[danpalmer]

> order me the cheapest best reviewed dry dog food that will arrive tomorrow

That's 2 continuous axes and one discrete option. What if the cheapest one is the worst reviewed? What if the most expensive one is the best reviewed? What if the middle price is only slightly above the worst review? What if there's a clearly cheapest, best option that is only available in 2 days?

How do you "trust" an answer to this? What does a single choice answer even mean?

I'm not sure I'd trust a shopkeeper to make this decision for me, as they could easily rationalise not telling me about the cheap and great option if it's not in stock, or falling more on the quality than the price because they make more margin. And Amazon is in this position on this one.

I can see a market for "Alexa, order me cheap dogfood for tomorrow", but pretty much anything more complex than that I just don't think people would give the decision to a biased third party to make for them, let alone a non-human one.

[harvey9]

I think it's almost achievable if you say 'cheapest with 4 or more stars and delivery tomorrow'. Problem remains that cheapest could be the smallest pack size or cheapest per pound, and Amazon is not good at the latter anyway.

[danpalmer]

It is, but it means engineering your formulations carefully before giving them to the computer. Computers taking things literally isn't new, but there's normally less on the line when we do it.

Also I would imagine that as often as not there would be an opportunity for human judgement. Maybe there's a _much_ cheaper one at 3.98 stars, or the 4+ star and next day delivery options are 3x more expensive than the next available option. In both of these cases a human with the right intentions would likely stop and do something different.