00:27:23 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:27:23] S1: Yeah. It's a crowded field, Aman. Right? Meta says Muse passed 10,000,000 users in six weeks. I think it was five in the first week, so it really doubled in first four weeks. So it's, like, really doubling in a really, really quick period of time. But $200 an order, Meta's own numbers. OpenAI has dots. Google has open protocols for the card and payment mandate. In fact, they launched their universal protocol earlier this month. And then Anthropic has Claude Duet in preview. [00:27:51] S0: I know. It came out almost as we launched our bots program. And, course, we use Claude in our own production efforts increasingly. So [00:28:02] S1: That's right. So hold your dates loosely. Gartner expects more than 40% of agentic AI projects to be canceled by the end of twenty twenty seven. And of 50 retail executives McKinsey surveyed, 45 had considered an agentic tool, and fewer than five had a borderline strategy. [00:28:22] S0: Alright. My own date for mainstream delegated checkout for ordinary shoppers, rung four, was the end of twenty twenty eight. I'm moving there now, I think, to 2030. [00:28:33] S1: The trough concession. I'll take that. That's two. [00:28:38] S0: Don't get used to it. Okay. Rails, Zubin and the human problem, Governor Waller put in one line at CyBoss. Who is on the hook if an agent makes the wrong purchase? Professor Z, know your agent.
00:28:38 · Aman Narain, Zubin Vandrevala
[00:28:38] S0: Don't get used to it. Okay. Rails, Zubin and the human problem, Governor Waller put in one line at CyBoss. Who is on the hook if an agent makes the wrong purchase? Professor Z, know your agent. [00:28:54] S1: Right. Right. And here's the uncomfortable bit. For as long as as many of us have worked in payments, fraud teams were paid to stop software from buying things. Now the bot is the customer. So know your customer becomes essentially know your agent. [00:29:10] S0: And what happens when the agent gets a draw? [00:29:12] S1: Right. The September 22, six banks, including Bank of America, I think it was Cap One, ING, NatWest, said liability outcomes should reflect where the risk and errors were introduced. That's the whole fight in one line. Liability is the product. [00:29:28] S0: So Waller named three walls. Authentication, is this agent real, and is this acting for you? There's liability, who pays when it's wrong? And fraud systems rebuild for machine speed. Meanwhile, LexisNexis cited secondhand says every dollar of direct fraud costs US merchants $5.13 in total. So, Zubin, what's the fakes? I would argue the Apple Pay trick.
00:29:28 · Aman Narain, Zubin Vandrevala
[00:29:28] S0: So Waller named three walls. Authentication, is this agent real, and is this acting for you? There's liability, who pays when it's wrong? And fraud systems rebuild for machine speed. Meanwhile, LexisNexis cited secondhand says every dollar of direct fraud costs US merchants $5.13 in total. So, Zubin, what's the fakes? I would argue the Apple Pay trick. [00:29:56] S1: Never hand over the real card. Mastercard or Visa, the network token services, the one behind your network cards, your Visa, Mastercards in Apple Pay now issues agentic tokens tied to one agent and its own rules, a ceiling, a a merchant type, and expiration. And since the September 13, it also scores how likely a payment is to come from an agent. Visa's trust agent protocol with Cloudflare tells a verified agent from a scraper. Amex records proof of intent, Stripe issues one time cards, x402 lets machines pay machines in fractions of cents. And I know Mastercard is also piloting x402 with Cloudflare and Coinbase. [00:30:39] S0: Zubin, DaVinci would call that making the complicated simple. [00:30:44] S1: Hope so. [00:30:45] S0: Tolls. Tolls. Where does the rent go? Let's talk about tolls. Where does the rent go when nobody's looking at the ads? [00:30:55] S1: Yeah. As Zach answered at Connect in September, as reported, no ads in Muse. Meta expects to make their money from taking a small fee on the transaction. [00:31:07] S0: Essentially, from renting attention to, I guess, taxing intent, from the billboard to the towboat.
00:31:07 · Aman Narain, Zubin Vandrevala
[00:31:07] S0: Essentially, from renting attention to, I guess, taxing intent, from the billboard to the towboat. [00:31:13] S1: Yeah. So brands now sell to machines. The exact specs, no surprise fees, accurate stock, low returns. I think we we were researching this. Euromonitor says, Asian favor clear structured propositions. [00:31:27] S0: Okay. Sol Adeyemi, thirty six, our Portland composite, runs a trail running shoe brand on Shopify. Couldn't make that up. On the... Or could we? On the September 8, Shopify shared his catalog with Meta's agent by default. So he rewrote his product data for software, toe box with heel drop, the returns rule in plain words. [00:31:55] S1: And his proof, it's working? [00:31:58] S0: Not a conversion number. He's still the merchant of record. The agent brings the order, but the customer, the support, the relationship stays his. [00:32:09] S1: Compression quickly. Drones are a supplement, not a fleet. China rents, what, tens of thousands of driverless delivery vans, and Amazon passed a million robots in its up... In its operations last year. And and remember London, payment robots already make short food delivery runs, pay wherever minimum wage kills a $4 fee. So, you know, it's at scale twenty twenty eight to twenty thirty two at best. [00:32:37] S0: And stores, Zubin, this is big one, don't die. They polarize. ICSC and McKinsey say each store has to pick a job, convenience hub, discovery destination, or dark node. 97% of Gen Zs still shop in stores. What hollows out is the routine middle, The weekly shop to make us phone now does.
00:32:37 · Aman Narain, Zubin Vandrevala
[00:32:37] S0: And stores, Zubin, this is big one, don't die. They polarize. ICSC and McKinsey say each store has to pick a job, convenience hub, discovery destination, or dark node. 97% of Gen Zs still shop in stores. What hollows out is the routine middle, The weekly shop to make us phone now does. [00:33:04] S1: Yeah. And now the critical part. Let's start with prompt injection and scope creep, a website that talks your agent into express shipping you never asked for. In fact, OpenAI reportedly shelved an internal project... Internal model called Astra over scope and authorization. The other one is surveillance pricing, which is why Walmart made the pledge. Here's another one. Liability gaps. No protocol yet settles who pays for an agent's mistake. And then let's talk about gatekeepers. Three or four agents replace the search box and the shelves at once. And finally, I wanna end with, you know, what most Europeans care a lot about and most of all of us should care about is data sovereignty. Muse launched in The US and Canada alone and essentially left out the EU.
00:33:04 · Zubin Vandrevala, Aman Narain
[00:33:04] S1: Yeah. And now the critical part. Let's start with prompt injection and scope creep, a website that talks your agent into express shipping you never asked for. In fact, OpenAI reportedly shelved an internal project... Internal model called Astra over scope and authorization. The other one is surveillance pricing, which is why Walmart made the pledge. Here's another one. Liability gaps. No protocol yet settles who pays for an agent's mistake. And then let's talk about gatekeepers. Three or four agents replace the search box and the shelves at once. And finally, I wanna end with, you know, what most Europeans care a lot about and most of all of us should care about is data sovereignty. Muse launched in The US and Canada alone and essentially left out the EU. [00:33:59] S0: The human edge. Chenbows pay insurance deductions and incentives are set by a dispatch algorithm, and nobody negotiates with that. As agents speed up the front end, the pressure lands on the person carrying the bag. So three waypoints. 2027, the trough. 2030, business buying and household replenishment at scale. 2035, software as the default shopper for staples. First to go, the boring, low regret, repetitive stuff, detergent, invoices, chargers. The last to go will be fashion, luxury, fresh produce, anything that is emotionally loaded.