00:17:21 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:17:21] S1: Amazon said no. Muse gets an error. Continued access by an authorized agent violates Amazon's t's and c's. [00:17:30] S0: So Muse takes her to Walmart, one of its launch partners, and she approves a one time card. Then on the October 21, Walmart opens a proper door in beta, the agent gateway built on the open model context protocol. Approved agents can buy directly and see her usuals without seeing her whole purchase history. That's kind of big. [00:17:57] S1: Yeah. And, Aman, I'm gonna do a slight plug. This... Early this morning, I actually did a webinar with MRC on agent payments. And one of the key concepts I talked about in my webinar is this notion of front door versus side door. What new instincts are all doing is coming through the front door. And for merchants, they can't tell the difference between bad bots and these agents. And I think what Walmart and what the open protocols that are out there tend to do is create a true legitimate side door. And so as the industry thinks about what's the proper door to open, to our analogy, it's creating those side doors and creating real legitimacy for these transactions is what's going to make the difference. [00:18:37] S0: I wonder, to some extent, the need is greater in the West given the cost of labor. [00:18:42] S1: And exactly, think that's the point you're making.
00:18:42 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:18:42] S1: And exactly, think that's the point you're making. [00:18:44] S0: Yeah. But the orientation is stronger in the East. And I mean this well, let me go here for a second. Like, people are used to having helpers in the home. People are used to having a service elevator as opposed to a main elevator physically in a building you've grown up in, in places that have that. There's an entire subculture around that side door you refer to as opposed to the main door. I wonder whether need versus orientation will play a role, but, you know, back [00:19:16] S1: That's to a good point. But coming back to the point we're just making, it's really a combination of need, in this case, where human power, labor power sort of density sort of makes up for it. In the Western world, agents are required to sort of address that. Right. So... And and coming back to the point we were just trying to make around agent profiles. Right? Like, due within a month, work like adding authorized cardholders. These are the mandates that the industry is driving towards, approves every order or sets a limit, whether it's $50,100 dollars, $200. The agent never sees the card, and all they really see is that mandate. [00:19:52] S0: Yeah. And Tamika plans to set a 100. And Walmart made a promise, I would freight. We price products, not people. So the prices that an AI agent sees are the same prices a customer sees. [00:20:07] S1: So I guess the question is, why does one giant lock the door and the other open it up?
00:20:07 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:20:07] S1: So I guess the question is, why does one giant lock the door and the other open it up? [00:20:13] S0: Well, it's simple. Follow the ads. Forbes puts Amazon's advertising business, it's something that nobody talks about, at around $68,000,000,000 a year. And today's shopping agents skip the sponsored tiles. They read prices, stocks, and reviews, and they hide the browsing data, and the ad machine runs off. [00:20:36] S1: Yeah. So the agent isn't attacking Amazon's checkout. It's really just attacking Amazon's billboard. [00:20:43] S0: Exactly. And people think always about Google when it comes to advertising, but Amazon's massive. And retail's real profit pool is attention. So agents threaten that ad model more than the tilt. The incumbent with the biggest ad business walls in. The one chasing shares opens up, even with ads of its own. Walmart's open, Amazon blocks. And I've seen this film from the bank side. Banks fought the aggregators, scraping their customer logins, and they continue now to try and do that with agents. But in 2018, Britain's competition regulator made the biggest banks open APIs. Similar things happened in India. Similar has happened in Singapore with consent screens, of course. Amazon is essentially the bank in this story.
00:20:43 · Aman Narain, Zubin Vandrevala
[00:20:43] S0: Exactly. And people think always about Google when it comes to advertising, but Amazon's massive. And retail's real profit pool is attention. So agents threaten that ad model more than the tilt. The incumbent with the biggest ad business walls in. The one chasing shares opens up, even with ads of its own. Walmart's open, Amazon blocks. And I've seen this film from the bank side. Banks fought the aggregators, scraping their customer logins, and they continue now to try and do that with agents. But in 2018, Britain's competition regulator made the biggest banks open APIs. Similar things happened in India. Similar has happened in Singapore with consent screens, of course. Amazon is essentially the bank in this story. [00:21:33] S1: Yeah. And it's... Let's do a reality check. Right? ICSE and McKinsey found that about 68% of American shoppers used an AI tool while shopping in the first quarter. But in Capgemini's global survey, 71% worry about how Gen AI uses their data. And then, I think, what, 76% the ability to set strict limits on an AI assistant. [00:21:56] S0: Curious, but I guess they're not yet trusted. [00:21:59] S1: That's true. That's true. And and you're opened against walled split is too neat. On Amazon's results calls in February, Andy Jassy said of the AI companies, and this is quote, We have to try to find a customer experience together that's better. I I don't... This isn't a wall. What I read it is a tollgate, the JPMC of of banking, right, which is still under construction.
00:21:59 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:21:59] S1: That's true. That's true. And and you're opened against walled split is too neat. On Amazon's results calls in February, Andy Jassy said of the AI companies, and this is quote, We have to try to find a customer experience together that's better. I I don't... This isn't a wall. What I read it is a tollgate, the JPMC of of banking, right, which is still under construction. [00:22:24] S0: Yeah. That's fair. Open against walled isn't binary, I think. Amazon is likelier to, I guess, sell access on its own terms than to stay shut. I guess you could have that one, Zubin. [00:22:37] S1: Alright. The walled concession number one. [00:22:40] S0: Okay. So act three, the future out to 2035. Four forces, and they spell CART, compression of time and distance, agents, rails, and tolls, meaning where the rent goes. [00:22:59] S1: Wow. You spent a lot of time on that acronym, man. [00:23:02] S0: It's like your interchange one. Right? It's Alright. [00:23:06] S1: Alright. God. God. Go on. Go on. Go on. [00:23:09] S0: Okay. I have, and I'm I'm not sorry to spend some time on this. Next to it is a framework of our own, the delegation ladder. Round one is the agent researches. Two, it recommends. Three, it fills the basket and you tap to pay. Four, it pays by itself within limits you set. And then five, your agent negotiates with the shop's agent.
00:23:09 · Aman Narain, Zubin Vandrevala
[00:23:09] S0: Okay. I have, and I'm I'm not sorry to spend some time on this. Next to it is a framework of our own, the delegation ladder. Round one is the agent researches. Two, it recommends. Three, it fills the basket and you tap to pay. Four, it pays by itself within limits you set. And then five, your agent negotiates with the shop's agent. [00:23:37] S1: And the feds draw the line between three and four. At Cyborg's governor Waller split agent assistant commerce where you still pay from agent delegated where the agent can buy. Almost all of today's volume sits on rungs one to three. [00:23:55] S0: Yeah. Prophecy, the forecasts, and the ruler problem. [00:24:00] S1: Well, that's true. That's true. So forecast for agentic commerce runs anywhere from 144,000,000,000 to about 5,000,000,000,000, which is crazy, a 35 fold gap. This isn't a disagreement. It's just different rulers. The shortest is e mark... Marketers, 144,000,000,000 by 2029, which really counts only US sales completed inside an AI platform. Morgan Stanley counts US purchases and agent executes at about somewhere between $1.90 to $385,000,000,000 by 2030. Bain's counts anything an agent initiated influences or completes, which is somewhere in that 300 to 500,000,000,000 in The US by '20 [00:24:45] S0: So essentially, one measures the till, one the hand on the basket, and one the whisper in your ear.