My concern with Muse, and all these AI shopping tools, is that we'll end up in a world where inventory drops to 0, orders are placed by the business based on the number of bots in the queue, and as inventory is made available, it is immediately snatched up by shopping bots... similar to what we've seen in collector markets (ex. sneaker drops) or concert ticket sales.
I don't want to live in a world where an AI agent is required to buy basic goods, just to compete with everyone else using them, and so businesses can optimize their supply chain to the point of product simply passing through the warehouse, without ever keeping inventory around.
This may look like an anticompetitive move from Amazon, and I'm not fan of Amazon, but I want shopping bots to fail. I think we are going in the wrong direction. We've seen how horrible shopping bots are, and I don't think the solution is to democratize them so more people have them. That simply makes the problem worse.
> similar to what we've seen in collector markets (ex. sneaker drops) or concert ticket sales.
Oh no, the collector/status markets are doomed! How will society survive?
Seriously, I find it incredibly hard to empathize with those who peddle artificial scarcity of luxury goods. Just sell your stuff at the market clearing price, especially if your marginal costs are minimal. If there's no business left when doing that, too bad.
I’m not worried about the collector markets, I think they are stupid and they have made basic items difficult to buy during hype cycles. I was very happy to see the sneaker market collapse.
My concern is that this type of crazy behavior, and poor experience for normal people, will extend to more and more products as bot shopping becomes trivial or normalized.
What do markets not designed to uphold artificial scarcity have to fear from bots? If bots are buying merchants' entire inventories and can then resell everything for a profit even after redundant shipping cost, these products must have been mispriced to begin with.
I’m not worried about bots creating a resale market. I think you misread my initial comment. My examples of sneakers and ticket sales weren’t a reference to scalpers and resale. It was a reference to normal people not being about to just go to Nike.com to buy a pair of Dunks. If bots consume the whole supply chain, and the supply chain optimizes for bot demand, there will be nothing available for the normal user just trying to go buy everyday products. It’s like a next level optimization of the drop-shipping model.
I don't want to live in a world where an AI agent is required to buy basic goods, just to compete with everyone else using them, and so businesses can optimize their supply chain to the point of product simply passing through the warehouse, without ever keeping inventory around.
This may look like an anticompetitive move from Amazon, and I'm not fan of Amazon, but I want shopping bots to fail. I think we are going in the wrong direction. We've seen how horrible shopping bots are, and I don't think the solution is to democratize them so more people have them. That simply makes the problem worse.