Uber and Lyft Use Artificial Intelligence to Price Rides

https://www.consumerreports.org/money/questionable-business-practices/uber-lyft-different-prices-for-same-ride-and-fake-discounts-a1093538909/

by gmays • 1 month ago

24 11 1 month ago

consumerreports.org

bell-cot2• 1 month ago

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?)

gdulli• 1 month ago

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.

bell-cot2• 1 month ago

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.

kittikitti• 1 month ago

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.

drillsteps53• 1 month ago

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

4d4m• 1 month ago

This is surveillance pricing, and it's wrong.

drillsteps53• 1 month ago

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.

Doxin2• 1 month ago

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?

Uber and Lyft Use Artificial Intelligence to Price Rides

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