First, I want to ask about these price-tracking websites, do they update in real-time? Do they get their information from confidential data or public data? Do they alert to changes and, in the case of say, applying for an apartment, time the application submission at exactly the right time? Do they collaborate with each other? See, I just learned about algorithmic price fixing and how companies in nearly every industry, every facet of life, give their algorithms access to vast amounts of data, both public and private, and these algorithms share their data with each other, allowing companies to indirectly collude and fix prices without human intervention. What can we common folk do against that?
I'm just saying, you're mentioning search engines, and the author says
You had Google and a spreadsheet if you were organized.
So, how can I, with my spreadsheets and my search engine, possibly stand up to Big AI? David and Goliath was a nice fable, but now Goliath is back, and has friends, and laws protecting them, and all David has, is a sling and a single rock.
This. Without regular people, they have nobody to exploit. They could exploit more robots, but robots don't have the same needs as humans. They could program them to have the same needs, but then that would just be going back to square 1, because then they'd have to pay the robots so they could buy the things they need.