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Comment by teeray | Hacker News Reader

and probably very illegal

Not illegal yet. Read the paper, stores have already been trying versions of it and it's being used in some industries already. Airlines have been playing with it for ages, which is how you can get very different prices online depending on things like which browser you are using. (https://millionmilesecrets.com/guides/are-airlines-raising-y...). It's not transparent to the consumer when it's happening so you may never realize you're being ripped off.

It’s not illegal until a protected class is charged a higher price and has grounds for a lawsuit, and the grocery stores cannot prove their AI isn’t racist.

It's not easy for someone to know what other people are being charged and it'd be easy to make it pretty much impossible for anyone to say exactly why.

I'm guessing it'd fall on the person who was overcharged to prove that it had anything to do with their race, and even then the company will hide behind the AI to avoid all responsibility. There are already many examples of AI found or suspected to be biased, but has anyone at any company been jailed or even meaningfully punished for using an AI that was found to be biased? It seems like the most you can expect is "We'll stop using that AI" after which they'll just fire up another one.

Absolutely, this seems illegal on several levels.

At least one good thing about supermarket oligopolies is that they'll need to abide by the strictest unit pricing state laws for the region they operate in.

It's not illegal today. Grocery stores have already been testing it and it's common in other industries.

> For example, ZipRecruiter, an online employment marketplace, indicates that it could increase profits by 84% by experimenting with personalized prices (Wallheimer 2018). Other players, such as travel sites (e.g., Orbitz, HotelTonight; DeAmicis 2015; Mattioli 2012), retailers (e.g., Amazon.com, Home Depot, Staples; Streitfeld 2000; Val-entino-DeVries et al. 2012), and even grocery stores (e.g., Safeway; Clifford 2012) have also reportedly begun implementing personalized prices for their customers based on individual characteristics.

Here's an article on one grocery store's early efforts: https://risnews.com/safeway-offers-personalized-pricing-prog...

This is all just another means to get people accept that prices should be allowed to vary on an individual basis. I'd very much like for this to be illegal, but companies stand to make money hand over fist so I doubt it will happen.

The Robinson-Pactsman act makes this type of activity illegal today, but has largely gone unenforced with passing time due to the complexities of the act. There's talk that government agencies are thinking of returning their enforcement of the act. Anyhow, just because companies are testing things and getting away with it, doesn't make something legal... it could be a ripe opportunity for a lawsuit.

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