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Comment by darkamaul | Hacker News Reader

I don’t see why you wouldn’t book a flight using an AI assistant. No one’s saying it should do it completely unsupervised (maybe that’ll come much later), but having something that can research the best routes based on my criteria and show me several options — with a single click to purchase the one I find most convenient — is something I’d love.

It could even work against the dynamic pricing algorithms airlines use to maximize revenue: if I have a tireless assistant exploring every possible combination to find the cheapest ticket, it’ll probably do a much better job than I ever could.

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There's probably little danger to the savvy user who understands how manipulative technology like this can be.

The problems come when vulnerable users are targeted using dark patterns. How AI dark patterns will evolve is very uncertain [1] however I suspect they will be extremely subtle and very effective.

What's the worst that can happen if someone vulnerable is persuaded to buy a flight by an AI. I don't know, maybe depression and bad credit after the chatbot's promises weren't met. If they're persuaded to buy a weapon, that's a different matter.

At least current advertising is somewhat public, although that's increasingly less true as ads get more targeted.

This is new territory where ads will be so extremely private it will be only known by the user (maybe they won't even notice) and someone reading the subpoenaed chat logs after a user does something terrible. Those chat logs will likely be inconclusive anyway.

[1] https://venturebeat.com/ai/darkness-rising-the-hidden-danger...

I suppose you just have to trust that it's incentivized to find you the best route and not only offer you 3 options which it says are the best, but are actually paid promotions.

It depends too on what you value. I’d be more than happy to pay a premium if it meant the time for me looking for a flight and having a seat booked is drastically reduced.

We used to get that through the services of a travel agency. Maybe we will soon have that luxury again?

I would try using AI to book flights - then double check if I can't get a better offer. Do this a couple of times and when I see AI is as good or even better at getting me flights, then sure, why not use it.

Extrapolating from my experience testing it for coding tasks the result is not reliable even if it was right a couple of times. A risk I'm not willing to take. And I can't say that AI powered chat assistants on web pages have been much help either.

You can even automate this kind of testing in the AI model. I think the Google ADK has a built-in system for tests you use to confirm the reply quality.

I suspect the cost of the AI will end up being more than the difference in flight pricing, but we'll see.

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