4 ms·

AI Isn't Just Spying on You. It's Tricking You into Spending More

105 points by c420 10mo ago

tantalor 10mo ago
This has been true for decades. I recall my university classes in mid 2000s talking about examples of machine learning models for grocery store purchase patterns.
- probably_wrong 10mo ago
  You may be thinking about this article about how Target knew that a woman was pregnant before her family knew: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3598558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3598558 I wish we had an update on what the situation looks like today.
  - measurablefunc 10mo ago
    They have even better psychometric profiles on everyone now than they did previously. This is why Zuckerberg can confidently tell people during an interview that he knows they want at least 15 friends¹ & he is going to deliver those friends to them w/ his data centers. ¹https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-mark-zuckerberg-thinks-you-need-15-friendsand-santos-lalleman-81urf https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-mark-zuckerberg-thinks-yo...
    - themafia 10mo ago
      I would guess that purely observational psychometrics completely fail to predict how people will respond when challenged or stressed. I think they're trading on fools gold.
      - degamad 10mo ago
        Observational psychometrics over a long enough timeframe (e.g. social media profile lifetimes) probably include periods of challenge or stress, which may help the predictive behaviour.
  - heavyset_go 10mo ago
    Go over to friend's place and watch the ads they get, you'll get a good idea of what kind of health concerns or illnesses they may have. So far, in situations where it wouldn't be rude to ask, I've been able to determine with pretty good accuracy that at least someone in the household has the advertised health concerns. You can also get an idea of their financial situation, given what buckets advertisers put them in and what they're advertised, as well. Similarly, advertisers know when you're at friend's location, or elsewhere, and may show ads tailored to your profile.
    - WalterBright 10mo ago
      You could have some fun by looking up symptoms of all kinds of diseases, so the profile of you will be filled with errors.
      - brewtide 10mo ago
        It's more fun to do this wild stuff when using someone else's wifi so it's also associated with their network for later savoring.
      - heavyset_go 10mo ago
        If you've been to a doctor's office, clinic or hospital lately, you've likely signed away the right for them to share your information with their partners during your initial intake.
        WalterBright 10mo ago
        My point was you cannot stop people from collecting data about you. But you can fill it with nonsense.
    - ahartman00 10mo ago
      I wouldnt jump to conclusions too fast. I'm a very thin person, but I get a lot of ads for GLP-1. My doctors have always said I need to gain weight, so I can assure you I'm not searching for weight loss solutions. Nor am I diabetic.
  - gruez 10mo ago
    >You may be thinking about this article about how Target knew that a woman was pregnant before her family knew: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3598558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3598558 "before her family knew" is a pretty low bar to clear, especially if the daughter was actively trying to hide the pregnancy (eg. by wearing baggy clothing). Moreover if we're taking the example of this specific story, where the women presumably knew she was pregnant (as opposed to the more sensational story of "Target figured out a women was pregnant before she even knew!!1!" that also makes the rounds), it's not hard to imagine how Target might be in a better position to infer her pregnancy without being galaxy brained or creepy. Take the examples given in the article: >Take a fictional Target shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium supplements and a bright blue rug.
    - majormajor 10mo ago
      Galaxy-brained, no; creepy, yes.
      - gruez 10mo ago
        It's creepy for companies to keep track of what you buy? How do you think your Amazon order history works?
        dragonwriter 10mo ago
        To track it? Maybe, maybe not, depends on what the conpany is, how the purchases are made, etc. To analyze it to infer personal information? Starting to be creepy, even in the cases where tracking it isn’t. And then use the inferred information for marketing explicitly and overtly around the inference? Definitely getting creepier.
    - pests 10mo ago
      I think that is still creepy, but that example just seems horrible? Oh no, a woman bought lotion, a purse, and a rug. Must be pregnant!
  - hamdingers 10mo ago
    > I wish we had an update on what the situation looks like today. My wife and I spent 3 years in fertility treatments, which involves a lot of online activity similar to that of someone newly pregnant (buying pregnancy tests, researching symptoms, etc). We were constantly bombarded with pregnancy related advertising, it really ramped up after the first year. Tons of "congratulations" cards, coupon books, "new mom" magazines, up to and including unsolicited shipments of formula and branded blankets. So to answer your question, it's still happening, and it's disgusting. I strongly suspect Carrot Fertility sold our information because the peak of it all happened a couple months after I gained access to them through my employer. (We did eventually succeed, our baby is nearing 6 months)
  - majormajor 10mo ago
    The miss rate is still wildly high based on the ads in my instagram feeds. But the really-good hits are probably tough to notice. They won't stand out as "boy this is a stupid ad" and even if I just scroll past a well-targeted ad, it's probably doing its job of making that company/product a bit closer to the top of mind...
    - bluGill 10mo ago
      Some of the miss is intentional. they don't want you to know what they know so they give some random things you don't want to throw you off
  - skybrian 10mo ago
