It's only "funny" if they don't get away with it.

Otherwise, it's just more depressing shit to throw on the pile

Sounds illegal or certainly should be. I'm confident nothing will be done to stop them though. Frightening given I believe this to be one of the least evil US airlines.

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.”

I have an Econ degree so my sense of (extremely dark) humor at this point is basically:

'billions must die, but actually'

Like I don't know what to do at the cuts to SNAP, Medicare, and Section 8, the resumption of student loan payments, the tariffs and destruction of our farming and construction industries via ICE raids... other than just laugh.

We're looking at Great Depression 2.0, a Holodomor-like, engineered-through-stupidity-and-malice famine.

I am at this point expecting millions, potentially tens of millions of Americans to die or be reduced to literal, actual debt slaves, or be incarcerated for crimes deriving from being forced into utter destitution... all that within this 4 year Trump term, unless there is an actual revolution.

Maybe if the Dems sweep the midterms (if Trump/the Reps even allow them to happen without massive ratfuckery) some of the bleeding can be stopped, but this situation is looking extremely fucking bad.

Oh god. I forgot about climate disasters.

Welp, alcoholism runs in my family, so, time to go look at cute puppies or something.

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?

Unfortunately the other big airlines in the country will do this soon after seeing its success.

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.

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

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

Delta has been by go-to airline for a long time. After reading this, I never want to fly with them again. Fuck them and anyone else who does this. If we collectively do nothing to put a stop to this practice now, it will be everywhere soon. I fucking hate this level of capitalism. Greedy fucks.

Guess people will be moving away from Delta then.

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 that'd be waaaaay cheaper to implement than AI.

...

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.'

Just a moment...

(www.investopedia.com)

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.

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.”

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.

This is so mind bogglingly insidious to actually roll out because Delta is a regional hub monopoly and major common carrier nationwide, they very well could be the market setters for this kind of AI-price scalping. Like, we’re just going to throw out the concept of serving ‘a market segment’ and trying to land on a certain price:offering ratio to capture market share via demand curve plotting, inherently leaving space both at the fringes and center for competition.

Now there is no competition. How does American or United price compare on routes or seat category, when there is no public price, but a personalized formula to maximize value extraction from each person? It’d be like trying to price compare at a close-envelope auction - you can’t.

There already is a lot of opacity in the buying process like phased seat releases creating artificial scarcity, but this is next level. I can absolutely see Delta holding back seats instead of selling them to ‘low value’ individuals who have very elastic demand, and releasing seats early/only for those who’ll pay the fees. Want peace of mind knowing you locked in your flight 6-9mo ahead? Pay up

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.”