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.”
So its gonna run a soft credit check on you and then give you a price?
You don’t even need AI for that, and it’d be waaaaay cheaper to implement.
…
A Delta spokesperson told Fortune the airline “has zero tolerance for discrimination. Our fares are publicly filed and based solely on trip-related factors like advance purchase and cabin class, and we maintain strict safeguards to ensure compliance with federal law.”
This is horseshit.
In Economics, the entire concept of setting specific prices for specific market demographics is literally called ‘price discrimination.’
www.investopedia.com/…/price_discrimination.asp
Advance purchase and different seating classes literally are price discrimination, third degree.
Frequent flyer discounts would be second degree.
Overall adjusting seat costs per flight based on how full or empty that flight is, is first degree price discrimination.
…
This is like a company that sells chickens saying ‘we don’t sell chickens.’
This is just gobsmackingly false, so blatantly so that it is actually funny.
Airlines entire fucking business models are based on inventing new forms and strategies of price discrimination.
…
What this asshat is saying is only even interpretable as true if what he means is ‘we don’t directly factor sexuality, age, disability, ethnicity, legally protected classes into our pricing model.’
They of course do this indirectly by pulling a whole bunch of your meta data and then accurately inferring those things, and then discriminating against you based on that.
It is laughably easy to get around US discrimination laws in this way, megacorps have been regularly doing this for at least decade now, both when it comes to you as a consumer, and you as a potential employee or renter.
bassomitron@lemmy.world 5 weeks 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 5 weeks 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:
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…
HasturInYellow@lemmy.world 5 weeks 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.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
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 maximize profit produces such a result.
It’s Ethically and Morally that this is the very opposite of “what it should be”.
eleitl@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
The endgame is that nobody has money and companies go bankrupt. The end.
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
The most perfected way to live our lives. That’s why aliens visit us you know… to study our highly advanced economic system. There is no rival in the universe. Perfection. /$
Krauerking@lemy.lol 5 weeks ago
The wealthy have more time to shop around and more money to choose another option so companies think they need to provide extra incentives to get them which means better treatment and prices and etcetera.
The poor? Ehh gouge for all they are worth and hope they die so you don’t have to hear them complain.
Which is insane cause that means the poor are the profit margins allowing for the deals of the wealthy.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
The higher a percentage of your income is the price of something, the more reason there is to allocate time to find the best price - if something costs you an amount which you earn in 5 minutes, it’s not really worth it to spend time looking for the better price, if it costs 2 and amount which you earn in 2 months, it’s definitelly worth to spend many hours looking around.
Granted, as you say, many don’t have the time to do this, and in my experience most people don’t really make the mental connection between an amount they’re considering spending and how long do they have to work to earn it hence don’t really look around enough when it’s economically logical to do it.
That said, for the reason I gave above, the rich don’t really care about things that “just” cost a couple thousand of dollars, which is why they casually just rent a private jet for a trip - there’s a whole industry for that - or even own one and employ a pilot for it fulltime.
CalipherJones@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
The endgame is stuff as much money into one’s own pocket.
UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 5 weeks ago
The money is gonna be monopoly bills soon at this rate.
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 5 weeks 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.