    It’s a meme that will never die, but there’s no proof it ever happened: > This story doesn’t even show that Target tried to figure out whether the girl was pregnant. It just shows that she received a flyer that contained some maternity items and her weird dad freaked out and wanted to talk to the manager. There’s no way to know whether the flyer arrived as a result of some complex targeting algorithm that correctly deduced that the girl was pregnant because she bought a bunch of lotion, or whether they just happened to be having a sale on diapers that week and sent a flyer about it to all their customers. https://medium.com/@colin.fraser/target-didnt-figure-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did-a6be13b973a5 https://medium.com/@colin.fraser/target-didnt-figure-out-a-t...
  - dragontamer 10mo ago
    I continuously get Spanish advertisements despite being unable to speak Spanish. (The only foreign language media I visit on YouTube is Anime/Japanese and Germans stuff). There are surely large numbers of dumb cases of being mispredicted out there in.
- mingus88 10mo ago
  Yeah AI is taking a lot of damage when the actual problem is capitalism
  - palmotea 10mo ago
    > Yeah AI is taking a lot of damage when the actual problem is capitalism And I think it's fair to to throw flak in AI's direction, if what it does is make capitalism less tolerable by removing some of the "inefficiencies." While apologists for capitalism have done a good job of pushing me towards wanting to burn it all down, I doubt that's in the cards any time soon and limits on AI technology are far more likely.
    - mingus88 10mo ago
      Seems ironic. Perhaps we should celebrate AI as the accelerator of capitalism’s ultimate unworkable demise We aren’t getting regulations on AI. The military industrial complex includes the tech industry now. It’s an existential race to beat China. The sad reality is that for all of our potential futures, we aren’t getting the Star Trek post scarcity utopia. Our onboard ship computers aren’t generating Earl Grey, hot, they are generating trillionaires on one hand and poverty on the other.
      - majormajor 10mo ago
        >The military industrial complex includes the tech industry now. It’s an existential race to beat China. Too bad nobody really even knows what this means but a lot of people will use it as a slogan to convince people to give this money!
vjvjvjvjghv 10mo ago
AI is just another tool to implement a trend that has been going on for quite a while, probably starting with massive data collection through the internet. I think it’s only a matter of time until we will be seeing individualized pricing everywhere, including retail like grocery stores or gas stations Maybe I am getting paranoid. But to me a lot of innovation in the last years feels openly hostile and primarily designed to extract maximum money while providing only little actual benefit. AI will just accelerate this trend.
- TSiege 10mo ago
  More perfect and consumer reports did a joint investigation and have uncovered this already happening. https://youtube.com/watch?v=osxr7xSxsGo&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD https://youtube.com/watch?v=osxr7xSxsGo&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD
- IAmGraydon 10mo ago
  >Maybe I am getting paranoid. But to me a lot of innovation in the last years feels openly hostile and primarily designed to extract maximum money while providing only little actual benefit. AI will just accelerate this trend. This is the natural evolution of capitalism in a system where regulation is weak. Political donations from companies need to be outlawed and the proper regulatory environment restored. Capitalism is like a powerful engine that will happily rev to redline and tear itself apart if the engine lacks a governor. Regulation is that governor.
charlie-83 10mo ago
It annoys me that big-tech marketing has made most people believe that "personalised advertising" means they get ads which are more "useful" to them. I regularly see people opt in to personalised advertising because of this. Personalised advertising is about collecting every detail about your life and using it to extract as much money as possible from you. AI advancements might be making this even more effective but it's been this way for a long time.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 10mo ago
  "It annoys me that big-tech marketing has made most people believe that "personalised advertising" means they get ads which are more "useful" to them." "relevant" is another term seen in addition to "useful" But "relevant" is relative For example, "relevant" to what? It's only if Big Tech has collected data about the ad target and, e.g., made some guess about their intent, that the ads could be "relevant" Whether the ads are truly "relevant" is a question for the reader. The term "relevant" might just be marketing fluff Either way, Big Tech will keep the data vacuum humming
  - gretch 10mo ago
    Well I can list some things which are completely irrelevant (happens even in online ads despite the advancements). I got an offer for life insurance for US veterans - I’m not a US veteran so this has nothing to do with me. I got an ad for women’s hygiene products, but I’m not a woman. So that’s completely wasted on me. I just bought a mattress, and I don’t need a 2nd mattress, so all of those are irrelevant.
    - sokoloff 10mo ago
      When I bought a vacuum on Amazon, I got cross-sells for other vacuums for several weeks. I don’t know how many avid vacuum collectors Amazon studied to conclude that those were the best ads to show me (not a vacuum collector).
    - bluGill 10mo ago
      Some of that is those advertisers want toeget everyone. You are not a women but odds are you live with one (at some point in life) who asks you to go buy something for her.
snorbleck 10mo ago
ahh yes. it's not just this, it's that.
standardUser 10mo ago
The real tragedy is that we don't already have regulations already on the books in response to the endless data-hoarding that's been inflicted on us since at least the first tracking cookie.
vivzkestrel 10mo ago
why doesnt someone make a coinmarketcap for grocery prices across all the stores and update it in real time?
- handoflixue 10mo ago
  Where are you finding the API to get these prices? Paying an individual to physically go to the store and check the prices on every good is presumably pretty expensive even if it's just quickly scanning each isle with a special phone app
  - vivzkestrel 10mo ago
    what if we could incentivize the grocery store employees themselves, i am sure nobody minds earning an extra hour of work

