Hi Everyone,
I wanted to share something that Iโm hoping will help me when it comes to making better choices about what I buy. While this isn't about promoting European products in the first instance, it's designed to help me figure out which brands I currently use, but may need to avoid, so I can find better alternatives that are local, European, allied countries, or even values-led US brands if no other option exists.
Here's what I did:
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Got the idea from Reddit: I saw a post on Reddit with a visual of all the brands owned by big multinational companies. Really helpful to see the visual but there were literally thousands, and I wanted a text list I could feed into an AI chat as a reference document.
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Did Some Research: I looked up these multinational companies on Wikipedia which seemed to have a relatively updated list of subsidiary brands, focusing on the parent companies I wanted to steer clear of, like PepsiCo, Nestle etc.
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Cleaned Up the List: I used AI tool to organise everything into a neat PDF.
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Made It Easy to Use for me with AI: I added the PDF to a chat in Mistral so I can quickly check any products I see in my fridge or cupboard. The AI helps me spot any brands I should avoid. I can also just list the brands off using voice for ease/speed but accuracy suffers a bit. I may also be able to just take a picture but havenโt tried that yet.
The image is the output.
Anybody with access to a simple list and an LLM could do this. Been inspired by the excellent websites and resources others have made and posted here, which I will use to find alternatives - but I first needed to know where the problems were!
Im hoping this will make it easier to buy stuff that aligns with my values. Hope this makes sense and helps someone else too!
Edit1: added link to source PDF containing list of companies and their brands. You can download this and search manually to avoid any use of AI. https://files.catbox.moe/jtmcb5.pdf
The sentiment is great, but I really wish people would stop using AI for everything.
No matter your opinion about AI in general, which I'll admit, I'm not a fan of, there is a true environmental cost associated with it, and using it for such trivial tasks is not such a great idea.
Edit: wording and format
While I agree the environmental impact of LLM is concerning, I disagree that this is a poor use for it.
It's pretty much the best case scenario for using an LLM. There are so many companies within companies that if you're trying to avoid an umbrella brand an LLM can quickly parse through that data and provide a response. Whereas you may take 5 minutes trying to find an answer and if you're grocery shopping that could add up very quickly.
And this is trivial for an LLM to do and would use barely any compute. As always, companies that are using AI to generate images, replace staff and moderate their websites that are going to be creating 99% of the environment damage by AI. We shouldn't be going after individuals who are using it to make their day-to-day easier especially if they're using it to hurt monopolies.
Can't you just search the pdf instead
Are you a bot? You literally replied to a comment mentioning that umbrella corps are hard to find and requires a few minutes of searching, whereas an LLM already knows it.
I mean that's true, but in this case, the OP downloaded a pdf with all the brands and umbrellas they wanted to avoid and gave it to the LLM.
I agree that an AI could be more intuitive and easy to use.
My point i guess is this is not something an AI just solves on its own and that you couldn't solve without an AI
Sure, the list had them already - but that doesn't change the fact that more can be added manually, and some companies could split or buy others - in which case this info will be what the LLM brings to the table.
You usually always start with a boilerplate and add into that. This is actually one of the few uses I really like.