How does AI assisted shopping create more economic activity? Even assuming you can do it, and people do find it helpful, it likely just shifts who people buy from, not how much?
Amazon.com is a business. AI is a technology in of itself it isn't a business.
Thus far it appears applications of AI that provide 'benefit' do so by removing or reducing the need for human operators. Examples include: fewer software engineers, fewer call centres, removing potentially whole areas of work such as paralegals and in general automating away many white collar jobs.
Well Amazon makes it take way less time to buy something (almost anything). I dont have to waste time and money going to the hardware store, it only takes 90 seconds of my time and the price including shipping is less than what the hardware store wants to charge, with its rent and utilities and so on to cover. Amazon cut out a middleman between the warehouse and the household. It made things more efficient, and I can use the time and money savings to spend more money or work harder at my job. (I for one do spend more hours working if I have more time in my day. Not everyone is like this.)
AI could do the same thing. It could cut 90 seconds down to... 10 seconds? It doesn't seem like the same impact as Amazon, where an hour's investment became 90 seconds. And I can't see how AI shopping is going to save me money here. There's no middleman to cut out, except maybe some web site storefront?? There's also a huge downside: with Amazon, I suddenly had access to 100 different pairs of scissors to choose from, instead of the 2 or 3 I could find in Staples. That was a plus. With AI shopping, suddenly I'm down to one choice: whatever Chat chooses for me. If I want to have a say in which pair of scissors I buy, I'm back to shopping for myself.
