About whether AI shopping agents are useful for tasks like buying groceries.
Has this happened?
Yes 28 (21%)Not sure 46 (35%)No 59 (44%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About whether AI shopping agents are useful for tasks like buying groceries.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Something that I thought when reading this was that I'm not willing to buy groceries remotely, because when I had covid during the pandemic I had grocery delivery and I ended up with milk that expired in a few days and produce that was very subpar neither or which I would have bought in person.
I would actually be willing to use AI to purchase groceries if it could provide me with some assurance that it would choose the items better than a shopping cart.
As for now, I'm only willing to purchase non-perishable goods that are difficult to screw up online.
Might be a service idea for AI.