Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI agents can fix it

Re:Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI age... by lighttower on Friday July 28, 2023 @10:30AM (#36907316)

One area where AI agents can help, is in going to the supermarket! many times what look like competing brands, are all owned by the same people, like Kellogg's or Procter & Gamble. they just create different packaging to appeal to different people. branding is just obfuscation. it'd be great to have the veil taken off, and every time you look at a product it shows you how the marketing team who made it, placed it in the market, should be cheaper than this other product but more expensive than something else, and so they created a new image in order for it to find a place in the market. market. But underneath the colorful ink, it's all the same crap

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Re:Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI age... by pavel_lishin on Friday July 28, 2023 @10:42AM (#36907502)

Why do we need an AI agent for this?

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Re:Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI age... by mistermann on Friday July 28, 2023 @10:38AM (#36907454)

* * *

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Re:Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI age... by mschuster91 on Friday July 28, 2023 @10:46AM (#36907569)

> One area where AI agents can help, is in going to the supermarket!

No need for AI there - there already are apps that you can use to scan the barcodes of products to filter for Nestle [1].

> But underneath the colorful ink, it's all the same crap

Not exactly. There are definitely differences between brand-name products and whitelabel ones... in food, for example, substituting actual sugar for cheaper HFCS, or industrial farming produce and meat as ingredients instead of certified-organic ones free from pesticides, or different ratios between "valuable" ingredients (meat) vs filler (grain), or legit aroma/flavour instead of synthetic. In non-food, product quality (plastic parts vs metal), repairability or stuff like warranty / support / security update availability.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.buycott.an...

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Re:Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI age... by Telemakhos on Friday July 28, 2023 @10:56AM (#36907705)

Does any of that matter if the consumer consistently chooses the cheapest product? If the shopper chooses the soap with lowest price per gram, what does it matter what brand it is or who owns what brands? An AI assistant might be much faster and directly relevant to the consumer by finding the best deal than investigating the irrelevant history of brands and marketing and shell corporations.

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Re:Real life indirection is the root of all evil, and AI age... by pie420 on Friday July 28, 2023 @08:26PM (#36915340)

You realize that AI agents will push the most malicious, unhealthy, sponsored, Nestle and Kellogs shit to you? You realize what's happened to the internet, and SEO spam, and social media, and you think AI will be a force for good, informed consumerism? Or do you think it will be controlled by whoever has the biggest ad spend budgets?

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