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Do you love targeted pricing too? Like user X is more likely to buy product Y so make the price +10%. It’s a good thing that targeted pricing is illegal in man

by boh 4y ago

Do you love targeted pricing too? Like user X is more likely to buy product Y so make the price +10%. It’s a good thing that targeted pricing is illegal in many places, but oh wait, there’s an AI pricing layer which cannot be reverse engineered so evidence of price targeting can’t be found. The problem with user data is it lasts forever, and as the political and technological environment further shifts into "profit-friendliness", your user profile will grow and be more and more valuable as it provides more advantages to the counter-parties you’ll be trading with in the course of your life. It will likely affect your insurance premiums, your interest rates, your every day purchases, but I guess it’s worth it for those swell ads.

Baader-Meinhof 4y ago
> there’s an AI pricing layer which cannot be reverse engineered so evidence of price targeting can’t be found Is this strictly true? Couldn't we can audit the model's parameters for things analogous to the user's economic status?
- kroltan 4y ago
  Most AI models are not even known about, accessible outside the system they are part of, let alone targeted for audits at all. Unless you got enough volume of volunteer users to try and make some correlations, but then, those can still be argued not to be causation.
- jezzarax 4y ago
  In theory it’s easier/possible with some types of models, harder/impossible with others, but only if the model and the data processing around it is disclosed. The bigger issue here is that some seemingly unrelated factors and their combinations (postal code, time being active during the day, even the vocabulary used in social communication) could be predictive for the user’s economic status.
dnissley 4y ago
Honestly totally fine with this and wish high demand items were mostly just auctioned off when they are first released. E.g. graphics cards, concert tickets, etc. They tend to end up in the hands of the people who want them most anyway, just through middle men (scalpers), so might as well have that value go directly to the company/artist.

by boh 4y ago

Baader-Meinhof 4y ago

> there’s an AI pricing layer which cannot be reverse engineered so evidence of price targeting can’t be found Is this strictly true? Couldn't we can audit the model's parameters for things analogous to the user's economic status?

kroltan 4y ago
Most AI models are not even known about, accessible outside the system they are part of, let alone targeted for audits at all. Unless you got enough volume of volunteer users to try and make some correlations, but then, those can still be argued not to be causation.
jezzarax 4y ago
In theory it’s easier/possible with some types of models, harder/impossible with others, but only if the model and the data processing around it is disclosed. The bigger issue here is that some seemingly unrelated factors and their combinations (postal code, time being active during the day, even the vocabulary used in social communication) could be predictive for the user’s economic status.

dnissley 4y ago

Honestly totally fine with this and wish high demand items were mostly just auctioned off when they are first released. E.g. graphics cards, concert tickets, etc. They tend to end up in the hands of the people who want them most anyway, just through middle men (scalpers), so might as well have that value go directly to the company/artist.