Shopping used to be fun.

Reading all the buzz around AI in marketing/advertising oriented press is incredibly disheartening because all the excitement is basically just about shortening the purchase funnel.

But people don’t want to be turned into clearing houses for cash, they don’t even want to delegate this task to a robot. People just want to (a) survive and when this is achieved they want to (b) have fun. [yes, super simplified, indulge me].

Shopping centres are fun. Freedom of choice is fun. Free market capitalism wins because it creates new and better choices for solving same problems every year, turning necessity (I need something to keep me warm) into fun (ooh look at this colour).

Travel planning is half the enjoyment of the trip. Educating yourself about different types of bikes over a course of a summer is the point. Journey, not the goal.

Even regular weekly grocery shopping used to be designed to introduce variety and serendipity into everyday life of a family, discovering the world in the process.

Yes, of course, when I know exactly what I want in advance, further automating the payment process is useful and that’s when agents come in handy. And yes, I accept that maybe 1-2% of chatbot conversations might end up in a transaction.

But AI is interesting because it is capable of entertaining us through the other 98% of the conversations that consumer didn’t know the answer in advance.