Word: bots
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...view will introduce the American public to the phenomenon of Battle Bots with the special, ``Battle Bots World Championship: Bot Bowl 1," which will last...
What Maes predicts, you had better believe. After all, she was the pioneer of the earliest shopping-bot technology known as collaborative filtering, which became popularized as Amazon's ubiquitous "people who liked this product also bought X" link. Now she's helping to bring us an e-commerce world based on the Priceline.com model--in other words, every seller will act like an airline with constantly changing pricing and the ability to negotiate. It's auto haggling...
...This bot-driven universe won't arrive until a few kinks have been ironed out. Right now, says Jeff Kephart, manager of the agents and e-merchant phenomena group at IBM, price bots don't understand that undercutting your competitor is not always smart. "This gives rise to price wars," says Kephart, who in tests has watched the sell bots give the store away in a competitive frenzy. "They're pretty dumb," he notes. "We have to give them a sense of anticipation...
Which means that Bezos can breathe easily for the moment. However, most up-and-coming bots have just the sort of customizable features that made his site such a hit. You will, for instance, be able to tell your bot to transact only with companies that offer two-year-warranties or free shipping or that don't run sweatshops in Malaysia...
Still, more than most, Bezos is likely to adapt to this brave new bot world. He understands its fundamental creed. "The balance of power online fundamentally shifts from merchants to consumers," he says. Indeed, thanks to shopping bots, the party won't just be at his place anymore...