A San Francisco bike shop owner is speaking out against AI agents calling local businesses, warning that the technology could undermine the personal relationships at the heart of his work.
Kash, who uses a single name, owns Warm Planet Bikes in the Tenderloin. "We've had enough of this b*******," he told The San Francisco Standard.
Here's what to know
During San Francisco's Tech Week in early October, startup Voygr placed 848 AI-generated calls to local businesses to test its software and gather information, according to The San Francisco Standard. Warm Planet Bikes was among the businesses on its call list.
The agents asked small businesses questions ranging from the price of a salon's cheapest haircut to whether a dental office accepted new patients. Voygr found that about one-third of respondents kept talking once the caller disclosed it was AI, while 1 in 25 businesses was already using AI to handle incoming calls, according to The Standard.
Voygr co-founders Vlad Baskakov and Yarik Markov found that veterinary and dental offices were most likely to continue the conversation. Dry cleaners and bars, meanwhile, were most likely to end the call.
Kash found the entire process invasive and potentially a massive waste of time for busy small businesses. Additionally, the true motives behind those deploying the AI agents have not always been clear.
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"It smacks of trying to get between business and the customer," Kash said, per The Standard.
More background
Colleen Booth oversees operations for the Lazy Bear Restaurant Group and said that, to her knowledge, no AI agent had successfully booked a reservation at any of its three restaurants: Lazy Bear, True Laurel, or JouJou.
Booth said the agents have struggled with payments, repeated themselves, misunderstood employee responses, or requested impossible-to-get last-minute reservations.
Booth worried that these artificial conversations will take employees away from customers who need their help, according to The Standard. For small businesses already operating with limited resources, those interruptions can be particularly burdensome.
Ginger Siegel, Mastercard's North American small and midsize business lead, said roughly 96% of small businesses have annual revenue below $1 million, according to The San Francisco Standard. For such small operations, taking time away from core functions to speak to AI agents can be a sizable burden.
The situation also raised familiar questions about the societal and environmental costs of AI systems, which depend on controversial data centers that consume large amounts of electricity and water. While AI could help optimize clean-energy systems, running the technology also consumes substantial resources.
Additionally, the growing prevalence of data centers — and their massive energy consumption — has been a significant factor in rising electricity costs across the U.S. These higher energy costs have affected businesses and residential households alike.
What's being done?
According to Voygr, the startup has been building what it says will be an alternative to Google Maps, with more information about local businesses without business owners having to submit it directly to the platform. The calling experiment tested the startup's AI-driven approach to gathering data, though most respondents stopped talking after learning they were speaking to AI.
Meanwhile, AI companies have pitched the software to Booth to answer her restaurants' phones. One such company booked a large party as part of its sales effort, but Booth remained hesitant about replacing human service with automated conversations.
Jason Ford, an employee at electric-bike retailer The New Wheel and a former tech worker, builds software tools for the shop. He described incoming AI agents as responsive, "like a good student," per The Standard.
Still, Ford voiced a desire for greater transparency, such as the AI-agent callers identifying which company created them.
On the more skeptical side, Kash has questioned whether an automated search for the lowest price can replace a person-to-person conversation about what a customer actually needs.
"When you are trying to work through a personal project, you can't just send out your bot to see who will come back with the lowest price," he said, according to The Standard.
Where can I learn more?
Kash hasn't been the only business owner pushing back on AI. The following stories cover other examples of businesses resisting the technology, customer frustrations with automated services, and a library's effort to remove AI features.
• A Florida pizza shop publicly rejected AI after bot replies compounded its Instagram hacking ordeal.
• Bar staff warned AI social media posts could alienate customers, but their boss disagreed.
• In Sydney, McDonald's tested an AI drive-thru, though some customers wanted human service instead.
• Tavus said nearly half its users mistook its AI for a human.
• A small New York library's "Bye Bye AI" event to remove AI features went viral.
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