For the past few years the whole world has only been talking about the fact that artificial intelligence is about to, if not destroy all of humanity, either enslave us or deprive us of most of our jobs. After all, computers and neural networks think better and faster, do not forget anything, and learn at a speed that is completely incomprehensible to any living person.
And yet, we believe that these concerns are somewhat premature. If humanity itself is engaged in the matter of its own destruction with varying success, then you should not be afraid that tomorrow you will be fired by your employer in order to hire a neural network. Well, for now. Yes, artificial intelligence can create a work of art that will surpass a human in an art contest, but as far as running a business with bots, the success of artificial brains is still quite modest.
Just read this thread on Twitter, which started with a tweet from user @ask_aubry and has amassed over 406.9K likes and around 35.6K retweets as of today. It all started with the post author's simple desire to make some purchases online - and continued with a completely enchanting thread, where human genius triumphs over computer.
More info: Twitter
The author of the post was once shopping online and got a suggestion to replace tampons with mushrooms at the same price
Image credits: ask_aubry
So, the Original Poster, in the process of purchasing, ordered tampons from the Walmart online store. Apparently the item they wanted wasn't in stock, so the store's search engine did their own research into the OP's needs, analyzed the prices... and offered a full container of mushrooms in return for the same price as tampons!
Image credits: ask_aubry
The author tweeted about this situation and it turned out that there are lots of people all over the world facing similar problems
We must say that the OP had never thought that mushrooms could at least to some extent become a substitute for hygiene products, so the proposed option, of course, was rejected. But not before taking a screenshot of this amazing idea and tweeting: "Hi Walmart, I don't think mushrooms will work."
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Image credits: larryburb
The resulting thread instantly went viral, and it turned out that many people around the world had, at least once, been faced with the amazing "inventiveness" of online stores' search recommendations. For example, for one Instacart user, cucumber Vagisil was once offered as a replacement for English cucumber. By the way, AI, as netizens have noticed, likes to swap food and various hygiene products in this way.
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One of the netizens constantly had suggestions to replace their purchases with cheddar cheese
Want more examples? Voila! One British supermarket once came up with an idea to substitute Peri Peri sauce for sanitary towels. And another user had been constantly offered a block of cheddar cheese - and if it was still possible to somehow withstand it instead of chocolate cake, then cheese would certainly not work as a replacement for hygiene pads.
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Jeff Bezos has repeatedly spoken about the AI's phantom menace to humanity, but Amazon's recommendations are also very "impressive". For example, one of the discussion participants was suggested by the system's suggestion to add a foldable solar panel to their cart after buying a package of socks. Well, we certainly support the idea of clean energy, but how does a solar panel fit with socks?
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By the way, people in the comments wittily claim that mushrooms indeed have several advantages over tampons
However, as for the Original Poster and their mushrooms, everything here is far from being as simple, as users joke. For example, mushrooms have many advantages over tampons, like they are 100% organic and decomposable. In addition, netizens gave several examples of how mushrooms were great at absorbing liquid. It seems that AI seriously cares about the environment...
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And yet, the pinnacle of online commercial systems' incompetence, according to many people in the comments, was the proposal to replace cheese with a dozen eggs as the netizen's family was about to make tacos. Yes, it seems that if artificial intelligence replaces living people in business, it would be not in the near future.
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If you have also faced funny and non-standard offers to replace missing items while shopping online, please feel free to tell your own story. In the meantime, you can read more of this tale of ours - there is no AI, but there are cheese and tacos! And, of course, please do not forget to write comments, because they are so pleasant for every living person!