CUDA inventor Ian Buck, vice president of hyperscale and high-performance computing at Nvidia.
GTC
CUDA engineers are elite coders who squeeze speed out of Nvidia's chips.
AI is reshaping the job as demand for scarce expertise continues to grow.
AI could soon write CUDA code that humans can verify but not fully understand.
For years, CUDA engineers who optimize Nvidia chips have been among tech's most sought-after specialists. Now, they're increasingly managing AI that does it for them.
These engineers specialize in using Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) — Nvidia's software for programming its AI chips, known as GPUs — to write code that can run AI as efficiently as possible.
The jobs are coveted because compute costs are massive; engineers who can squeeze the most value from a chip can save companies millions.
CUDA engineers traditionally spent their days writing kernels — the small pieces of code that tell a GPU how to do a single job as quickly as possible — and then testing them to find the fastest version. Now, AI is taking over much of that painstaking work by generating hundreds of kernels, testing them, and picking the best one.
As a result, CUDA engineers increasingly spend their time supervising coding agents. It's part of a broader shift across the software industry, where developers are moving from writing code to managing AI.
This involves setting goals, checking results, and stepping in when the AI gets stuck, said Jeremy Nixon, founder of the startup Infinity, which builds AI that optimizes chip software.
Because AI can introduce "bizarre" bugs that humans wouldn't have written, the job of reviewing AI code has become "more intense," said Anne Ouyang, cofounder of the AI infrastructure startup Standard Kernel.
Despite the shift, hiring data suggests demand for CUDA engineers remains strong. While overall demand for software engineers is lower than in 2023, "demand for some specialized skills, like CUDA, has grown," said Elena Magrini, head of global research at the labor market analytics firm Lightcast.
And scarcity remains a challenge, even as AI has supercharged productivity, said Bing Xu, founder of the AI optimization startup INT21. That's because the deepest CUDA expertise was built over more than 20 years, long before AI sent demand soaring.
"In the past, we couldn't hire enough good-quality CUDA engineers, and now AI is filling the gap," Xu said.
CUDA engineer jobs are evolving
CUDA engineering roles exist both inside and outside Nvidia — including at AI labs and cloud giants. There have already been more US job postings requiring CUDA skills through the first eight months of 2026 than during all of 2025, per Lightcast.
Nvidia remains the largest employer hiring for these positions, according to the firm, with over 300 active US job postings requiring CUDA skills as of September. Public Nvidia job postings for CUDA-related engineering roles advertise base salaries as high as $431,250 before stock and benefits.
Nixon said that AI lowers the barrier to entry for engineers with less experience while simultaneously pushing veterans toward higher-level work, like overseeing AI.
Ouyang said AI could hit junior CUDA engineers hardest, while specialists who can outperform AI and verify its work will become more valuable.
And over time, AI could take on a greater role.
Xu said his company's research had already shown that AI can outperform human engineers on certain benchmarks for writing kernels.
In some cases, AI already writes CUDA code that engineers can't fully understand, though they can verify it's correct, Nixon said.
He said this ability to outperform human engineers offers an early glimpse of "superhuman" AI in the real world.
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It seems as though every day brings a new announcement from an odd-couple pairing of companies (or a company and a celebrity) about some sort of co-branded product. In the past month alone, Dunkin' and L.L.Bean came together to sell a tote bag and sweater, JELL-O and Tower 28 teamed up to make lip gloss, and Mane and Cinnabon put out a lip balm and hairbrush. There's also Gap x JYT, Realtree x Harley-Davidson, and Peloton x Miley Cyrus. The list goes on and on. Another cross-brand collab is almost certainly being dreamed up in a conference room somewhere as we speak.
From a corporate perspective, the calculation is pretty straightforward: Brand A + Brand B = $$$. Hopefully. In an economy where it's increasingly difficult to get attention, a limited-edition crossover seems like as good a way as any to manufacture an event. But collab city is getting pretty crowded. At their best, these mashups create something that's genuinely exciting and creative that neither name could have made alone. At their worst, they're two logos slapped together on an uninspiring sweatshirt or fanny pack — a customer acquisition ploy dressed up as cultural relevance.
"I don't know if there's as much collab fatigue as there is fatigue around unoriginal ideas," says Gabriel Whaley, the founder and CEO of MSCHF, a New York-based art collective and studio. "A lot of people see collabs as a substitute for taking risks."
Brands beware, though: Customers are learning to tell the difference.
It's not surprising that Liquid Death had a hand in former NFL star Jason Kelce's recent ad encouraging consumers to send their urine to data centers (which you probably shouldn't, FYI). The canned water and beverage company made quite a name for itself with its eyebrow-raising brand collabs well before it teamed up with the Kelce brothers' Garage Beer to jump on the anti-AI bandwagon. Liquid Death joined forces with Spotify to launch a $495 funeral urn that streams music, e.l.f. Cosmetics to make $34 "corpse paint" makeup, and Depend to create $75 "pit diapers" for music-lovers who don't want to lose their spot at the front of a show.
