Shopping by algorithm: How agentic AI deploys human heuristics as a surrogate consumer

arXiv:2609.28372 · econ.GN, cs.AI, q-fin.EC · Submitted 2026-09-23 · Read on arXiv

econ.GN, cs.AI, q-fin.EC

Submitted: 2026-09-23

Updated: 2026-09-23

Terminology

• Benchmark — 30× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• AI Agents — 29× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Trace — 25× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Index of Moderated Mediation — 14× in this paper
• Reasoning Traces — 10× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Generative AI — 8× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Hallucination — 8× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Accuracy — 7× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Large Language Models (LLMs) — 5× in this paper · explained in 6 episodes
• Linear Probability Model — 5× in this paper
• Agentic AI — 4× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Expected Value of Information — 4× in this paper
• Objective Function — 4× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Benchmarking — 3× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Consistency — 3× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Robustness — 3× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Action Space — 2× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Actor — 2× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Bayesian Inference — 2× in this paper · explained in 5 episodes
• Quantization — 2× in this paper · explained in 12 episodes
• Variance Inflation Factor — 2× in this paper
• Verification — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Activation Patching — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Adaptation — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Additive Decomposition — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Admissibility — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Agentic System — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Bayesian Framework — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Decoupling — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Fidelity — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Foundation Model — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Interpretability — 1× in this paper · explained in 15 episodes
• Open Science Framework — 1× in this paper
• Partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP) — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Reinforcement Learning — 1× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Resource Constraints — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Thinking mode — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

Sources

• The Curious Case of Neural Text Degeneration
• The Bias is in the Details: An Assessment of Cognitive Bias in LLMs
• Does Rank Still Matter? Position Bias When AI Agents Shop on Our Behalf
• Whom Do AI Agents Work For? Role Assignment Induces Sponsorship Bias in LLM Recommenders
• Every Token Counts: Exact Likert-Scale Distributions for Measuring LLM Attitudes and Biases

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