Companies using AI to overcharge you for...everything

Watch Companies using AI to overcharge you for...everything - New York Post on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00A follow-up on that rage-inducing story from earlier this week about Instacart

00:05charging different people different prices for the same item at the same store on the same

00:09day. Good news and bad news. The good news. The group behind the report that revealed the practice

00:16says that some members of Congress have already reached out to them and are promising to crack

00:20down on AI-driven pricing. The bad news? The post dug into the tech and this practice is much more

00:27widespread than you'd think. We all know that Uber and Lyft love to gouge us to the high heavens when

00:35it rains or snows or the weather is miserable. One report from the group Consumer Watchdog even said

00:41they can charge more when they know our phone battery is low and we're running out of options,

00:46which is insane, though the rideshare companies deny that one. Then there are retailers like

00:52Whole Foods, Kroger, and soon Walmart that have installed electronic price tags where employees

00:57can hike the price of a product in mere minutes based on God only knows. A report by the Las Vegas

01:03Review Journal found that kiosks inside major casinos can do the same thing. And when a cashier was asked

01:10about it, they said, quote, the computer makes the price, not us. Well, not comforting. One expert the

01:16post spoke to noted that retailers are working with roughly two decades of our personal data mined from

01:22social media. And we're used to targeted ads. So it doesn't seem like a big jump to leverage that same data

01:30to price gouge us.