AI Surveillance Pricing: “One of the Biggest Scams ever”

   There are several dark sides to all the data centers being built currently. An obvious one is surveillance everywhere. With cameras and other data sources linked in real time, privacy will soon be gone. Another more insidious and irritating application will be the explosion of dynamic pricing. 

   Surprisingly, fix prices are a modern invention. Go to any "developing" country and haggling is the norm. Sometimes it's part of the culture. Not arguing about the price in most Arabic countries is almost an insult since the initial asked price is easily twice the real price of the goods. Elsewhere, almost everywhere, street markets have no price although everyone knows the right price.       

   Fix prices were actually "invented" or rather implemented by department stores and catalog companies around the end of the 19th Century which immediately gave them a huge advantage on their competitors and led to their meteoric rise. So much so that in the 20th Century, everybody else ended up obliged to apply fix prices too in order to stay competitive. Then later still fix prices became the rule, an finally in many countries the law. 

   But it is one thing to discuss the price with a merchant and quite another thing when a company online will show you a certain price based on the data they have about you which can be quite deep these days. The more active you are on the Internet, the better companies can segment your profile and understand how much you are ready to pay.  

   Is this fair? Companies will argue that the data is anonymous and therefore show no prejudice. This was most certainly true 20 years ago when the amount of data was indeed quite limited. Nowadays, data points can be so numerous that in reality, vendors end up knowing who you are and can therefore as in the example of the video double the price of a plane ticket if they know you are desperate and need to go to a funeral. In such case the imbalance of information coupled with your inability to discuss the price or buy elsewhere makes a transaction extremely unfair. Now imagine dynamic pricing changing prices in real time in the store (let's not talk about the Internet where it is so much easier.) A price for you, a different one for me. A lower price for rainy days a higher one for sunny days. 9pm, plus 20%. Poor sales? -20%. Express counter? Plus 30%, Disney-like. Wants to see the doctor immediately in a high-end neighborhood? Sure. Price x3! In fact the sky is the limit. Some of these ideas are "fair", others discriminatory. What is certain is that under pressure, most companies will try to optimize their margin and where competition is gone, they will have a field day to do so and technology will make it so much easier. 

   PS: I didn't mention AI specifically because the article would be 3 pages long and very irritating. There is so much you can do with AI such as manipulating people's perception or psychology. Eventually, we will all need our own AI agent in order to do our shopping. But that's another article for later.        

AI Surveillance Pricing: “One of the Biggest Scams in American History”