105 points by c420 10mo ago

This has been true for decades. I recall my university classes in mid 2000s talking about examples of machine learning models for grocery store purchase patterns.

probably_wrong 10mo ago
You may be thinking about this article about how Target knew that a woman was pregnant before her family knew: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3598558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3598558 I wish we had an update on what the situation looks like today.
- measurablefunc 10mo ago
  They have even better psychometric profiles on everyone now than they did previously. This is why Zuckerberg can confidently tell people during an interview that he knows they want at least 15 friends¹ & he is going to deliver those friends to them w/ his data centers. ¹https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-mark-zuckerberg-thinks-you-need-15-friendsand-santos-lalleman-81urf https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-mark-zuckerberg-thinks-yo...
  - themafia 10mo ago
    I would guess that purely observational psychometrics completely fail to predict how people will respond when challenged or stressed. I think they're trading on fools gold.
    - degamad 10mo ago
      Observational psychometrics over a long enough timeframe (e.g. social media profile lifetimes) probably include periods of challenge or stress, which may help the predictive behaviour.
- heavyset_go 10mo ago
  Go over to friend's place and watch the ads they get, you'll get a good idea of what kind of health concerns or illnesses they may have. So far, in situations where it wouldn't be rude to ask, I've been able to determine with pretty good accuracy that at least someone in the household has the advertised health concerns. You can also get an idea of their financial situation, given what buckets advertisers put them in and what they're advertised, as well. Similarly, advertisers know when you're at friend's location, or elsewhere, and may show ads tailored to your profile.
  - WalterBright 10mo ago
    You could have some fun by looking up symptoms of all kinds of diseases, so the profile of you will be filled with errors.
    - brewtide 10mo ago
      It's more fun to do this wild stuff when using someone else's wifi so it's also associated with their network for later savoring.
    - heavyset_go 10mo ago
      If you've been to a doctor's office, clinic or hospital lately, you've likely signed away the right for them to share your information with their partners during your initial intake.
      - WalterBright 10mo ago
        My point was you cannot stop people from collecting data about you. But you can fill it with nonsense.
  - ahartman00 10mo ago
    I wouldnt jump to conclusions too fast. I'm a very thin person, but I get a lot of ads for GLP-1. My doctors have always said I need to gain weight, so I can assure you I'm not searching for weight loss solutions. Nor am I diabetic.
- gruez 10mo ago
  >You may be thinking about this article about how Target knew that a woman was pregnant before her family knew: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3598558 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3598558 "before her family knew" is a pretty low bar to clear, especially if the daughter was actively trying to hide the pregnancy (eg. by wearing baggy clothing). Moreover if we're taking the example of this specific story, where the women presumably knew she was pregnant (as opposed to the more sensational story of "Target figured out a women was pregnant before she even knew!!1!" that also makes the rounds), it's not hard to imagine how Target might be in a better position to infer her pregnancy without being galaxy brained or creepy. Take the examples given in the article: >Take a fictional Target shopper named Jenny Ward, who is 23, lives in Atlanta and in March bought cocoa-butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc and magnesium supplements and a bright blue rug.
  - majormajor 10mo ago
    Galaxy-brained, no; creepy, yes.
    - gruez 10mo ago
      It's creepy for companies to keep track of what you buy? How do you think your Amazon order history works?
      - dragonwriter 10mo ago
