There’s a lot of talk in the AI world about “agentic commerce.” My big question: whose agent?
We have “agents” today, but most of them aren’t working for you. They aren’t fiduciaries.
Travel agents? They steer you to whoever gives them the largest commission. Despite all their targeting data, the default sort order is Recommended. I usually want Price or Rating, but Expedia wants to steer my booking—so it shows Recommended. (Expedia takes a 15–30 percent commission on hotels.)
Real-estate buyer’s agents? Same story. When I bought my place, my agent urged me to pay full asking price. I bid lower. He wanted the higher price because his commission would be higher.
Almost every service you buy, no matter how it’s marketed, isn’t designed in your best interest. “Free” stock trades? Robinhood makes its money on the back end through payment for order flow—$677 million of it in 2023. The finance industry even lobbied successfully against a rule that would have required brokers to act as fiduciaries.
Google is the ultimate example, even though Google’s founders were skeptical of the advertising model.
“We expect that advertising-funded search engines will be inherently biased toward the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” — Sergey Brin and Larry Page, 1998 (The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine)
In the U.S., the only mainstream professions actually required to put your interests first are lawyers and fee-only financial advisers. (Yes, lawyers still have a conflict: the more hours they bill, the more you pay.)
What AI could change
With a fundamental shift like AI, there’s a possibility of turning that model on its head.
Take Amazon Marketplace: merchants compete for visibility, and Amazon takes 30–50 percent for the privilege. If my agent could talk directly to their agents, we could split that spread—I’d pay less, the merchant would earn more.
My agent could negotiate on my behalf:
“Hey airlines, I need to fly SFO → JFK next Tuesday. Give me your best bid.”
Instead of spending 20 minutes sifting through Expedia, my agent could strike a deal in milliseconds. I could even place limit orders: “When someone offers this trip for $300, buy it.”
Airlines and intermediaries would hate that, but it’s closer to an efficient market. Intermediaries wouldn’t skim 30 percent just for hosting a platform. (Yes, platforms claim they provide protection and customer service, but in reality most offer little of either.)
Today’s model is expensive because there are many mouths to feed along the way.
Will it happen?
I’d happily pay my agent a subscription fee if it truly worked for me. Will it happen? I’d love it—but history says no.
We’re addicted to “free,” even though “free” often costs us more.
(Written by me, lightly edited by ChatGPT.)
Disclaimer: As with all things AI, the industry moves at a rapid pace. Models evolve, tools update, and behaviors shift—sometimes overnight. By the time an author hits ‘publish,’ the example they’re using may already be obsolete. It’s not that the writer was wrong. It’s that the system changed while their post was still rendering. Disclaimer 2: The previous disclaimer (only) was written by AI. Disclaimer 3: Any future attempts to update Disclaimer 1 may invalidate Disclaimer 2.
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