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.”

  • bassomitron@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    Sooo… If you’re broke, does it give you low prices vs someone who is rich?

    Kidding, kidding. We all know they’re going to be fucking the lower and middle income brackets hard as hell with this. As if we weren’t already being milked dry, now they want to milk the very blood out of us.

    My question is: What the fuck is the endgame? This shit isn’t sustainable. Used to be that most companies were content with steady profits. The last 40+ years has shown us that simply generating a profit isn’t enough, the profits must be constantly going even higher every quarter. But again, this isn’t realistic or sustainable. So why the fuck has the entire world agreed to condone and enable this pathway that is ultimately doomed?

    • ToastedRavioli@midwest.social
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      3 months ago

      I was thinking the same thing, considering that I have less money to pay to fly my price should be lower, no? But the article ends on this note:

      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.

      So basically the opposite of what it should be. I wouldnt mind individualized pricing if it meant Delta was robinhooding with their pricing model, but instead they are effectively using their pricing model to force out poorer consumers. Which makes sense from their perspective I suppose considering they can upsell more shit to people with more money.

      As someone who lives in a top-wealth zipcode (as a working class person) I assume by next year this means I will no longer be able to afford to fly out of town…

      Its starting to make sense why the GOP was working to ban regulation on AI use. This shit is blatantly unethical

      • HasturInYellow@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        There is no fucking way that that is sustained simply due to the fact that people would BURN THIS PLACE DOWN if companies start doing shit like that. No one has money as it is. I’m not convinced we’re not going to burn it down as it is.

        These elites has truly lost the plot and are going so far down the comic book villain lane, they’re going to start dying like comic book villains. Dunked in acid, frozen solid, crushed by their exploding submarine, eaten by their own rabid experiments… Who knows, but I’m excited to find out.

        • TJA!@sh.itjust.works
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          3 months ago

          People will not do anything. They might complain on Lemmy/Reddit/Facebook and then go watch another tiktok

        • Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 months ago

          Uber started this shit years ago. If you’re desperate, they screw you. You’re well off, they screw you. You’re in the middle of nowhere, they screw you. There’s a holiday/event, they screw you. You’re one of their drivers, they screw you daily.

          I can’t recall if they ever got sued over it, but they’re still here.

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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          3 months ago

          Look around, dum dum. You see any shit burning to the ground? You think manipulating airline pricing is gonna do it?

          • HasturInYellow@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            This isn’t about fucking flight prices. This is a testing ground. You think it’s going to remain relegated to airlines? If this works out for delta, you’ll see this in grocery stores, in all entertainment, any subscriptions, every single transaction will be reduced to: what is the most you Are physically able to pay currently?

      • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 months ago

        worst deals given to the poorest people, who are least likely to have other options

        (emphasys mine)

        Financially, giving the higher price to those who have fewer options is exactly “what it should be” so it makes sense that a pattern finding algorithm trained to find patterns in user data that indicate they are likely to agree to higher prices, produces such a result.

        It’s Ethically and Morally that this is the very opposite of “what it should be”.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      This is musical chairs, and everyone involved is desperately hoping that they won’t be one of the ones left without a seat when the music stops. Anybody with a plural number of brain cells must know deep down inside that infinite growth is literally impossible, but they all think they’ll be smart enough to cash out before it all collapses.

      There’s a problem with that, though: Money has a notoriously poor nutritional value.