 | Jun 04, 2025 | | | | The Information Forum Digest The top posts from The Information's subscriber only community. | | | Featured posts Posted by Hüseyin Gün · CIO 14 hours ago LLMs are impressive. But what's the point of intelligence if it can't act?
Where is physical AI in action? We keep hearing about the rise... | | | Top comments |  | Michael Fisher | How are these efforts differentiated from one another? Other than Crescendo, they all seem like any vertically oriented PE roll up strategy but just adding AI to the mix (which, presumably, all of the pre-existing PE rollup efforts are also doing). Crescendo seems like the exception because it appears to be inverting the process, rolling up call center and BPO so that it will be ready for PE efforts to take advantage of.
Anand Chandrasekaran am I right about that? Or misunderstanding the model? Message
|  | Jay Kim | Great read.
Fully agree AI agents will reshape a good chunk of shopping, and these talent moves show just how seriously the industry's taking this shift.
Still, one important distinction to draw here is between commodity and discretionary goods. AI is ideal for automating purchases that feel like chores (toilet paper, batteries, pet food). Quick, frictionless, efficient.
But discretionary shopping (sneakers, cosmetics, quirky home decor) is fundamentally different. It thrives precisely on friction, discovery, even serendipity. Browsing, curating your identity, stumbling upon unexpected finds - this creates what I call the "joy margin," an emotional surplus AI can't easily replicate.
Automating the mundane makes perfect sense, but we should temper expectations around AI completely reshaping shopping behaviors deeply tied to personal expression and cultural nuances. After all, sometimes the scroll itself is half the therapy.
Maybe we're underestimating just how much pleasure and creativity we pull from the act of shopping.
I explore this further here if you're curious: Message
|  | Pano Anthos | It is very likely that the ecommerce sites will become nothing more than a checkout server. So much of the information that a customer wants is contextual and in many cases multimodal (e.g. what are the reviews of the product across various sites, how does this look on me, what are the best units on the market, what should I wear to this party?, - that no one site will anchor all of this information, reducing the ecommerce site's purpose dramatically. Message | | | Directory updates Featured directory updates of people looking to hire, looking to invest, and looking for a new role. | David Kaiser Founder & Chief Executive Officer · Scienza Health Providing services: Scienza Health's voice-to-voice AI handles patient intake, scheduling, and auto-transcribes to EHRs while clinically validated speech biomarkers... Message
| Ricardo Cidale Ceo, Founder · Finding a new job: Message
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