I don't know if there's as much collab fatigue as there is fatigue around unoriginal ideas.
Andy Pearson, the vice president of creative at Liquid Death and the head of its in-house production arm, Death Machine, tells me he's aware this stuff sounds absurd. That's the point. "Liquid Death logic" dictates that an idea often "on the surface sounds super stupid" but is backed by a coherent case. "We want to make things that are genuine entertainment," he says, not bullet points on why consumers should choose whatever product. "It's finding things that either make a ton of sense or make zero sense."
Liquid Death generally takes the creative lead in its partnerships — there's no decision by committee. This philosophy means things may not always work out. They recently abandoned a project with language-learning platform Duolingo because both sides were trying to "lead the dance." This artistic work, of course, is in service of a commercial goal: reaching new customers. The company has a product line with YouTuber MrBeast's snack and chocolate brand, after all. Pearson prefers to talk about this as "awareness building" rather than going viral.
"It gives us this exposure to all these little corners of different types of people," he says.
Your mileage may vary on the Bluetooth urn — I don't know how many people want the receptacle for their loved one's ashes blasting tunes. But there is something truly unique to the concept: It likely couldn't have existed without these two specific companies. That's what the magic of collabs is supposed to be, explains Quentin Humphrey, a director at WGSN, a consumer trend forecasting company. It's "two brands coming together to create new worlds," he says. Lackluster collabs too often rely on "world renting," with one company simply borrowing another's audience and cachet.
"Collabs used to feel like events. Now it's like inventory with a storyline," Humphrey says.
There are some basic bases all collabs need to cover. They ought to be limited in duration, product range, and number of units for sale. Whatever's in the drop shouldn't be a product that's already being sold by one of the brands. The partners should be complementary, not necessarily identical, and the tie-up should make intuitive sense while expanding what each one represents.
The trap many companies fall into is that, while they're checking many of these boxes, they're not creating anything truly special. The creation may be weird, but does anybody care about or want it? Thomai Serdari, a luxury marketing professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, says that brands lean on collaborations because they're struggling to come up with new ideas that target new segments. They're also reacting to an age when markets are extremely fragmented, and it's harder than ever to get and keep attention, especially among younger potential buyers.
"The Gen Z consumer is flaky," Serdari says. "They are brand agnostic, or so they say."
Companies have had some success on this front. Gap, for example, has said that nearly a third of its customers who make one of its collab purchases are new to the brand and attributed its growth among younger consumers to collaborations.
Collabs are also a way for brands to react to ever-accelerating consumer cycles, in which trends come and go at lightning speed, says Ali Furman, consumer markets industry leader at PwC. "There's this whole speed-culture surfing situation where collaborations allow you to borrow relevance in a specific moment faster than just building it on your own, which you might miss a window," she says.
Collabs used to feel like events. Now it's like inventory with a storyline.
Nostalgia, for example, is trending right now. If you're Starbucks, partnering with Peanuts to feature Snoopy and Charlie Brown on a fall collection is an agile maneuver.
These types of tie-ups can also go awry. Case in point: The recent breakup between golf brands Callaway Golf and Good Good after they put out an ad that opened with a golfer pushing a woman to the ground to stop her from touching his driver. No one came out looking good in that one.
There's no perfect formula for what makes a collab work. It needs to feel unique, but not random. It ought to be novel, but not for novelty's sake. Perhaps most importantly, while it is marketing at its core, it shouldn't feel like that's the entire point.
"We live in a time where everything just sort of distills down to marketing," Whaley, from MSCHF, says. " I think that means the opportunity is to try and make something good versus trying to just make marketing for the sake of marketing."
Quincy Moore, the CEO of New York or Nowhere, a streetwear and apparel brand, is managing what most would consider a good problem to have: his company is inundated with collaboration requests. New York City is having a bit of a moment, with the Knicks winning the NBA Championship, hosting the World Cup final, and a buzzy new mayor in City Hall. Given the renewed swagger, a lot of brands are looking to get in on the action. Whenever he's considering a new partner, Moore says he asks himself one baseline question: "Do we have anything new to say?"
They've got ongoing and more obvious partnerships with major sports teams, like the Knicks and Yankees, and teamed up with Saturday Night Live for the show's 50th anniversary. This fall, New York or Nowhere is launching a Sesame Street collection. (As Elmo was recently reminded on Twitter, he's a New Yorker.)
Getting to yes on a collaboration is a long process, Moore says. Sometimes it's a question of bandwidth, or of whether legal and licensing agreements can be reached. Because they're often entering into multi-year agreements, his team also wants to ensure that projects aren't treated as one-offs. Sure, the second drop won't generate as much hype as the first, but they want to generate ongoing sales. Ultimately, he says, the task is to figure out, "does this deserve to exist or not?"
