Uber and Lyft Use Artificial Intelligence to Price Rides | Hacker News Reader

Uber and Lyft Use Artificial Intelligence to Price Rides

consumerreports.org

24 pointsgmays11 comments

Ignore the "AI" clickbait. What matters is that U&L are charging different customers very different prices for the same ride, and playing games with fake discounts. Which are both sleazy and, in places, illegal.

(Though if you aren't one of Today's 10K - ignoring laws and ethics have been SOP at U&L for how many years now?)

If modern AI is going to be used against us so horizontally we will absolutely not ignore it. If it widely accelerates something negative that existed before it, its effect is entirely relevant.

The crap that U&L are pulling existed long before AI. And are very easy to do, at scale, without AI. Biggest downside might be that the PHB's and minions at U&L couldn't include "with AI" in their bragging.

If a bunch of banks were robbed by a guy wearing lime-green shoelaces - how much attention should either banks or law enforcement pay to shoelaces? Either that perp, or copy-cats, could wear some other color at whim.

I have said this before, I will say this again: we've been using ML for pricing changes for different groups of users on ecommerce sites for literally decades.

Most simplistic example:

1. User arrives on site; we believe we haven't seen them before (their cookie is new and based on our ID graph, they may very well be) and they're behavior on site (e.g., how they navigate it; what they click on; how they scroll) is indicative of an entirely new user. For this user, we give a discount to try and capture the sale and keep them coming back with nurture activities (e-mail or retargeting).

2. User arrive on site; we KNOW they are a returning user (e.g., we have their cookie tied up to pre-existing rows in the ID graph; they came in from a retargeting ad; and/or their on-site behavior is indicative of a returning user). For this user, they get the 'normal pricing'.

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The only difference here is that the article claims they use AI and AI is scary.

One of the ways I've found to game this system is to delete the app from my phone when I'm not using it. The real time systems have more trouble charging surge pricing if they don't all the data coming in from the background process. I compared this with someone else a few times.

It doesn't always work but I don't trust Uber or Lyft with my data at all.

If you think there's no way for Uber and Lyft to infer anything about your purchasing power/habits when you install an app running on your primary computing device with generous privileges, logged in with your unique phone number/email... You might be unpleasantly surprised

This is surveillance pricing, and it's wrong.

I heard that "surge pricing" , or "surveillance pricing", is wrong, but don't understand why. Shouldn't the service provider be free to charge whatever they want for the service they provide? And the consumer should be free to choose between multiple service providers to find the optimal value (price/convenience/features/whatever)?

In other words, the root issue is not "surveillance pricing" but lack of competition.

Increasing prices at busy times (i.e. surge pricing) is... to some degree defensible. Spying on people and charging different prices to different people for the same thing (i.e. surveillance pricing) is not. Can you imagine the mayhem if companies just straight up knew salary information for all of their customers?

>Spying on people and charging different prices to different people for the same thing (i.e. surveillance pricing) is not.

They are not "spying", they are _legally_ using various data _legally_ collected on their current and prospective customers to set the pricing. Do you ever read T&C of any online services you're using? So how is this illegal?

>Can you imagine the mayhem if companies just straight up knew salary information for all of their customers?

I filled in FAFSA and CSS Profile for multiple colleges my child applied for last year. So yes, that's exactly how some industries work. Sucks for me, the customer. Not illegal.

Work on your reading comprehension. I never said anything was illegal. Spying means the act of keeping a secret watch for intelligence purposes. This is what they are doing. And just because it's legal does not mean it isn't wrong.

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