buy. In fact, I want to do the final SELECTION of stuff. How is agent buying groceries superior to have a grocery list…

Lots of senior executives, celebrities, etc have other people buy stuff for them all the time - flights, gifts, lunch, etc. The problem is this is very expensive so not available to most people. If agents reduce the cost and are mostly reliable, there will be a significantly large market for this service.
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