Mutiny on the Bounty Paper Towels

“You wake up to a notification that a grocery-store employee will deliver all of the ingredients for the three recipes you saved last night to your ‘Weeknight Dinner’ folder. While you brew your coffee, a program browses online retailers to compare toilet-paper prices, and another solicits competitive bids for Sheetrock work you need done in the garage. During your commute, a bot moves your upcoming dentist appointment to avoid a scheduling conflict. On your lunch break, you get an alert that computers acting on your behalf noticed some unclaimed funds and class-action payouts in a state database and claimed them. Also, the machine has negotiated a cheaper internet plan. By the time you get home, the groceries are on your doorstep, and you’ve gotten back $150. This is the future that OpenAI, Meta, xAI, Google, and the rest are selling with a spate of always-on AI assistants that work for you.” Do you want that future? And what might it mean for the way the economy works? Matteo Wong and Charlie Warzel: Imagine Every AI Agent on Earth Buying the Same Cheap Paper Towels. (I can’t imagine this, because paper towels are one product I would never skimp on…)