Get the Ricochet app

Ricochet will work fine in a browser on your mobile devices, but for the best experience please download our app.

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

Become a member.

Tired of the toxicity of social media? Why not join Ricochet for just $5/month? Think of it as an online bar. Come in, have a drink, hang out, say whatever you want. But don’t badger, bully, or berate the other drinkers. That's our only rule.

S15 EP171: Hour 3 - Meta’s Muse AI Agent Spooks Amazon

Episode length: 37m

Subscribe to The Erick Erickson ShowSubscribe

Erick explains why Meta's new AI agent Muse, the number one app in the Apple App Store, has Amazon blocking it and Wall Street dumping bank, insurer, telecom, and travel stocks, and why he is fine with AI agents canceling unused subscriptions and hunting down better deals even as a Financial Times study finds ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, and Grok get financial questions wrong most of the time. Then, with the 10 year Treasury yield at a 19 year high, Erick plays Rand Paul on CNBC blaming both parties for the national debt, warns of stagflation and a bipartisan fiscal cliff Mitch McConnell predicted, and asks listeners to pray for Ben Sasse after his liver surgery.

  • Meta's Muse AI agent: Amazon blocks it from shopping, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Allstate, and Charles Schwab shares slide, and Goldman Sachs flags telecom, insurance, and utilities as "consumer inertia" stocks at risk
  • AI agents versus Main Street retail: Amazon's ad business, Walmart, Barnes and Noble, Blick, and why Erick misses browsing a real store, plus Apple's new Siri agent on the iPhone
  • Financial Times study: AI chatbots give wrong answers to money and tax questions 57 percent of the time, with Claude Opus 5 the best performer at about 60 percent
  • Rand Paul on CNBC: warfare and welfare spending, deficits causing inflation and the affordability crisis, tariffs, the 10 year Treasury yield, entitlement reform, Social Security and Medicare, and Mitch McConnell's warning that both parties will go off the cliff together
  • The White House denies a diesel export ban as Chris Wright seeks voluntary help from the oil industry, and Erick shares an update on former Senator Ben Sasse's surgery and fight with pancreatic cancer
Host:
Erick Erickson