Google, OpenAI, and Shopify insist that the next revolution in AI is agentic AI shopping agents. Shopping is a lucrative area for AI to burrow into. The thing that I keep thinking is that shopping is a deeply important activity to humans; it’s literally a part of our DNA. Is surrendering the shopping experience something the general public is willing to do?
Agentic AI shopping is like a personal assistant that you tell what you want and maybe why you need it, plus some features and a price range. The AI will go out and do the research and comparison and even make the purchase.
There’s no human performing a search in that scenario. So it’s kind of not necessarily good for SEO unless you’re optimizing shopping sites for agentic AI shoppers.
Shopping Is A Part Of Human Biology
Scientists say that shopping is literally a part of our DNA. Our desire to hunt, to gather, and to flaunt our ability to be successful is a part of the evolutionary competition we participate in (whether we know it or not).
A Wikipedia page on the subject explains:
“Richard Dawkins outlines in The Selfish Gene (1976) that humans are machines made of genes, and genes are the grounding for everything people do.
…Therefore, everything that people do relates to thriving in their environment above competition, including the way people consume as a form of survival in their environment when simply purchasing the basic physiological needs of food, water and warmth. People also consume to thrive above others, for example in conspicuous consumption where a luxury car represents money and high social status…”
What that means is that whether we know it or not, our drive to shop is a part of evolutionary competition with each other. Part of it is to signal our status and attractiveness for reproduction. So when we go shopping for clothes or toilet paper, it’s part of our genetic programming to feel good about it.
Shopping And The Brain’s Chemical Cocktail
And when it comes to feeling good, some of that is triggered by chemicals like dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin firing off to reward you for finding a good deal.
Even scoring a deal on toilet paper can trigger reward signals in the brain.
Another Wikipedia page about the biology of our reward system explains:
“Reward is the attractive and motivational property of a stimulus that induces appetitive behavior, also known as approach behavior, and consummatory behavior. A rewarding stimulus has been described as “any stimulus, object, event, activity, or situation that has the potential to make us approach and consume it.”
A sale sign in a store can act as a reward cue because it signals a lower price or added value, which can drive someone to approach and buy it. The sign itself is just information, but when a person recognizes the discount or deal as beneficial, it can trigger motivation to act. That’s a deeply embedded behavior that we carry with us.
We are like machines that are programmed in our genes to shop.
So that raises the question: Why would anyone delegate that deeply rewarding activity to an AI agent? It’s like delegating the enjoyment of chocolate to a robot.
I suspect that most of you reading this know which supermarkets sell the best produce at the cheapest price, which ones have the yummiest bread, and which markets have the best spices. That’s our programming; it’s biological. It does not make sense to delegate the rewards inherent in discovery or acquisition to an AI shopping agent.
Serendipity And Shopping
Serendipity is when things happen by chance, unplanned, that nonetheless provide a happy outcome or benefit. One of the joys of shopping is stumbling onto something that’s a good deal or beautiful or has some other value. Employing an AI agent will cause humans to miss out on the serendipitous joy of discovering something they hadn’t been looking for that is not just desirable but also something they hadn’t known they needed.
For example, I purchased a birthday gift for my wife. I walked into a gift shop run by a charming new age hippie. We talked about music as I browsed the gifts for sale. I found something, two things, that I hadn’t planned on buying. The two things had a semantic connection to each other that I found to be poetic and therefore extra nice as a gift. The shop owner put the two items into two boxes, then placed the boxes in a lovely mesh gift bag with a ribbon.
That’s serendipity in action. It was a pleasurable moment I enjoyed. I walked out of the store into the sunshine with a fresh cocktail of dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin flooding my brain, and it was a delightful moment. I bought a gift that I was certain my wife would enjoy.
Agentic AI Shopping Is Unnatural
My question is, why does Silicon Valley think it can automate the many things that make us human?
It’s as if Silicon Valley is trying to convert us into teenagers by doing the things adults normally do.
Now they want to take shopping away from us?
I think that the only way that agentic AI has a chance of working is if they build in a sense of serendipity and discovery into the system. I’ve been a part of the technology scene for over 25 years, I lived in the world capital of the Internet in San Francisco and even worked for a time at a leading technology magazine.
So it’s not that I’m a luddite about technology. AI integrated into a shopping site makes a lot of sense. It can make recommendations and answer questions. That’s great. There is still a human who is clicking around and discovering things for themselves in a way that satisfies are natural urge to shop and consume. That’s good for SEO because it means that a store needs to be optimized for search.
AI agents doing the shopping for humans makes less sense because it’s unnatural, it goes against our biology.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/Prostock-studio
