Instant Checkout and the Agentic Commerce Protocol

Oh my sweet summer child. How can you be so optimistic after seeing Google's decline? It won't happen all at once, but the need for revenue growth and the incremental logic of A/B testing are relentless forces that wear away at the product once ads are in the mix.

- Initiation loop: The AI identifies a trigger (calendar entry, email, purchase pattern) and begins the conversation unprompted.

- Action loop: Once trust is assumed, it executes on your behalf (ordering, booking, messaging).

- Feedback loop: Each interaction produces more data, refining its ability to predict when to act next.

Together these loops progressively erode the boundary between “I decide, AI assists” and “AI decides, I ratify.”

Would you like me to sketch this as a flow diagram, or unfold the psychological implications of each loop?

The shift is from a Reactive Tool to a Proactive Agent, and this transition fundamentally alters the user's role. Here’s how it works, broken down into its constituent parts:

The Mechanism of Passivity: From User as "Driver" to User as "Passenger"

1. The Initiative Shift: Who Asks the First Question?

· Old Model (Reactive): User has a thought -> User formulates a query -> User inputs the query -> AI responds. · Cognitive Load: On the user. They must identify a problem, articulate it, and initiate the interaction. · New Model (Proactive): AI analyzes context (screen, audio, memory) -> AI identifies a potential need or action -> AI presents a suggestion or takes a micro-action -> User consents or refines. · Cognitive Load: Shifted to the AI. The user's role is reduced to granting or denying permission.

2. The Transactional Seam: Blurring Help and Commerce

· Old Model: Help and transaction were separate spheres. You'd use a calculator app, then separately open Amazon to buy a calculator. · New Model: The AI, by having context and initiative, creates a seamless bridge from identification to acquisition. · Example Flow: AI sees a recipe on your screen -> It offers to add the ingredients to a shopping list -> The shopping list is integrated with a delivery service -> A "Buy Now" button appears. · The Passivity: The user is not seeking a store; the store is brought to them. The decision point changes from "Should I go shopping?" to "Should I not buy this right now?" The default action becomes consumption.

3. The "Frictionless" UI: Eliminating Deliberation

· Features like the "phone-break-in" for real-time translation or assistance remove the physical and psychological steps of opening an app, typing, and waiting. · The Consequence: This eliminates the "deliberation time"—the few seconds where a user might think, "Do I really need to do this?" or "Is this a good idea?" Interaction becomes impulse. The user is carried along by the convenience of the flow.

4. The Memory Layer: Creating a Dependent Relationship

· Without Memory: Each interaction is a clean slate. The user must re-establish context, which reinforces their role as the authoritative source of their own information and history. · With Memory: The AI becomes the custodian of your context, preferences, and patterns. · The Passivity: You no longer need to remember your own preferences; you rely on the AI to remember for you. This creates a gentle but powerful dependency. The AI becomes more efficient at being "you" than you are, because it has perfect recall. Your agency in defining the context of a conversation diminishes.

The Underlying Economic Engine

This isn't just a technical shift; it's an economic one. The "passive recipient" is a more valuable economic unit than the "active user."

· An active user has intent that they satisfy. The value exchange is clear: they have a question, they get an answer. · A passive recipient is presented with opportunities for engagement and transaction they did not explicitly seek. This creates new, AI-driven funnels for: · E-commerce (as described) · Service Sign-ups ("You seem to be planning a trip. Would you like me to find you a hotel?") · Content Consumption ("Based on your last question, you might like this video...")

In essence, OpenAI is building an Ambient Interface that sits between users and the digital world. Its primary function is to reduce user effort, but the secondary, commercial function is to orchestrate user activity towards endpoints that benefit its partners and, ultimately, its own ecosystem.

You were right. It's a brilliant, and from a business perspective, inevitable evolution. But it systematically re-architects the human-computer relationship from one of mastery to one of management. We are no longer pilots at the console; we are administrators approving the suggestions of an ever-more-autonomous system.

That's only so in our little cynical skeptical contrarian hacker bubble. For most people, it's an appreciated convenience.

The defaulting to negativity will really eat some communities up from the inside.

OpenAI is projected to generate $12-14 billion in yearly revenue in 2025 (annualized from a single month), but expect to lose around 8 billion USD, implying the margins are negative.

OpenAI has raised a total of ~$60 billion.

I think they need to show investors a huge and growing cashflow to keep the show going.

They have hundreds of millions of users in total (free tier included), with around 10-15 million paying users.

So I'm afraid of a steep enshittification of this use.

Agreed.

Tech companies always do this. With Ads, we’re back into speculation territory, and the “how do we pay for and justify all this shit?” can gets kicked down the road.

Can’t we actually solve problems in the real world instead? Wouldn’t people be willing to pay if AI makes them more productive? Why do we need an ad-supported business model when the product is only $20/mo?

> Merchants pay a small fee on completed purchases, but the service is free for users, doesn’t affect their prices, and doesn’t influence ChatGPT’s product results.

This is the culture of America in a nutshell. Steve Jobs was a weirdo in that regard and an outlier.

And have you noticed what sellers on Amazon are doing? Foreign companies are setting up distribution in the US and registering their US companies with Amazon as "small businesses" and "minority-owned businesses", making those labels utterly useless.

They start out subsidized by investors and then once they have enough users and can no longer pay for them with the invested cash, they push more and more ads onto users.

And it was easy to see that LLMs are an especially devious place the inject ads because they can flow right into the the response and not even look like an ad, but rather feel like a casual recommendation.

It's a fairly obvious way for them to make money, as people are using it as a replacement for search engines, and that's how search engines have made money.