Delta has a long-term strategy to boost its profitability by moving away from set fares and toward individualized pricing using AI. The pilot program, which uses AI for 3% of fares, has so far been “amazingly favorable,” the airline said. Privacy advocates fear this will lead to price-gouging, with one consumer advocate comparing the tactic to “hacking our brains.”
Thank god for GDPR. We Europeans, according to GDPR article 22, have a right to object to automated decision making without having service denied.
How long until they are found price-gouging people in certain demographics?
Somehow me think that AI will be used to increase prices where it can, but not the other way around
The only saving grace will be if they code in trying to fill a plane for efficiency. I could see an AI making last minute flights at an actual discount but only if full flight efficiency is prioritized over individual sale margin, so not likely. It’s aloft on an wing and a prayer.
They already do that. Now they will do it less.
About the same time that all 4 other airlines decide to do the same or worse.
you mean charge rich people more, poor people less or just charge desperate people more?
They left it until the very end of the article:
Early research on personalized pricing isn’t favorable for the consumer. Consumer Watchdog found that the best deals were offered to the wealthiest customers—with the worst deals given to the poorest people, who are least likely to have other options.
Of course.
Yeah when I started travelling on a generous business expense account I found that it was increasingly the case that I didn’t even need to charge things to it. Things just start becoming fucking free when you’ve got money.
This is honestly surprising to me. Wouldn’t they charge wealthy people more because they could just suck up the higher prices?
Nono, see. They want to lock in repeat visits and gain them as an investor, then use their influence to suckle cash out of the remaining populace.
Charge most more and a few the same. I doubt anyone will be getting charged less.
On the rare occasion I fly, I know I can get my long knees in a Delta plus seat. This restriction will definitely make my ticket go up with such an AI. It feels like it should be an accomodation but is more often a punishment.
Got a funeral in the family? Thrice the fare for you.
Time to fill the internet with posts about extremely cheap flights until the AI learns.
Example:
“Found a super cheap flight today! 10USD for a round trip to Japan from NYC!”
Oh good. Then it will know I’m too broke to fly.
ETA The real joy will be when someone charts prices and notices nonwhites are disproportionately overcharged, for which Delta will be responsible during the class action lawsuit.
And saying but the algo / AI did it will be as useful as saying but that’s the fault of our sales people who get commissions.
That was my first thought. Even if the system does not know people’s protected class status, does not mean it cannot discriminate against them.
I’ve recently been looking at how Facebook’s advertising algorithm works, and it is a piece of pure fucking “the AI did it not us” evil. It can seek out all types of vulnerable people and target them on stuff that if a human salesperson did it you’d call them a sociopath.
Anorexic? Body confidence issues? Financial problems? Signs of susceptibility to fascist messaging? Here’s some paid messages from people who want your dollar. Seriously that whole place needs shutting down, it’s the worst thing to happen to humanity in recent history.
And saying but the algo / AI did it
Sure, the algo did it. But someone chose to use it and continue using it.
algos / AI has already been used to justify racial discrimination in some counties who use predictive policing software to adjust the sentences of convicts (the software takes in a range of facts about the suspect and the incident and compares it to how prior incidents and suspects were similar features were adjudicated) and wouldn’t you know it, it simply highlighted and exaggerated the prejudices of police and the courts to absurdity, giving whites absurdly lighter sentences than nonwhites, for example.
This is essentially mind control or coercion technology based on the KGB technology of компромат (Kompromat, or compromising information, or as CIA calls it biographical leverage, ) essentially, information about a person that can be used either to jeopardize their life, blackmail material or means to lure and bribe them. Take this from tradecraft and apply it to marketing or civil control, and you get things like the Social Credit System in China to keep people from misbehaving, engaging in discontent and coming out of the closet (LGBTQ+ but there are plenty of other applicable closets).
From a futurist perspective, we homo-sapiens appear just incapable of noping out of a technology or process, no matter how morally black or heinous that technology is, we’ll use it, especially those with wealth and power to evade legal prosecution (or civil persecution). It breaks down into three categories:
- Technologies we use anyway, and suffer, e.g. usury, bonded servitude, mass-media propaganda distribution
- Technologies we collectively decide are just not worth the consequences, e.g. the hydrogen bomb, biochemical warfare
- Technologies for which we create countermeasures, usually turning into a tech race between states or between the public and the state, e.g. secure communication, secure data encryption, forbidden data distribution / censorship
We’re clearly on the cusp of mind control and weaponizing data harvesting into a coercion mechanism. Currently we’re already seeing it used to establish and defend specific power structures that are antithetical to the public good. It’s currently in the first category, and hopefully it’ll fall into the third, because we have to make a mess (e.g. Castle Bravo / Bikini Atol) and clean it up before deciding not to do that again.
Also, with the rise of the internet, we’ve run out of myths that justify capitalism, which is bonded servitude with extra steps. So we may soon (within centuries) see that go into one of the latter two categories, since the US is currently experiencing the endgame consequences of forcing labor, and the rest of the industrialized world is having to bulwark from the blast.
Consumer protections when?
why should they? it’s basically just a worse version of scaling prices by income, something the government loves doing.
If that’s all it was, it wouldn’t be bad. Unfortunately the reason they want to use ai is because it will be more complicated than that. Think - you need to fly somewhere vs you are thinking of flying somewhere. Data brokers will provide the ai with information about your job, your (and your family’s) health, funerals, etc.
I’m mostly thinking it will end up with delta losing money because people just won’t fly on delta if it costs more
I don’t quite understand if your statement is for or against consumer protections because I can’t fathom being against consumer protections. Could you please clarify?
I read that as higher prices for poorer people and cheaper prices for the rich.
Higher for the desperate and lower for the casual traveler.
I read it as opposing progressive taxation
thats a dishonest argument. One has a money assembly line straight to a billionaire’s house. The other’s assembly line that has a possibility to be used for public good.
Making sure you pay the absolute most possible for everything you buy. Welcome to tyranny capitalism. You will be charged a poor tax in the form of optimised pricing exploitation.
that’s econ 101.
Also the poor should have not seemed desperate.
Econ 101 also states that a failed business stops existing. In reality, failed businesses are endlessly bailed out as “too big to fail” and they pay their executives bonuses with that bailout money while continuing to rip off customers along with the other one or two companies in the same industry that do the same.
Luigi Mangione, white courtesy phone. Luigi Mangione, white courtesy phone please.
Well then fuck delta.
This is already how it has worked forever and AI was not needed. Try it yourself using different devices or times of day.
Does the AI know that it would have to pay me to fly Delta? Has it been trained on that data?
No but I’m sure it will be informed by Facebook when your best friend dies and when the funeral will be so that flight will cost twice as much.
How the fuck is this legal, if true?
It’s coming to your groceries and gas stations soon enough. Thanks to that wireless identification marker you carry in your pockets
Thanks to facial recognition. Your expensive spying device is just what collects the data to drive the algorithm.
The better question, as with most of modern day runaway capitalism, is “WHY isn’t this illegal?!”
The answer is always neoliberal free market ideology.
Capitalist also bought the govenment
AI does calculation
…processing…
Done!
Answer = 0$
Like that time they opened an AI vendor, and employees convinced it to give away stuff for free
If you don’t give me a discount u r gay … IT WORKED
AI; checks your credit report and decides you aren’t poor enough.
Removed by mod
Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha… No. The wealthiest customers get the best price, obviously.