That may sound like a low bar, but it's one more companies need to ask themselves whether they can get over before rushing the latest Franken-product to the manufacturing line.
Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.
Magnus White, who was a competitive cyclist, died in 2023.
Jimena Peck for BI
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Michael White, 49, from Boulder, Colorado. In 2023, a driver killed White's 17-year-old son, Magnus. The essay has been edited for length and clarity, and the details verified.
Eight days after my son Magnus was killed, we held his memorial. By then, I had already learned that dying is a business.
Quickly, my wife and I had to find an attorney, choose between burial and cremation, and decide what would hold our son’s ashes. A police victim advocate handed us a glossy catalog of urns, each costing thousands of dollars. It all felt ridiculous.
Then the financial consequences began to mount: legal bills, lost income, and years of therapy. Losing our son will always be the greatest cost, but nobody really talks about the financial toll that follows.
When the hospital called, my mind went to the worst place
Magnus was my firstborn. When your first child arrives, it instantly changes who you are. As they grow, you learn what makes them happy or sad, and try to help them become their own person. During the last year of Magnus’s life, we really saw that happening.
Magnus White had competed with the USA Cycling National Team.
Jimena Peck for BI
At 17, Magnus was a world-class athlete with the USA Cycling National Team, but he was still a teenager at heart. He had a close group of friends, could be mischievous, and loved having fun. He was extremely smart, remarkably talented, and had a magnetic personality. He was a special kid.
July 29, 2023, was a beautiful summer’s day and Magnus had gone for a 70-mile ride on a highway not far from our home in Boulder. I brought him breakfast, but he had already eaten. My final words to him were to make sure he ate when he got home.
Like any worried parent, I regularly checked his location using Find My iPhone while he was out on a ride. The last time I looked, he was about 15 minutes from home.
I was in the shower when the hospital left me a voicemail. As soon as I heard the message, my mind went to the worst possible place.
Magnus White, the son of Michael White, was killed while cycling near his home in Boulder, Colorado.
Jimena Peck for BI
A driver had hit Magnus. He was brain-dead and on life support. My wife, who was in Wisconsin, traveled back using a friend’s private plane service because she couldn't find a seat on a commercial flight in time. She arrived about an hour and a half before he died.
You expect your parents to pass, maybe your spouse, but nobody anticipates the death of their child.
I couldn’t work while living with grief
Immediately after Magnus died, the doctor signed me off from work. I was a creative director at a major outdoor product company and the family’s breadwinner, earning about $187,000 a year.
A few weeks later, we had one of our biggest financial shocks. Our health plan sent us a letter saying it had paid nearly $137,000 toward Magnus's medical care and was seeking reimbursement from any insurance settlement we received.
It was devastating. We fully expected the amount to be taken from our underinsured motorist policy. In the end, our attorney negotiated the lien down, and only $5,000 was deducted from our settlement.
Michael and Jill White had faced major financial consequences after losing their son.
Jimena Peck for BI
In the almost five months it took for prosecutors to charge the driver who killed Magnus with reckless vehicular homicide, we continued todeal with costs that nobody can prepare you for. Colorado pays crime victims for certain expenses, such as counseling and the funeral, which you pay upfront and submit for reimbursement. It felt so transactional, which was really odd.
Returning to work six months after he diedin January 2024 was difficult. I used my vacation and sick days to attend court hearings.
Everybody knew what had happened to Magnus, but most of my colleagues were afraid to mention it. They didn't want to upset me, but the truth about grief is that I was already upset every second. I wanted to talk about Magnus, and I wanted someone to listen. It keeps him alive.
After about nine months back at work, in September 2024, I decided that I couldn’t do it anymore. Shoes and outdoor products no longer meant anything to me. I had spent 25 years building my career, but I couldn’t do the job while living with grief.
Michael and Jill White both took time off work after Magnus died.
Jimena Peck for BI
My wife also took several months off and has since returned to working at a university. I haven't earned a salary since leaving my position, so I have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in income.
We used to contribute to our other son's college fund. Now we only draw from those savings, and we’re not sure he’ll be able to go.
Every purchase requires more thought than it did when we had two incomes, and we've had to cut back on spending. We paid off our car and decided to keep our 2021 vehicle to avoid new monthly costs. We still occasionally travel, because it’s part of our grief therapy, but we cut back on everything from eating out to our hobbies.
Earlier this year, about three years after Magnus died, we received a $25,000 settlement check from the driver’s insurer, and $13,500 from a separate claim for Magnus’ bicycle and other cycling equipment he was using when he got hit. Our attorney took a cut of every compensatory check.
I began attending therapy shortly after Magnus died, and I continue to pay $150 for each weekly session out of pocket. My wife and I also attend trauma therapy together, which Colorado’s crime-victim compensation program reimburses.
