I Used An AI Agent To Do My Back-To-School Shopping. It Was Easy. So Why Do I Feel Sad?

A mother who used an AI agent to complete her back-to-school shopping in about 20 minutes felt a mix of sadness and guilt, missing the joy of discovery and impulse buys, though she acknowledged the convenience and predicted AI will handle many routine purchases. The experiment, prompted by her husband's suggestion to use a browser toolbar, highlighted the emotional trade-offs of outsourcing a treasured annual task.

Back-to-school shopping is one of my most treasured late-summer activities. When the school supply list came out as a kid, I would wait with anticipation until my mom could drive me to Office Max in her minivan. I’d spend as long as I could in the store deliberating between seven different types of highlighters and the coolest brand of gel pens and – us millennials of a certain age will understand this – selecting the perfect Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper. Now that I’m a parent, I relish filling up my online shopping cart with 50% off boxes of crayons, scissors Fiskars only, thank you very much and pristine glue sticks every August. But once I had two school-age kids, shopping got complicated. One kid might require 12 glue sticks, while the other needs four to six, but glue sticks are only sold in packages of two, six or 12 – yet only the two-packs and six-packs are on sale. So how many glue sticks do you buy, and what size package do you choose? Repeat this process for Ticonderoga 2 pencils, which are mystifyingly only sold in packages of 30 or 18 or 12, all on sale for different prices. So this year, I had the bright idea of using an AI agent to merge the two school supply lists into one. When I proudly shared the combined list with my husband, he offered me a second suggestion: Why not install a browser toolbar and have the agent add everything to the cart for me? Huh, I thought. This is what everyone in the advertising industry says is the future of buying, right? I decided to try. Over the course of more than 20 minutes longer, it’s worth pointing out, than it might have taken me , my AI agent added more and more of the school supplies to my cart. I gave the agent some advice – “I’m loyal to Fiskars ” “Change everything to ‘shipping’ from ‘drive-up’” – to guide it. Then I reviewed the cart, tossed in a few more items and hit “purchase.” Done. Then I felt weird. Sad. It was over so fast Even though it was annoying to have to deliberate about glue sticks or whether to buy the 48-pack or 24-pack of colored pencils for my kids, I missed the sense of discovery. In my old way of shopping, I could scan the search results for each item and for new products – honestly, those neon-colored Ticonderogas are pretty chic – and compare prices. My predilection to add a few extra items to my shopping cart would make a retailer proud, as I’m an impulse buyer who always finds a few useful I-forgot-I-needed-that items or little add-ons that bring me joy, like a set of fine-tip Expo dry erase markers for our home white board or a new brand of natural-ish dish soap. Over the next couple of days, I continued to feel as if I’d missed out – but only until the school supplies arrived. My daughter relished in the unboxing as much as I did as a kid, fawning over the pristinely packaged items. While I missed out on the dopamine hit from seeking out school supplies, the joy of unboxing remained. “You shouldn’t have AI do things you enjoy doing,” my husband told me as I worked through the weirdness of outsourcing a treasured annual task. Sending my AI agent to go shopping for me ignited contradictory feelings. I felt sad that I’d let AI take over one of my favorite shopping projects, but then I also felt guilty for resisting a time-saving activity. Didn’t this “free me up” to do something even more valuable, like playing with my kids, for example? I felt guilty for the opposite reason, too. By outsourcing the task, did I miss out on an opportunity to let my kids experience the thrill of back-to-school shopping? Conflicted feelings aside, however, the ease of my back-to-school shopping experience left me feeling certain about one thing: AI will definitely be making lots and lots of purchases for people, especially items that aren’t emotionally tinged. Some people get zero thrill from household shopping, and if they don’t live in a household where someone does care, they should have an agent keeping them continually supplied with sharpened pencils and hand soap and granola bars. In the years ahead, I think the AI shopping versus human shopping shift might play out similarly to the in-store versus online shopping shift. There continue to be people who drop by the store instead of adding to their Amazon cart, and people who prize the connection and tactile pleasures that only happen outside of the virtual world. I think of my uncle, who cashed his paycheck at the bank every week because he liked to talk to the teller. Many of us will end up being hybrids, using AI agents to buy some items while reserving other shopping activities for ourselves. I desire efficiency, but I also love participating in the thrill of a hunt, finding a good deal or being the first of my friends to discover a new product. As a new generation forms its brand preferences and loyalties, a set of tantalizing questions loom about how brands can influence buying decisions when the discovery process involves not just a consumer but a consumer and an agent making the buying decision. For example, I told my AI agent that I prefer Fiskars. I also happen to know from experience that the best Fiskars for kids are the real-deal pointed-tip ones. If people tell their AI agents about their preferences, established brands will find it easier to maintain a leading market share. I could easily dictate a brand choice and never again be tempted by a sale from a challenger brand. But then again, I could also do the reverse and tell my agent to always look for the lowest price – which could strike fear in the hearts of many other brands. Until I did it myself, I didn’t realize just how technologically easy it is to use AI agents to buy stuff. Now that I’ve ripped off the metaphorical Band-Aid, I realize I could use AI agents to stock my fridge, book flights, find a hotel, shop for clothing or do a myriad of other household shopping tasks. But what we all shouldn’t overlook in this shift are the emotions driving or resisting these new possibilities. I felt guilty and disappointed and like I’d missed out – all over some scissors and 2 pencils Although it’s not really about the pencils and the scissors; it’s about how uncomfortable change can feel, and the sense of loss as we adopt new ways of getting from point A to point B. I’ve already decided that when next August rolls around I’ll use AI to create one combined school supply list. But I’m not yet sure who will do the shopping: myself, my kids or a robot. But even if I go back to manually buying everything, I know I’ll feel different, because I’ll be treading a path to purchase a robot could navigate for me instead. For more articles featuring Sarah Sluis, click here https://www.adexchanger.com/tag/sarah-sluis/ .