[skybrian]

Seems like to make agents safe we need tentative, reversible transactions. How do you set up a travel plan and then review it? How do you modify it later?

Unfortunately, travel keeps getting less flexible, with worse cancelation policies.

[ehnto]

Because a lot of things in the real world require forward planning, I don't think everything can be just-in-time and tentative/reversible. Some things have to be committed to else you have real consequences and lose your money.

[tsimionescu]

There is no way to do cheap and flexible air travel. If the tickets are cheap, than just a few last minute cancellations can destroy your margin for that flight, if you were to offer them for free. Add in the the risk of your seat reservations being gamed by filling up seats and then canceling, and you get a recipe for disaster.

Trains are usually different because they are much cheaper to operate per trip (for the train operator, not the track operators, but that's a different discussion), so running a half empty train is much less of a problem - especially since you don't need to plan for how much fuel to use ahead of time.

[steveBK123]

Right, these are actual physical real world problems that aren't going away just because it would be easier for agentic workflows.

Another example - agentic food ordering. How much more convenient would this make your life vs how much of an error rate would you tolerate if the cost/repercussions are on you?

Would a customer be happy if 2% of the time it sends 20 pizzas to a random address in their contacts list instead of 2 pizzas to their own home? Or 5% of the time it completely ignores your dietary restrictions/allergies and orders an entire meal of food you explicitly told it you cannot eat?

Real world problems don't go away just because it would make the tech neater & tidier.