Corporate travel is an example. In many organisations, you tell someone in the travel department "I need to be in Tokyo for this conference from Tuesday to Sunday, and charge it to this cost code", and they figure out flights, accommodation, etc for you, with minimal input from you.
… 23 hours in Denver later…
My employer does have corporate travel concierge who can actually do this with minimal input. But people do not want that. They think about aspects like, if I have a layover at XYZ, would the vicinity of XYZ be a good place for a few hours of sightseeing, given my own travel preferences and previous sightseeing destinations; and would I still want it if it is an overnight layover at XYZ. Or things like, if I fly via this route, I could squeeze another paid day with zero work expectations while I could rest on the plane / in lounges. Or things like, this particular airline has this particular type of aircraft with far better seats than that particular airline, so I would be happier even if the flight is longer.
Needless to say, all colleagues that I know of (myself included) prefer to book corporate travel themselves, even if from the company's perspective, spending a few hours to do it is much more expensive than having the concierge spend a few hours to do it.
And in many cases having a corporate policy means just adding a few more constraints: it makes the problem more like a logical puzzle and this can nerd snipe people.
When I tell a bot to find the best value per volume for a reasonable quantity of unscented Dawn dish soap [so I can buy that], then: It often makes a complete mess of this seemingly-simple operation.
(And yeah, that is an actual thing that I've tried to accomplish with voice commands while standing in my kitchen and doing some dishes. It seems very simple, and it did not go well.
Maybe when we get the basics figured out we can start worrying about how inept it is at doing vacation planning.
It seems that this kind of thing isn't sorted at all, and that this is a very real problem for those who are in the bot business: These missed opportunities leave money on the table.)
These AI LLM products really do well on the illusion of seeming intelligent to regular folks, but I'm not fully convinced they can replace human brains... yet. ;)
I often get some seemingly-good results in the non-shopping research department, where I'm exploring science and physics; things that don't generally change rapidly.
But unlike dish soap, I can't buy the science results that I want[].
[]: er. well, ackshually... let's just not talk about that concept right now.
I asked the chatbot (librechat, tavily-mcp connected, kimi-k3) if anybody tests dish soaps rigorously. It said yes. I asked it to find the consumer reports from Germany. It did so, full access is paywalled but it did see the top positions. The I asked it what term to put in evay.de if I want to order. It gave me a string that found the auctions for me. I also asked it what the actual difference is and it described what info the EU law forces onto the label and told me what to look for in the ingredient lists.
The process is still involved. I wish I could just do it all by saying "find me another dishsoap, this one sucks". But then would everybody saying this phrase except the same approach to the issue that I took?
LLMs completely and utterly failed at this.
The Mensa test results are impressive but are in no way shape or form relevant to real world scenarios.
I wanna see benchmarks on successfully completing benefits applications, on finding the best option to purchase X from, on correctly identifying a piece of furniture and its condition and setting a correct price on it and selling it on craigslist/FB market place and so forth.
Also: What banana plugs did you wind up with?
I've been looking for usable, insulated, stackable banana plugs that work with 12 AWG wire for over a decade.
For a lot of my audio things, I can get by with MDPs from Pamona Eelectronics. They're insulated-enough, stackable, dual-banana plugs on 3/4" centers and where they work, they work very well. (I don't recall if 12AWG is within spec or not, but it can be made to fit.)
But they do not work on audio widgets that do not have 3/4" spacing, like my aging Lexicon receiver and its great quantity of binding posts for speakers.
I don't care if they're glitzy or fabulous-looking. I just want functional, insulated, stackable single banana plugs.
(The common marketplace is full of elaborate gold-plated non-insulated things. I guess they're pretty, but they're a hazard and nobody will see them again soon at all if everything goes well. Their function-follows-form beauty is only detrimental.)
Which makes me think: would a generation raised on AI and automating these things even consider looking for e.g. deals on household consumables? This is spiraling doomerism at this point, but, do people who outsource the hard thinking to LLMs get fresh ideas or inspiration still?
And the only reason I'm thinking about buying dish soap is because I'm washing dishes. Without some kind of other influence, I won't be thinking about it again until the next time I'm washing dishes. But meanwhile, there I am -- washing dishes, and thinking about buying dish soap. I'm stuck doing this job until it is finished and my hands are wet; I might as well engage the bot.
> Which makes me think: would a generation raised on AI and automating these things even consider looking for e.g. deals on household consumables?
Sure. If finding a deal on a household consumable is what they're behooved to do, then why would they not? People broadly do adapt to the world they grow up in, and to use the tools available to them.
We don't use phone books or video rental places anymore. We're still getting by.
And people will misuse the machine as well, but that's also not new.
When the engine light comes on in ~any car from the last 30 years and the dude at Autozone plugs a widget in and declares "It says here that it's an O2 sensor!" and people blindly treat that as a firm diagnosis, then they sometimes find disappointment: They install a brand new O2 sensor and things don't improve at all. That won't change.
(In reality, that result just means "The measurement reported by the O2 sensor is irrational." That could be because the sensor is bad, but it could also be because any other part of the fuel+air system -- from front to back -- is being funky instead.)
> do people who outsource the hard thinking to LLMs get fresh ideas or inspiration still?
As much as they ever did, I suppose. Not everybody is naturally inquisitive, nor gets to be above average.
But I realized that this is mostly a strict upgrade to how many many people are planning trips these days. It will probably do a pretty good job of accounting for your preferences, probably better than most/any travel agent unless they're very very local.
But my routine business trips in the CONUS with strictly defined booking options... let me just email an agent "Get there by meeting on day A, leave after meeting day B" and have it sort it all out without the drudgery of the corporate travel portal. YES PLEASE!
And now we want to add some random factor into middle of it all...
There will have been an A-B test with 9 clicks -> less sales, less revenue.
There will have been an A-B test with 11 clicks -> less sales, less revenue.
The people making these sites are not dumb. They are also sitting on thin margins nowadays, and mostly from the airlines and hotels rather than from the users.
A human assistant is largely a status symbol. Most people are not really that busy. The real problem with an agentic assistant is if everyone can have one then it no longer acts as a status symbol.