        To track it? Maybe, maybe not, depends on what the conpany is, how the purchases are made, etc. To analyze it to infer personal information? Starting to be creepy, even in the cases where tracking it isn’t. And then use the inferred information for marketing explicitly and overtly around the inference? Definitely getting creepier.
  - pests 10mo ago
    I think that is still creepy, but that example just seems horrible? Oh no, a woman bought lotion, a purse, and a rug. Must be pregnant!
- hamdingers 10mo ago
  > I wish we had an update on what the situation looks like today. My wife and I spent 3 years in fertility treatments, which involves a lot of online activity similar to that of someone newly pregnant (buying pregnancy tests, researching symptoms, etc). We were constantly bombarded with pregnancy related advertising, it really ramped up after the first year. Tons of "congratulations" cards, coupon books, "new mom" magazines, up to and including unsolicited shipments of formula and branded blankets. So to answer your question, it's still happening, and it's disgusting. I strongly suspect Carrot Fertility sold our information because the peak of it all happened a couple months after I gained access to them through my employer. (We did eventually succeed, our baby is nearing 6 months)
- majormajor 10mo ago
  The miss rate is still wildly high based on the ads in my instagram feeds. But the really-good hits are probably tough to notice. They won't stand out as "boy this is a stupid ad" and even if I just scroll past a well-targeted ad, it's probably doing its job of making that company/product a bit closer to the top of mind...
  - bluGill 10mo ago
    Some of the miss is intentional. they don't want you to know what they know so they give some random things you don't want to throw you off
- skybrian 10mo ago
  It’s a meme that will never die, but there’s no proof it ever happened: > This story doesn’t even show that Target tried to figure out whether the girl was pregnant. It just shows that she received a flyer that contained some maternity items and her weird dad freaked out and wanted to talk to the manager. There’s no way to know whether the flyer arrived as a result of some complex targeting algorithm that correctly deduced that the girl was pregnant because she bought a bunch of lotion, or whether they just happened to be having a sale on diapers that week and sent a flyer about it to all their customers. https://medium.com/@colin.fraser/target-didnt-figure-out-a-teen-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-father-did-a6be13b973a5 https://medium.com/@colin.fraser/target-didnt-figure-out-a-t...
- dragontamer 10mo ago
  I continuously get Spanish advertisements despite being unable to speak Spanish. (The only foreign language media I visit on YouTube is Anime/Japanese and Germans stuff). There are surely large numbers of dumb cases of being mispredicted out there in.
mingus88 10mo ago
Yeah AI is taking a lot of damage when the actual problem is capitalism
- palmotea 10mo ago
  > Yeah AI is taking a lot of damage when the actual problem is capitalism And I think it's fair to to throw flak in AI's direction, if what it does is make capitalism less tolerable by removing some of the "inefficiencies." While apologists for capitalism have done a good job of pushing me towards wanting to burn it all down, I doubt that's in the cards any time soon and limits on AI technology are far more likely.
  - mingus88 10mo ago
    Seems ironic. Perhaps we should celebrate AI as the accelerator of capitalism’s ultimate unworkable demise We aren’t getting regulations on AI. The military industrial complex includes the tech industry now. It’s an existential race to beat China. The sad reality is that for all of our potential futures, we aren’t getting the Star Trek post scarcity utopia. Our onboard ship computers aren’t generating Earl Grey, hot, they are generating trillionaires on one hand and poverty on the other.
    - majormajor 10mo ago
      >The military industrial complex includes the tech industry now. It’s an existential race to beat China. Too bad nobody really even knows what this means but a lot of people will use it as a slogan to convince people to give this money!

