Discussion on the implications of AI agents for delivery services (Part 2)

That the rise of agents are present an existential crisis for companies like Uber, DoorDash, Airbnb, Instacart, etc. Because if you have an agent go out and do your shopping or your booking for you, then they don't have any brand loyalty. They're not going to open up the DoorDash app just because that's on the homepage of your iPhone, which is kind of what we do. They'll just go to wherever the best deal is and they'll be absolutely ruthless about it. So this viral essay came out earlier this year saying, yeah, we might see disintermediation of Uber and DoorDash because of the rise of agents and all these companies sol off big time. But now you hear these CEOs talk and you see, you think maybe this is a solution in search of a problem. Tony Xu, the CEO of DoorDash, said, When it comes to a task that's as simple as ordering food, we tend to see that come directly to DoorDash. Dara Khosrow Shahi, the CEO of Uber, said that the average time to book a ride is only 50 seconds. In the company's app, reordering a favorite food only takes 90 seconds. Brian Chesky, the CEO of Airbnb said, you know what, people kind of love to plan a trip. 80% of travelers say they enjoy spending time researching trips. There is a lot of joy in that. So why would you have an agent do that? So really interesting to hear these CEOs come out in their earnings call and saying, yeah, like we don't know what these general purpose agents are going to do for people because it literally takes 50 seconds to order some food. But on the flip side, of course they would say that because they are looking out for their own interests. And of course the CEO of Uber say, wow, the Uber app is extremely easy to use. It is true though. Like it's bearing out in the data. I think one of the big hurdles that agents need to get over is the trust problem. The more you hand over to them, the more effective they are. But that means you got to hand over your passwords, your email accounts. You got to put your credit card up into a vault and say like, hey, you can use this for certain purchases and it's a really fine line that they're walking. There is this YouGov so survey more than 2,000 UK adults, fewer than one in five trusted AI assistants to make everyday purchasing decisions. In six in ten, I think this is the key stat, said they would stop using an AI shopping agent after it made just one mistake. So they're on extremely thin ice. They cannot mess up. And I think that is one of the reasons. I mean, we have instinct, we have these agents. And I never wanted to book anything for me because, like, what if it just completely does something wrong? What if my flight is. Isn't actually booked? It helps with the research, but that final step of actually executing the purchase, where companies think they're going to make their money back, that's something that a lot of people still say.