Someone Noticed

Lawmakerssaying that Delta Airlines' use of AI to price gouge should be made illegal. 

How about you do this for Uber and Lyft, whose apps got caught raising prices on riders when their cell phone batteries were low, because they knew that they were desperate. 

One week after Delta announced it is expanding a test using artificial intelligence to charge different prices based on customers' personal data—which critics fear could end cheap flights forever—Democratic lawmakers have moved to ban what they consider predatory surveillance pricing.

In a press release, Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) announced the Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act. The law directly bans companies from using "surveillance-based" price or wage setting to increase their profit margins.

If passed, the law would allow anyone to sue companies found unfairly using AI, lawmakers explained in what's called a "one-sheet." That could mean charging customers higher prices—based on "how desperate a customer is for a product and the maximum amount a customer is willing to pay"—or paying employees lower wages—based on "their financial status, personal associations, and demographics."

It's more than that.  They can determine who has to get to a funeral of a family member, and jack up the prices using online information.

Sound creepy enough for you yet.

Tlaib called companies using AI to "exploit" workers in "desperate" situations "appalling," with the one-sheet specifically shaming delivery services that lower drivers' wages based on their "pattern of taking orders" and health care companies that base nurses' pay on "an algorithmically-manipulated-bidding war, not the tasks they perform." 

Delta's counter argument is that this is a well established business practice, by which they mean, "Uber has been doing this sh%$ for years."

As I noted just yesterday, this is why the Gypsy cab companies are busy enshittifying themselves into oblivion right now.

I am not surprised that Delta did this first, for as John Mulaney obsurved:

I'll book a ticket on some garbage airline---
You know, I don't wanna name an actual airline so let's just make one up; let's call it "Delta Airlines." 

We really need to make jailing senior corporate executives great again.