We're only just starting to get our heads around what generative artificial intelligence (AI) is. Now we have to deal with "agentic AI".
While generative AI refers to a computer response to a single query using natural language processing, agentic AI uses sophisticated reasoning and iterative planning to solve much more complex multi-step problems. The idea is that AI serves as your agent to help you make better decisions, employing multiple data sources and third party applications to analyze challenges, develop strategies, and execute tasks, all with minimal human intervention. It learns from the results it achieves, and uses this feedback to improve future plans and actions.
Frankly it's what most people think AI is (or should be), although it's only very recently that AI has become sophisticated enough to deliver on this promise. Generative AI, by comparison, is really just a jumped-up search engine, based on single input prompts. For example, generative AI can used to create some marketing materials, but agentic AI can used to actually deploy these materials, track their performance, and adjust the marketing strategy accordingly.
Agentic AI is being increasingly employed by businesses to personalize customer service, streamline software development, and facilitate patient interactions. Another place it's being used (and this is what initially triggered my interest and concern) is in shopping and merchandizing.
For example, Canadian shopping goliath Shopify has teamed up with Google and Microsoft to help shoppers find and buy its products more easily and even to help them make purchasing decisions. Shopify merchants can now sell directly through Google's Gemini app and the AI Mode of Google Search, as well as through Microsoft Copilot. Walmart and Mayfair have also recently set up similar agreements. Shopify is even setting up agentic plans with other ecommerce platforms, which will allow online stores throughout the world to sell through Shopify's catalogue, which already comprises billions of products. So, shoppers can buy multiple items from different places without ever leaving the initial AI conversation. Yikes!
Analysts are saying that this has the potential to revolutionize online shopping and advertising. Sound familiar? The merchants stress that shoppers are in control of the whole process, and that they have the final call.
But the agentic AI system can even complete checkout on a customer's behalf, based on pre-entered discount codes, loyalty credentials, billing options, and payment information. I do worry that this makes shopping a bit too easy, and I can easily see it spiralling out of control, or even becoming addictive. After all, it's the customer, not the AI, that has to pay the credit card bill at the end of the month.
I don't have any evidence to back it up, but there just seems a lot that could go wrong with this developmemt.
No comments:
Post a Comment