I will eventually have to go back to work because we can’t sustain this forever. I just don’t know what that timeline is yet.
You have to protect yourself
Michael White started a charitable foundation in honor of Magnus. It's called The White Line.
Jimena Peck for BI
I don’t think most people understand the true cost of dying in the US. Much of my time now goes toward the foundation we created in honor of Magnus, The White Line, which aims to protect vulnerable lives on our roads. We have published a guide explaining what victims of road incidents and their families may need to do in the days, weeks, and months after a serious crash or death.
I would encourage families to review the amount of life insurance they carry and to maximize their uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. You need it when you need it, and you don’t know when that is. Both my wife and I have also purchased additional life insurance policies to give us greater protection.
One of the hardest lessons we learned is that you have to protect yourself. You hope the system will look out for you, but our experience taught us that it may not.
We are telling our story because we want what happened to us to help other families and to make sure that Magnus’ death was not meaningless.
Gary Doss, a longtime real estate agent in Big Bear Lake, California, says sellers need to have "a tough conversation."
Ethan Noah Roy for BI
John Kenney is the second real estate agent to take a stab at selling 317 Matterhorn Drive, a rustic, two-bedroom cabin in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The getaway sits in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains, about a 30-minute drive from Dollywood, in an area that draws millions of tourists each year. At the height of the housing boom, it might have sparked a bidding war. Instead, it's withered on the market for two years.
The home has seen a steady drip of price cuts and relistings since January 2024, when it debuted at $850,000. The owners are now asking for just under $600,000, a decrease of nearly 30%. "NEW PRICE, BIG MOUNTAIN ENERGY!" the listing reads.
"We're just chasing the market at this point," Kenney tells me.
Vacation homes like this one were once chum in the water for hungry Airbnb investors or flush retirees looking for part-time getaways. In 2021, cheap loans and a surge in vacation bookings spurred a buying bonanza, turning staid markets like Gatlinburg and Big Bear Lake, California, into eye-popping examples of the housing scramble. It didn't last long. The short-term rental business has plateaued, forcing more discipline among investors who can no longer feast on record-low borrowing rates and fully booked calendars. Other second-home owners are realizing the places they use a few times a year may not be worth the costs and headaches. All these factors add up to for-sale signs and six-figure price cuts. A report this summer from the research firm Parcl Labs declared America's vacation-home sellers "the most motivated in housing."
This four-bedroom home in Big Bear Lake, California, has been listed for $1.3 million since June.
Ethan Noah Roy for BI
It's not all dark clouds for those saying goodbye to their summer cabins and ski chalets. In most of these markets, home values remain well above their 2019 levels, and any longtime owner is likely to turn a healthy profit. But vacation-home owners tend to churn through properties at a faster pace than the average population. Agents in these places say owners generally hold onto their places for four to six years before opting for a change of scenery, which means some sellers who bought at the peak are now staring down steep losses. Even those netting profits may walk away crestfallen as their long-awaited paydays come in lower than expected. The owners of 317 Matterhorn, for instance, bought their place in mid-2020 for $380,000, a bargain by today's standards. Their nest egg will still yield a healthy return, but the owners are still anchored to the gangbuster valuations of 2021 and 2022, Kenney tells me.
"They thought they scored big on being able to add to their retirement," Kenney tells me, "and now it's not as much."
Owners in resort towns had no trouble offloading their properties at the start of the decade, when the big-city exodus was in full swing. Mortgage applications for vacation homes in 2020 jumped 30% from the previous year, a Zillow analysis of federal mortgage data found, and by March 2021, demand for second homes had peaked at 88% above pre-pandemic levels, according to a Redfin analysis. These figures don't take into account the all-cash purchases that further distorted the market. The hot spots weren't exactly surprising — second-home buyers flocked to the coastal towns and mountain ranges that tend to make vacation bucket lists — but the steep price hikes came as a shock to locals and out-of-town bidders. Home values in Gatlinburg more than doubled in a two-year span, per Zillow. Big Bear Lake jumped by 77%, while the metro that includes Destin, Florida, rose by nearly 50%.
As homebound Americans started scratching at the walls of their pandemic pads, the business of short-term rentals flourished. For three straight years beginning in 2021, bookings on sites like Airbnb and Vrbo increased by double-digit percentages, according to the research firm AirDNA. Rental owners cashed in, upping nightly rates while keeping their units healthily occupied. Taking a cue from the surge in demand, a new wave of hosts opened their doors to visitors. The average number of short-term rental listings climbed to almost 1.5 million in 2023, up nearly 38% from two years prior and about 25% from 2019 levels.
