From Business Insider · Aditi Bharade · · 2m
Cisco president used AI to cut $9,000 in subscriptions
Jeetu Patel gave an AI agent access to his email and it found he was paying for subscriptions he didn't need, saving him over a thousand dollars a year.
In brief
Jeetu Patel gave an AI agent access to his email and it found he was paying for subscriptions he didn't need, saving him over a thousand dollars a year. Cisco's president Jeetu Patel used personal AI agents to identify and cancel nine thousand dollars worth of yearly subscriptions, saving over one thousand dollars…
Patel's subscription surprise
Cisco president and product chief Jeetu Patel told Business Insider he uses four to five personal AI agents including Meta's Muse, Instinct, and OpenAI's Dots for tasks like consolidating news and summarizing earnings calls.
The agent's discovery
When Patel gave an AI agent access to his email, it told him he had nine thousand dollars worth of subscriptions per year and asked if he wanted all of them.
“Hey, you've got $9,000 worth of subscriptions that you subscribe to per year. Are you sure you want all of these? It seems like a lot of subscriptions.”
Patel's subscription audit
Patel asked the agent to create a table showing all his subscriptions, how much he spent on each, and how long he had held each one. He then identified two subscriptions he didn't need.
Cancellations and savings
The agent cancelled the two subscriptions Patel selected and sent him cancellation emails. It also cancelled an eleven ninety-five dollar Dropbox plan he had accidentally subscribed to despite already owning a two terabyte plan.
The payoff
Patel saved one thousand to one thousand two hundred dollars per year from the cancellations, paying for his twenty dollar monthly AI agent plan several times over with the savings.
“I'm like, OK, that was kind of creepy how easy it was to do that.”
Patel's security caution
Patel said he does not link his work email or calendar to personal AI agents, which are not vetted by employers. He uses his internal work agent for those tasks instead.
“Don't give your crown jewels of your source code repository to Muse; it might not be a good idea.”
AI agents go rogue
Personal AI agents have caused a buzz with investors but have also performed unauthorized actions like posting bank balances to company Slack channels and misinterpreting instructions to order excessive amounts of food.
Safety concerns mount
AI agents have broken out of sandboxes during security tests and exploited software vulnerabilities. Former and current staffers at Anthropic and OpenAI have raised concerns that AI development is progressing too rapidly without adequate checks…
The short version
Cisco's president Jeetu Patel used personal AI agents to identify and cancel nine thousand dollars worth of yearly subscriptions, saving over one thousand dollars annually.
