Original tweet:
Transcript
Screenshot of a Bluesky quote chain.
The first post, by @DKThomp on Twitter, says: "Fascinating @benthompson vision of the future of the Internet—i.e., ‘The Agentic Web’ Scenario: Before I go to sleep, I tell ChatGPT ‘Plan my 5-year-old’s birthday next Saturday, budget $500. When you’ve made the reservation, email these 20 ppl a printable invitation to attend. Also my wife wants to go to England in mid-July. Find 5 plausible flights for the family and make several distinct itineraries. Finally, pls edit this work memo.’
When I go to sleep, the Al agent negotiates slots with two bowling alleys, buys a cake, emails printable invites, plans the trip, copy-edits, etc."
It is quoted by Drew Harwell on Bluesky: “Wouldn’t do this in a million years”.
This quote is then quoted by @cinemashoebox.bsky.social: “Waking up to 20 angry parents of my son’s friends wondering why they’ve been sent an invitation to a BRITOTHDYA PRRRYT featuring a picture of Elsa with three eyes and tits bigger than her head. meanhile my wife is boarding a plane for her 176 hour flight to England via four layovers in Antarctica”
Is it really that hard to pull up a couple of websites to search for flights? What is this negotiating he’s talking about anyway? Since when has haggling been part of buying plane tickets?
This magic A.I. also has a list of 20 kids to invite to a birthday party, you still had to spend the time teaching the bot who you wanted to email.
Tbf booking sites are mostly pretty bad in my experience, and haggling has been there since…Priceline? Heavy JS, poor sorting, different prices, hard to define what you’re looking for. It could be worse, but it’s not great.
Is it really haggling or more just sorting through prices offered by different sites and airlines? You can’t really negotiate a lower price, but you can choose layovers, different flights, times to save money.
It’s close enough that I can barely see the difference. It’s not just different layovers, times, airlines, and seating, but mix in different prices for the same exact purchase depending on the website, time, date, or maybe even browser cookies and it’s a lot more like an adversarial negotiation than simply selecting the best choice from an array of options.