Rory Sutherland

It's now clear-cut because they can say, ooh, it's a bit cheaper than the other one, and it's got a conservatory.

There's contrast.

So there's a kind of decoy effect, a bit like the famous economist experiment with the decoy effect.

So, you know, one of my interesting questions is, you know, what interface will AI deploy to help us make choices?

And will it make the mistake that you could very easily make?

If you think about it, nobody clicks the I'm feeling lucky button on Google.

think it's still there isn't it it's been there for years and they've removed it and found that it slightly reduces the appeal but the number of people who actually click it i i'm feeling lucky take me straight to a single page is vanishingly small people want to choose between you know effectively above the fold options

And so, you know, I'm just intrigued because it's very, very easy, I think, for people with an economic or tech background to make assumptions about what people are trying to do and how they choose and that we're, you know, utility maximizers and all this kind of thing, only really to be completely wrong.

Do you think we're looking for efficiency in the wrong place?

We usually do, in the sense that when you pursue efficiency, there are quite a few problems.

But when you pursue efficiency...

Generally, you start looking at numerical or mechanical factors.

And of course, in the process, you disregard psychological factors where the greater gains may be found.

And so you focus too heavily on cost reduction and too little on value creation.

I mean, one of the greatest forms of efficiency, by the way, is employing a human being who's really, really nice.

Now, this is complete anathema to people in tech who love to define business processes so as to make them susceptible to automation.

You know, person X does this.

We will take that function.

We will replace it with algorithm Y.

And it's a very beguiling message because it usually comes with cost savings attached.