I think agents are scary and complicated and dangerous enough that it is genuinely scary to give an agent an instruction like go buy this ticket. It’s okay and apple can easily simplify and eventually win. The mainstream hasn’t really started using agents yet and no one has come close to delivering a platform that will get them there.
These ones also seem really weird because the baseline is most often someone using the iOS app to do the same thing, and the agent demos are usually slower in addition to being riskier. One of the Chrome demos had someone buying groceries at pretty hefty markup, which seemed to be targeting a narrow demographic of people who a) don’t worry about paying 50% more for produce and b) can spend time writing a prompt but not 30 second opening an app and just doing it with zero chance of getting scammed.
I don't expect to go for that, but other people might. Especially if AI stuff continues to improve.
I would actually be willing to use AI to purchase groceries if it could provide me with some assurance that it would choose the items better than a shopping cart.
As for now, I'm only willing to purchase non-perishable goods that are difficult to screw up online.
Might be a service idea for AI.
Once again, early 1990's General Magic looks prescient.
They were working on smartphones with agents capable of completing remote transactions before we had wireless data networks.
> General Magic: The Greatest Tech Company You’ve Never Heard Of
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tuFl4WEXBrk
> allowing end-user equipment with limited capabilities to upload Telescript programs to servers to allow them to take advantage of the server's capabilities. Telescript could even migrate a running program... transfer it to another Telescript engine (on a device or a server) to continue execution, and finally return to the originating client or server device to deliver its output.
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telescript_(programming_langu...