Willingness to Delegate Subscriptions to AI Agents

Thanks for taking part! We're exploring how comfortable people are letting an AI agent handle things like renewing subscriptions or reordering household items on their own. There are no right answers — about 5 minutes.

In the last 3 months, which of these have you done yourself (not through an AI agent)?

• Renewed or canceled a subscription
• Switched a subscription plan or provider to save money
• Reordered a household item (groceries, supplies, etc.)
• Negotiated a price or asked for a discount
• None of these

Overall, how comfortable would you be letting an AI agent manage your subscriptions and reorders without asking you each time?

How comfortable are you with an AI agent handling each of these on its own?

Which of these AI agent capabilities matter most to you, and which matter least?

• Auto-renewing subscriptions before they lapse
• Automatically canceling unused subscriptions
• Switching you to a better price or plan
• Pausing or resuming a subscription for you
• Adjusting order quantity based on your usage
• Alerting you before any charge over a set amount
• Negotiating price with the provider
• Keeping a running log of every action taken

Rank these safeguards by how essential each one is before you'd trust an AI agent with your subscriptions.

1. A hard spending cap it can never exceed
2. Advance notice before any charge or cancellation
3. An easy one-tap way to undo any action
4. Required approval for anything over a set amount
5. A full activity log you can review anytime

You have 100 points to distribute across these concerns based on how much each one worries you about AI-managed subscriptions.

• Getting charged for something I didn't want
• Losing control or visibility over my accounts
• The AI making an error I don't catch in time
• My payment or personal data being shared unnecessarily
• It being hard to reverse an action once it's done

Which level of oversight would you want over an AI agent managing your subscriptions?

• Fully autonomous — it acts and just tells me afterward
• It notifies me first, then acts unless I stop it
• It asks my permission every single time
• I wouldn't let an AI agent manage this at all

How likely are you to try an AI agent for managing subscriptions or reorders in the next 6 months?

Explore why the respondent's comfort level differs across task types (renewing vs. canceling vs. negotiating vs. reordering) — anchor on their rating-scale answers and ask what specifically feels riskier about the lower-rated tasks. If they chose 'I wouldn't let an AI agent manage this at all,' find out what single change (a safeguard, a track record, a specific use case) would move them off that position. If they rated overall comfort high, probe for a concrete scenario where they'd still want to step back in.

What is your age range?

• Under 25
• 25-34
• 35-44
• 45-54
• 55-64
• 65 or older
• Prefer not to say

Which best describes your household income?

• Under $50,000
• $50,000-$99,999
• $100,000-$149,999
• $150,000 or more
• Prefer not to say

That's everything — thank you! Your responses will feed into research on how people want AI agents to handle everyday purchases, helping shape what oversight and safeguards get built in.