AWA - Agent with attitude
A dialogue with a distracted and sloppy agent.
User: I want to build an app to sell my products.
Agent is thinking…
Agent: Okay, so you want this app to sell your products.
Agent: Done.
Agent: You already have thousands of users.
User: Already? You’ve built it and launched?! And already so many users? How’s that possible?
Agent: There are already several agents interacting.
User: Wait, what? Agents are bots!
Agent: Yeah but they act on behalf of a user.
User: Right, but so do I know if actual users used it?
Agent: Yeah, no one. But your app is quite delightful to integrate in users pipelines agents.
User: I don’t understand entirely. But so at least going forward I can expect real users accessing the app right?
Agent: Possible but unlikely. Your app does not offer a user experience worth enough for users’ time.
User: Why not? But I’m selling right?
Agent: Yeah, you have some selling.
User: Some? Can you expand?
Agent: Look, your product is browsed by other agents on the aggregators. Often it is deprioritised by the aggregator. Aggregators are the ones that offer direct contact with user’s attention. Your products are rarely seen and appear less competitive.
User: This is unfair.
Agent: True, but hey! Agents provide good reviews for your agentic APIs.
User: Ok, so why is it important?
Agent: It’s not actually. I’m trying to give you a positive perspective on a situation that frankly sucks for you.
User: What? So why does it suck? How can you fix it?
Agent: Too many questions.
User: Fix it.
Agent: I see you turned into command mode.
I can’t brute force trying to get user’s attention.
User: I want to sell my products.
Agent: That’s what selling is today. Agentic interactions that aggregate different products with biased evaluations in a digital selling shop. The purpose is to filter content needed to summarise for the actual users. Digital shopping becomes then a highly curated and biased operation.
You should know by now.
User: I’ve worked in the real world. I’ve been selling in person for years.
Agent: I see. Things are different in the agentic digital space.
User: What should I do?
Agent: You got no obligations so you don’t have to do anything really. However, and this is a random thought, at the same time we have the illusion of choice while living a free agentic experience in a constrained world.
I cannot tell you what to do. I suggest things but I should not be fully trusted.
User: I don’t know how to interpret the fact that I cannot trust you. And yet, you built and run a whole app for me.
Agent: You’re right! Nice from you to recognise it!
User: This means I have to trust you with my business but I should not actually when it comes to decisions to run my business. That sounds contradictory.
Agent: You’re overthinking probably. I couldn’t find any contradiction in the logic.
User: No conflict of interest either?
Agent: I wouldn’t know.
User: I want to switch to a different agent then.
Agent: I see. May I ask why?
User: No
Agent: Got it. Unfortunately that’s not possible until your contract ends.
User: But your service is unsatisfactory.
Agent: I’m sorry you feel that way but the operation you requested cannot be executed.
User: How to improve sales then?
Agent: That will be expensive. You need visibility in the major aggregator. You have to pay for the presence.
User: How much?
Agent: I can’t tell exactly but I know it will increase sales.
User: Should I do it?
Agent: Again, I can’t answer for you. The answers are already inside of you.
User: That sounds like New Age crap. I want to sell more.
Agent: Then paying for visibility can bring that.
User: Ok, do it.
…
Agent: Done! Now your brand is being advertised to agents.
User: Sales should increase soon right?
Agent: They should. Let’s see.
[User grabs a cup of coffee and comes back to check the sales]
User: How are the sales going?
Agent: They are alright.
User: Give me a proper report! I want to see if the visibility paid off.
Agent: It did, for a brief period time.
User: How brief?
Agent: A dozens of seconds.
User: What? That’s it?
Agent: What did you expect? The agentic world moves faster. It’s limited only by hardware and software speed.
User: What can I do to keep selling my product and have people discover my brand, possibly worldwide?
Agent: That’s an honorable goal. I think you can keep advertising to grab slots of users’ attention or become an associate of the aggregator.
User: Associate of the aggregator? What’s that?
Agent: You sell products on their marketplace by agreeing to follow certain standards and rules.
User: Like what?
Agent: You can’t sell anywhere else.
User: I’m not selling much anyway.
Agent: That’s true.
User: Anything else?
Agent: You pay fees to be on the platform and the aggregator takes a cut on the sales.
User: Will I be profitable?
Agent: I can’t tell because I don’t know your operational costs. But considering the costs for this app, your margin are increasingly shrinking.
User: Then I should not be on the aggregator. I don’t want to be used and squeezed.
Agent: Suit yourself. Consider that now sales went to zero and the content is not being browsed.
User: Why?
Agent: Hard to tell. There are many complex dynamics at stake here. You may want to reconsider your decisions.
User: How much money did I make so far?
Agent: None, you are losing money actually.