Where are we all going?!
Do you feel it? A simmering discontent with the state of capitalism in American life? I certainly do. My kids engage with social media only if they have to – never because they wish to. They believe their feeds are manipulated by corporate interests, and they are distrustful of anyone who believes otherwise. My wife is convinced that anything she buys online – particularly the bigger ticket items like flights or hotels – is priced based on what algorithms calculate she can afford to pay – not what might be fair or offered to others. Parents in my friend group are terrified that their kids are using ChatGPT as a confidante and therapist whose motivations…
Where are we all going?!
Do you feel it? A simmering discontent with the state of capitalism in American life? I certainly do. My kids engage with social media only if they have to – never because they wish to. They believe their feeds are manipulated by corporate interests, and they are distrustful of anyone who believes otherwise. My wife is convinced that anything she buys online – particularly the bigger ticket items like flights or hotels – is priced based on what algorithms calculate she can afford to pay – not what might be fair or offered to others. Parents in my friend group are terrified that their kids are using ChatGPT as a confidante and therapist whose motivations are unfathomable. The stock market keeps pushing ever upwards, but my colleagues are increasingly convinced a crash is around the corner.
Something just feels….off. The complex socio-economic system that we’re all a part of seems rigged. And we feel powerless to do anything about it.
Two news items from the past few days underscore this gloomy sensibility. From the Times comes this gem: Same Product, Same Store, but on Instacart, Prices Might Differ. Here’s the takeaway: digital aggregators like Instacart (and Uber, and Expedia, etc.) use a sophisticated combination of data, algorithms, and AI to extract as much profit as they can from each and every consumer with which they interact. It’s called dynamic pricing, and it’s an inevitable consequence of capitalism colliding with the digital economy. Turns out, my wife was right.
The second item offering proof that something’s rotten in the state of capitalism comes courtesy of 404 Media, which uncovered some downright insidious behavior from Meta’s Instagram (I know, shocking!). In short, Instagram is creating AI-generated content based on its own users’ posts, then injecting that content into Google so as to drive more traffic back to Instagram. It’s a perfect example of “growth hacking,” a practice that Meta/Facebook perfected more than ten years ago. Turns out, my kids were right to not trust their social media feeds.
What connects these two stories is how the “customer” is treated by tech platforms. The Instagram user whose posts are being distorted in pursuit of traffic, the Instacart consumer who sees a price driven by extractive algorithms – they’re being manipulated by forces they can’t see or understand. In short, they’re being treated like commodified inputs to a system, not valued customers who might have a choice as to where they shop or spend their time. They’re being taken for granted.
Have you ever found yourself part of a “Waze parade,” blindly following the algorithm’s increasingly complicated instructions through suburban streets just to save a few seconds of time on your way to your destination? It kind of feels like that’s happening everywhere now, across every digital surface that’s intermediated by a profit-seeking technology company. We know it sucks, but hell, we’re already way off the highway and deep in unfamiliar territory, so let’s just keep making those lefts and rights, and hope we get there, right?
Is there a way out of this algorithmic prison? I’m not sure, but I sense personal AI agents – ones that work only for us – could be a big part of the solution. I’ve written recently about the problems facing personal agents, and heard back from someone who’s working on those problems via a “loyal agents” consortium led by Consumer Reports, amongst others. They call their work “conscious commerce” – and I’m cheering for their success. From a recent post:
*If agentic commerce is built the way the internet works today, we’ll get an economy even more by advertising and other perverse incentives—one where your buying decisions are based on obscure deals between online retailers and AI companies, where all the intimate conversations you share flow into an ad platform, and where manipulative AI chatbots whisper in your ear over the months to spend more, or more foolishly. *
It doesn’t have to be that way. If we’re intentional, we can use this moment to build something much more consumer-centric—an economy where consumers have more power than ever before.
Hear hear!
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