Go to the store, look at the five kinds of mustard on offer, and pick the one that’s best for you. This is not controversial.
Go to Amazon and search for wireless headphones. There are more than 400 types to choose from. Compare rankings and ratings and price and choose the ones that are best for you. Amazing, but not shocking.
Now, consider an architect designing an addition for the nearby school. She has specced the windows (there will be 200 of them). Autodesk could have the ability to poll every qualified window manufacturer and have them bid for that work, based on how busy they are, what they have in stock and how eager they are to grow their market share. And the building plans could change in response. Reputable companies and reputable architects could connect over better service, timing or pricing, creating a virtuous cycle.
Applying to college? Why not apply to all of them? Your AI bot takes all of your qualifications, recommendations and preferences and the colleges of the world have their AI optimizers consider all available options and put together the best available class, offering incentives and options to the potential students that are most likely to lead to a successful match.
And a job? What’s the point of applying to just a few when the software is already treating you like a cog in the machine as it reviews resumes? What if every job seeker was seen by every employer? The seeker’s AI agent could rank based on location, employee satisfaction, retention, workplace, pay, etc. And the employers could focus on skills and attitudes instead of false proxies like background.
One more: we know a lot about real estate agent performance. We can see how long their houses have been on the market and how likely they are to sell for above estimate. We can measure buyer and seller satisfaction. So, when it’s time to put a house on the market, why not have every broker make a bid instead of choosing the one who has a lot of signs around town?
More market information is not always a good thing. It can cause gaps, unfair access and dislocations. But more market information has been on an inevitable one-way road for generations, and it’s unlikely to go away.
And we should be prepared for asymmetrical competition–companies will hire MBAs and lawyers to create fine print, subscriptions and loopholes that are to their advantage when their AI agents start bidding on projects or hiring people. It’s rare to see this with a loaf of bread, but really common when we buy a cell phone or loan. Human beings are easy to trick. Hopefully, our AI agent will be at least as smart and careful as the company’s.
The thing about wasted slack is that we don’t notice it until we imagine that there’s a productive way for it to disappear.