The short-term rental business these days is far from "bust" territory — occupancy rates across most of the country are holding steady, while daily rates show small year-over-year increases — but the forces driving the pandemic-era frenzy have since come back to bite vacation-home owners and rental investors. The abundance of Airbnbs in some locales has allowed travelers to comparison shop, forcing owners to cut prices and making it tougher to justify the steep sums they were once willing to throw down to add more properties to their portfolio. Katelyn Warren, another agent in Gatlinburg who often works with short-term rental buyers, says she typically advises a "10% rule": revenue from bookings each year should work out to 10% of the home's purchase price. So, for a $500,000 house, a buyer would want to pull in $50,000 each year before expenses. Clearing that hurdle was pretty easy in 2021, Warren tells me, but most investors hunting for purchases in her area are now looking at 7% or 8%. The typical reaction is, "Oh, well, that's not going to work for me," Warren says.
Those who splurged on vacation homes five or six years ago are also hitting a point where they're taking a harder look at the pros and cons of a pied-à-terre. Kids grow up and schedules get cluttered, leaving less time to get away from the city. The monthly payments on the mortgage, insurance, and taxes may no longer be so easy to swallow. Maintenance costs pile up. Gary Doss is a longtime agent in Big Bear Lake, a popular Southern California vacation spot with picturesque lake views and easy access to the slopes. He says many of the sellers he's worked with this year are those who bought in 2021 and 2022. The homes are hitting the market again at a point when Airbnb returns are no longer so appetizing and mortgage rates have surged past 7% for the first time in more than a year.
Homes that traded hands in 2021 or 2021 are now hitting the market again, Doss says.
Ethan Noah Roy for BI
"We kind of had this perfect storm," Doss tells me. Prices in Big Bear are down 20% from their peak in June 2022, per Zillow, and the pool of available homes in the surrounding county has increased by nearly 47% in the same period, Realtor.com found.
Vacation homes were slightly more likely to see a price cut than other properties, the research firm Parcl Labs found in June — 37.3% of getaways compared to 35.1% for the rest of the homes on the market. The company also found that Destin, the Florida Keys, the Smokies, and Palm Springs were seeing the highest share of vacation-home owners hit the exits, with anywhere from 3% to 5% of the vacation-home stock listed for sale. Those figures are limited to true second-home owners and don't include rental investors with multiple properties.
We kind of had this perfect storm.Gary Doss, real estate agent in Big Bear Lake, California
With price cuts so pervasive, buyers often bide their time for deeper discounts, Doss tells me. "Whenever you see a lot of availability, buyers tend to be a little more shy," he says. A pair of neighboring homes in Big Bear Lake tells the tale: 305 Starlight Circle, a spacious four-bedroom that had been used as a short-term rental, sold in late 2020 for $850,000 and was listed for sale again in May 2025 for $1.2 million. But it languished on the market, sitting until the end of the year, before the owners pulled it, hoping to try again later. When Doss took over marketing the property, they tried relisting it at the same price but got no bites until they shaved the asking price. It ended up selling this May for $1.1 million. That saga counts as a downright success when you look at the house next door, 301 Starlight Circle, which Doss is also marketing for sale. That place, another four-bedroom with log siding and sweeping views of the valley, also traded hands in 2020 for $905,000. But it's been sitting for sale at $1.3 million since late June. Homes priced between $1 million and $1.5 million are especially challenging, Doss tells me — when he recently scanned the local multiple listings service, there were about 50 available homes in that range and only a handful under contract.
"There's just a lot of inventory out there that they're competing with," Doss says.
Rustic features like this wood-carved bear adorn the home at 301 Starlight Cir. in Big Bear Lake.
"It's almost to the point where I think buyers are conditioned to wait until they see price cuts before they even start looking at a property," Kenney says.
Vacation-home owners may choose to bide their time, too. In many cases, they can afford to be patient, especially in true luxury destinations like Jackson, Wyoming, or Aspen, Colorado, where price cuts are less common and cash buyers don't have to fret about mortgage payments. Less fortunate are those who bought at the peak and can't afford the costs of maintaining their once-idyllic retreats. One of Kenney's clients bought a pair of snug cabins in 2022 and realized they're no longer using them. "Dealing with the ongoing maintenance and things like that of a cabin is not easy," Kenney tells me. Even if they collect the full asking price of $400,000, they're looking at a $150,000 loss.
Perhaps scared off by horror stories like this one, would-be rental owners appear to be more hesitant about jumping into the business and scooping up homes. A recent AirDNA study found that existing short-term rental hosts were much more interested in acquiring additional properties than those who had never tried their hand at the rental game. This makes sense in light of the past few years: If you've dealt with late-night guest issues and tinkered with nightly rates, you may have a good handle on the risks involved. But if you're on the outside looking in, "You're like, I don't know,'" Jamie Lane, AirDNA's chief economist, tells me. "Interest rates are really high. It's hard to find good deals. The risk just seems a bit more."
