Why would anyone have an extra layer of friction too where things could go wrong, where handing over payment details in another chain.
Just let me buy my stuff in peace. Shopping is not the 'killer app' for GenAI.
"This isn't what I wanted to buy, I said my feet are a size 10 and these aren't even shoes!"
"You're absolutely right! Shoes go on feet, and each of your 10 feet could wear shoes. Would you like me to research shoes and purchase them for you?"
There a people today learning to use an LLM instead of an actual search engine. For these types of people whatever happens outside of the LLM app is invisible to them. The social media apps did similar where they started letting people purchase directly within the app. People started looking at these shops rather than doing searches for it elsewhere.
Buying things on a social media app is crazy to me, but I don't use the social media apps. Buying things from an LLM app seems crazy to you, (because it's new and it's borked is fixable), but to people that first turn to their LLM app of choice that decision isn't so crazy.
my neighbors are wonderful and i like chatting to them.
are you the bad neighbor?
Knowing your neighbors is a good thing. Even if it's just a friendly hi. You don't have to hang out, but if there's ever something you need like "did I leave the sprinkler on" or "did I leave the stove on" or "borrow a cup of sugar", it helps being on speaking terms with a neighbor rather than your first interaction with them is because you need something.
Caveat being that you live next door to Epstein or similar where not knowing them will be beneficial when the police come asking questions.
Just because a target-audience has >0 members doesn't mean the target is plausible or good. :p
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To transcribe an old Dilbert comic, which I think captures the sometimes, uh, aspirational nature of "target audiences":
1. Dogbert, presenting a labeled circle: "Your target market is the high income group. They're the only ones who can afford your product."
2. Dogbert, adding circles to Venn-diagram: "More specifically, they must be rich, tasteless and easily amused. I've located a cluster of them for study."
3. Scene change to outdoor lawn, one suitably-dressed man confiding to another: "That dog's watching us golf again."
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.
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).
It sounds like you're excusing AI, what other systems is AI not suitable for?
When the hotel, airline, car rental, etc. can’t even talk to me because of the channel I purchased from that’s a problem. So I’d expect similar issues from buying through a AI interface. Walmart will say something about “we can’t see your order details” when your delivery driver forgot the milk.
When they aren't designed, how do you know how to test?
Over the weekend, I was directed to file a police report with a chatbot and could not complete it because it was asking for information that did not exist and did not apply to my case.
(I'm sure somebody is going to say that this can be solved by having LLMs role play as victims and have an LLM observe and decide what's a failing test case and what isn't.)
Personally I am an inductivist, I imagine you may be too.
Think top down decisioning is deduction. Bottom up is induction.
You might think induction is amazing but if you ask yourself "Are there any black swans?" and your answer is "No I've never seen any so there can't be any black swans." The issue is you've never actually seen every Swan and actually there are black swans in Australia.
Point being, we don't know if this is a good thing until it's tested.
This is an age-old problem.