upvote
I'm probably overlooking something, but what makes the problem of being able to get from item in basket to item is shipping different from choosing which item(s) to put in the basket?

In other words, if Agents are able to navigate marketplaces, shouldn't that imply they can also navigate a subset of the marketplace, the payment section? Especially given that that section is "easier: theres no need for qualitative (or quantitative) judgement like there is for the shopping portion.

Perhaps its a matter of proper safeguards?

reply
It's not actually doing browser actions like Playwright or other browser automation tools, rather than direct API and MCP calls/actions. This is a whole new subset of API and connections that are all contained within the Agent context, no browser mocking. That's why they are creating these new protocols, so the full governance can work within the context of the Agent and its available tools.

As I said, it doesn't have to make sense, but this is being pushed on us anyway...

reply
Thanks for sharing your insights!

It seems like this workflow suffers the same problem as Alexa and Amazon dash buttons: consumers don't typically want the computer to just go buy things for them with no oversight. At least I don't.

Adding a checkout step would make this more plausible to me. "Agent, go find the most efficient dishwasher under $600" where it adds its recommendation to a cart, or even "Find me the best dishwashers under $600" where it creates a catalog page with its recommendations and an easy checkout process with whatever store is actually providing.

reply
This still does not answer the question. What makes this different from any other API request to Stripe?
reply
As much as I detest having to look at ads or being "influenced" in any way, shape or form, I think the opportunities for exploitation with what you just described is potentially orders of magnitude more harmful. Sure, let me just hand my wallet to a stochastic black box with god-knows-what RL'd biases and then hook it up to adversarial data sources all vying to extract the most money from me - what could possibly go wrong?
reply