It's almost to the point where I think buyers are conditioned to wait until they see price cuts before they even start looking at a property.John Kenney, real estate agent in Gatlinburg, Tennessee
Lane considers this a relatively healthy state of affairs. The pool of short-term rentals has plateaued, rising in August by a paltry 1.7% year over year. Investors aren't flocking in, but that also means less competition for existing owners, who have seen occupancy rates either flatten or tick up slightly.
Buyers and sellers of vacation homes — whether pure investors, snowbirds, or somewhere in the middle — are both stubborn and fickle. Unlike a primary residence, a mountain getaway isn't a must-have, and the beach house that sits empty most of the year is an easy expense to cut if things get tight. These days, numbers-obsessed investors are picky with their purchases and loath to take a loss on their long-standing properties.
Gary Doss says Big Bear Lake has seen a "perfect storm" as more homes hit the market.
Ethan Noah Roy for BI
"I joke and say I honestly don't know how we sell anything up here," Doss tells me. "Because almost every seller I talk to says they don't need to sell, and almost every buyer that we talk to says they don't need to buy."
The deals are happening, though, if only at a pace — and price — that may leave nobody entirely satisfied.
"At some point in time," Doss says, "they just need to have a tough conversation on what needs to be done to get the property moved."
AI agents like Meta's Muse and its mascot Jolly can make purchases on users' behalf.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
AI agents can make purchases for you, but not everyone is ready for it.
A survey found 53% of respondents were uncomfortable with an AI agent making a purchase for them.
Trusting agents enough to take action could take time and require changes to check out systems.
The moment many have waited for — where AI can actually do your bidding, not just tell you how to do it — may finally be here, but that doesn't mean consumers are ready for it.
Makers of personal AI agents like Meta's Muse are touting their ability to handle shopping tasks from beginning to end: researching items, comparing prices, and checking out on your behalf. While many consumers are open to having the AI agent handle the first two steps in that process, trusting it with the final step could prove more difficult.
A recent survey conducted by YouGov for ACI Worldwide, a global software and payments company, asked over 3,000 adults from the US and UK how they felt about using AI agents for shopping related to fashion. The survey found 53% of respondents said they would not allow an AI assistant to make purchases on their behalf under any circumstances. Only 7% said they would allow agents to make purchases without their approval.
Other data suggests that skepticism isn't limited to shopping for clothes and shoes. Accenture's Consumer Pulse Research report, which surveyed over 25,000 consumers worldwide, found that while 74% of consumers would trust a personal AI agent more than their best friend to make a purchase on their behalf, only 9% were open to fully autonomous shopping. About one in three said they'd let AI decide what to buy, but that they would personally make the payment.
As the personal AI agent moment appears to have arrived, the data suggests there's still a fundamental disconnect between wanting an AI agent to help with shopping and trusting it enough to fully hand over the reins.
"Right now, it's a trust issue," Dan Coates, director of merchant product management at ACI Worldwide, said. "People have gotten comfortable letting AI help them with discovery, comparison, and decision-making, but they still want to be the ones to pull the trigger."
Coates said it's still the wild west when it comes to agents making purchases on people's behalf, but that a purchasing framework for agents could help consumers feel more comfortable with the idea, adding, "think of it as an agentic bill of rights or rules of the road."
Some payment companies are already working on such programs, like Mastercard Agent Pay and Visa Intelligent Commerce. These agent frameworks, he said, could lay out rules for agents, consumers, merchants, and banks, adding transparency and security to the process.
Phil Bruno, chief strategy and growth officer at ACI Worldwide, said that while the capabilities of AI agents have improved, it only takes a few negative stories to impact user trust.
Early users of personal AI agents have already reported some issues. A tech reviews YouTuber said Muse gave his address to a potential buyer on Facebook Marketplace and arranged a pickup without his knowledge. A Meta Superintelligence Labs staffer said on X that in similar cases Muse was "following direct instructions and correctly asked for permission." A representative for the company previously told Business Insider it attempted to contact the YouTuber but did not get a response.
While Muse can make purchases on users' behalf, Meta says the agent will always ask for approval first.
Bruno said trust would likely build up gradually as users experiment with agents, starting with the "tinkerers" who are trying it out now and eventually with a broader set of early adopters. He said that testing will likely start with merchants that users already trust and are already comfortable with one-click ordering, like Amazon.
He also said that asking whether AI agents are ready to take over purchasing decisions isn't the right question.
"It's not that it's got to be ready, but it's got to be better. And how much better?" he said. "Is it appreciably better in a way that now I actually want this to occur?"
We're interested in how people across different generations are using — or not using — AI agents. Tell us about your experience in the survey below.
A soldier of NC13, a unit of Ukraine's Third Army Corps that specializes in the combat use of unmanned ground vehicles, uses a laptop connected to a ground drone.
Thomas Peter/REUTERS
A Ukrainian corps has been using ground and aerial drones for sapping missions on the front lines.
One commander said visibility plays a key role in when these drones are deployed.