vjvjvjvjghv 10mo ago

AI is just another tool to implement a trend that has been going on for quite a while, probably starting with massive data collection through the internet. I think it’s only a matter of time until we will be seeing individualized pricing everywhere, including retail like grocery stores or gas stations Maybe I am getting paranoid. But to me a lot of innovation in the last years feels openly hostile and primarily designed to extract maximum money while providing only little actual benefit. AI will just accelerate this trend.

TSiege 10mo ago
More perfect and consumer reports did a joint investigation and have uncovered this already happening. https://youtube.com/watch?v=osxr7xSxsGo&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD https://youtube.com/watch?v=osxr7xSxsGo&pp=0gcJCR4Bo7VqN5tD
IAmGraydon 10mo ago
>Maybe I am getting paranoid. But to me a lot of innovation in the last years feels openly hostile and primarily designed to extract maximum money while providing only little actual benefit. AI will just accelerate this trend. This is the natural evolution of capitalism in a system where regulation is weak. Political donations from companies need to be outlawed and the proper regulatory environment restored. Capitalism is like a powerful engine that will happily rev to redline and tear itself apart if the engine lacks a governor. Regulation is that governor.

charlie-83 10mo ago

It annoys me that big-tech marketing has made most people believe that "personalised advertising" means they get ads which are more "useful" to them. I regularly see people opt in to personalised advertising because of this. Personalised advertising is about collecting every detail about your life and using it to extract as much money as possible from you. AI advancements might be making this even more effective but it's been this way for a long time.

1vuio0pswjnm7 10mo ago
"It annoys me that big-tech marketing has made most people believe that "personalised advertising" means they get ads which are more "useful" to them." "relevant" is another term seen in addition to "useful" But "relevant" is relative For example, "relevant" to what? It's only if Big Tech has collected data about the ad target and, e.g., made some guess about their intent, that the ads could be "relevant" Whether the ads are truly "relevant" is a question for the reader. The term "relevant" might just be marketing fluff Either way, Big Tech will keep the data vacuum humming
- gretch 10mo ago
  Well I can list some things which are completely irrelevant (happens even in online ads despite the advancements). I got an offer for life insurance for US veterans - I’m not a US veteran so this has nothing to do with me. I got an ad for women’s hygiene products, but I’m not a woman. So that’s completely wasted on me. I just bought a mattress, and I don’t need a 2nd mattress, so all of those are irrelevant.
  - sokoloff 10mo ago
    When I bought a vacuum on Amazon, I got cross-sells for other vacuums for several weeks. I don’t know how many avid vacuum collectors Amazon studied to conclude that those were the best ads to show me (not a vacuum collector).
  - bluGill 10mo ago
    Some of that is those advertisers want toeget everyone. You are not a women but odds are you live with one (at some point in life) who asks you to go buy something for her.

snorbleck 10mo ago

ahh yes. it's not just this, it's that.

standardUser 10mo ago

The real tragedy is that we don't already have regulations already on the books in response to the endless data-hoarding that's been inflicted on us since at least the first tracking cookie.

vivzkestrel 10mo ago

why doesnt someone make a coinmarketcap for grocery prices across all the stores and update it in real time?

handoflixue 10mo ago
Where are you finding the API to get these prices? Paying an individual to physically go to the store and check the prices on every good is presumably pretty expensive even if it's just quickly scanning each isle with a special phone app
- vivzkestrel 10mo ago
  what if we could incentivize the grocery store employees themselves, i am sure nobody minds earning an extra hour of work