His unit is also using bomber drones to disperse up to 40 anti-personnel mines per sortie.
In northern Donetsk, Ukraine's Third Army Corps has been using a network of aerial and ground drones to deploy and clear minefields while attacking Russian lines.
These missions are part of its recent high-profile offensive, Operation Vivaldi, which it's said has seized about 50 square miles around the city of Lyman so far.
The corps has said that ground drones, capable of carrying heavy payloads and operating in more dangerous areas, are dramatically cutting the time for mine-laying. A single drone can deploy a minefield over 1,300 feet deep in two days, while a human crew would have taken two weeks.
A commander of the corps' 96th Support Battalion, Serhii Tischenko, told Business Insider how the operation works, including how troops prefer to split sapper and attack operations by time of day.
"It is definitely better to mine at night, because the enemy cannot see our UGVs," said Tischenko, whose battalion supports the 125th Separate Heavy Mechanized Brigade and the 60th Mechanized Brigade.
Ground drones, or uncrewed ground vehicles, are most commonly tracked or wheeled platforms, designed to carry up to 400 kg, or about 880 pounds.
They're quiet on the battlefield, Tischenko said, so it's common for the Third Army Corps to clear mines at night, then launch assaults in the day.
"It is more practical to carry out assault operations during the day because the enemy uses a lot of FPV drones, and during daylight we can detect them more easily," he added.
Ground drones play a critical role here, Tischenko said, because an assault soldier seeing one ahead of them provides clarity and confidence that the path is clear.
"They can keep moving forward without constantly worrying about being seriously injured by a mine. This is extremely important during an assault," Tischenko said.
The 96th also uses drones for mining operations, he said, which primarily help slow Russian advances and give the Ukrainians time to respond.
Aside from ground drones, Tischenko said his unit has also been deploying heavy aerial bombers — typically hexacopters that can carry up to 40 kg — to lay dozens of mines at a time.
"A single heavy bomber can drop up to 40 anti-personnel mines over a specific area," Tischenko said.
A typical night could see a heavy bomber crew running five sorties at distances of up to 10 km, or just over six miles, the commander added. On average, a mining crew in his battalion could conduct about 130 sorties a month, he said.
Smaller aerial drones can also drop explosive charges to clear Russian minefields, Tischenko said.
"And this produced significant results. We disrupted and demoralized the enemy and their assault groups," said Tischenko, who added that his unit conducted mining missions along about 18 miles of the front lines during Operation Vivaldi.
Ukraine has spent the last year and a half heavily promoting the use of uncrewed ground vehicles, which its officials often call "robots," as a way to minimize human exposure to the most dangerous frontline roles.
Unlike soldiers, ground drones don't tire or lose concentration, making them perfect for meticulous sapping work, Tischenko added.
More importantly, they can be repaired when damaged or destroyed, he said.
"A human life, once lost, cannot be restored. We would rather spend money on UGVs than risk the lives of our soldiers," said the commander.
Some early adopters of Instinct are using AI agents to manage common tasks in a relationship, like shared to-do lists and vacation itineraries. It's had mixed results.
Getty Images; BI
Instinct's new "Trusted Person" allows users to connect their AI agents and tag-team tasks.
Some couples use it for shared to-dos or help planning surprise date nights.
While it cuts down on emotional labor, a therapist says not so fast: You still have to put work in.
AI agents aren't just sneaking into your workplace anymore. Soon, they might be making regular appearances in your relationship.
Since the launch of Instinct, an invite-only AI assistant that went viral among Silicon Valley insiders in August, early adopters have been using it to offload tasks like booking hotels and scheduling appointments.
Then, on September 9, Noah Shinn, the company's 23-year-old founder, announced Instinct's new "Trusted Person" feature: You could now have your Instinct agent directly communicate with another person's Instinct agent to reduce the amount of "back-and-forth" in a relationship, such as coordinating plans and organizing vacations.
Introducing our Trusted Person network powered by our new Instinct-to-Instinct communication protocol. Your Instinct can now talk to other Instincts to coordinate plans on your behalf.
Getting people together often involves a lot of back-and-forth: finding a time, working out… pic.twitter.com/LXkDpXGmea
So far, some users have found it helpful. "Instinct syncs with my wife's Instinct so we can actually finish a shared to-do list," Alex Borkin, a 36-year-old entrepreneur who uses AI across his portfolio of companies, said on X, noting that it was easier than manually setting up AI agents using Claude Code or Codex.
While Instinct may help eradicate the most annoying part of a partnership (figuring out dinner plans when you both keep saying "whatever you want!"), it can also open up the possibilities of new relationship drama. Some users have already reported some issues, ranging from privacy concerns to accidentally spoiled surprises.
Your emotional labor robot
Emotional labor is disproportionately felt by women in relationships, causing friction. AI agents are marketed as reducing some of those responsibilities.
janiecbros/Getty Images
The greatest appeal of Instinct and other AI agents is their ability to cut down on what Borkin calls "boring tasks" — like booking appointments or getting refunds.
"I close the loop," Borkin told Business Insider. "I get to go to bed and not think of 'Did I take care of jury duty?'"
Like other working parents, Borkin and his wife use Instinct's Trusted Person feature to smooth out their day-to-day life as a family with two kids, ages 3 and 20 months (and a third child on the way).
Most recently, the couple used Instinct agents to send them individual reminders to complete tasks for their daughter's third birthday party, such as ordering food.
"It's nice not having to remind myself of something I asked my wife to help with, and then remind her if she's taking care of it," Borkin said.
The more invisible work within a relationship — such as nudging a spouse to finish a task you asked them to do — requires cognitive and emotional labor. Some partners, more often women, can feel as though they bear the brunt of this work, leading to tension in the relationship.
Annie Wright, a licensed psychotherapist who works with Silicon Valley clientele, told Business Insider that this dynamic is so common in heterosexual relationships that, sometimes, even AI agents don't fully solve the problem.
"Even when you have an AI agent, who's putting in the prompt to begin with, who's architecting out the idea, who's remaining responsible for the oversight of that agent?" Wright said. More often than not, she said it's her female clients who are tasked with the burden.
Wright said it can also be tempting to use AI agents as a way to avoid enduring "weaponized incompetence" when a partner performs the task wrong — or just keeps ignoring you.
"An AI agent isn't going to bring that same relational scar tissue into the dynamic with you," she said. "It's very compelling. It provides a kind of shortcut, but it doesn't eliminate all the work for you."
Deep intimacy required
To book flights or fulfill shopping requests, AI agents need access to your credit card and all relevant login credentials.
showcake/Getty Images
Instinct fans have used it to do everything from booking a birthday cabin to canceling forgotten subscriptions, impressed by its ability to successfully follow through on semi-complex tasks. Users can send Instinct a simple text request to book an in-network doctor's appointment, and it seems to follow through effectively.
There's a catch, though: Instinct needs to know a lot about you to perform well. Depending on what you ask it to do, it might need access to your email account, calendar, or even credit card.
Users have reported troubling incidents, including privacy and security concerns. Some users have also reported hallucinations and what appeared to be leaks of strangers' data.
Out of caution, Borkin said he only linked Instinct to his retailer accounts (like Amazon and Costco) without directly giving it his credit card. He also uses a throwaway email account for Instinct to avoid the risk of any sensitive information being breached.
Naturally, AI agent mishaps can cause new issues in a relationship. Wright said the biggest risk is one person in the relationship now feeling responsible for checking that the AI agent properly followed through on instructions.
"One partner thinks they've handed off a task while the other partner still feels responsible for making sure it happens — now you've got a new argument," she said. "Technology can become another place where you're disagreeing about who's responsible."
When agents remove agency
Wright said AI agents can mirror 1950s secretaries, buying anniversary gifts for wives.
George Marks/Getty Images
Sometimes, Instinct's glitches can be more innocuous — even entertaining. Luba Yudasina, an angel investor, said she asked her Instinct to help her plan a surprise for her boyfriend, according to her post on X. She wanted it to ask him when he was free and what kinds of dates he would like.
Instead, it blabbed too much.
Told my Instinct to reach out to my bf's Instict to plan a surprise.
On a bigger scale, using Instinct raises questions about the merits of smoothing out every crease in a relationship. If that idyllic proposal was entirely dreamed up and coordinated by an AI agent, is it as romantic? If Instinct handles all the household logistics and plans all the date nights because your husband can't be bothered to, do you feel as seen in your marriage?
Wright said AI agents could almost be stand-ins for 1950s secretaries tasked with buying birthday gifts for their bosses' wives. "Getting help expressing your care versus outsourcing the attention that makes the gesture meaningful — that's a really important distinction to draw," she said.
There's a high cost to cutting out any source of conflict in a relationship: the ability to grow together. One satirical X post by Alex Cohen, the cofounder and CEO of the AI agent platform Hello Patient, summed it up best: Who's to stop the AI agents from absorbing each partner's passive-aggressive jabs, the humans behind the screens becoming empty husks occupying a living room together?
My wife and I no longer talk to each other, instead our AI agents communicate on our behalf.
It illustrates Wright's biggest concern: skirting over real relationship issues for the sake of expediency.
"If we're already arguing about how much time we spend with your family, having software arrange another visit hasn't really settled anything," she said. "It's just made a decision before we reached an agreement and really done the hard relational work to arrive there."
For some couples, there's work that even the top AI agents aren't cut out for. Michael Stothard, a partner at Firstminute Capital in the UK who uses Instinct with his wife, shared on LinkedIn that he wanted to branch out from using it for administrative tasks alone.
"Michael asks his Instinct to pass you a message: 'I love you,'" his agent said.
