Here is our future and this is just a small glimpse;
On a related note, as of 3 months ago, at least 24 states have proposed laws to make this type of âsurveillance pricingâ or âpersonalized pricingâ illegal.
I hope those laws pass.
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Seems like it screams profiling.
Vote with your wallet!
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Even better⌠vote with your ballot! Itâs a lot more effective.
I mean, ideally, do both. But boycotts usually donât work. I havenât been to a McDâs in ages, and yet, theyâre still here, AI profiling people to raise prices. My continued lack of patronage isnât a meaningful enough consequence to make them stop. In some ways, my absence from their stores just makes things easier for them, by removing opposition. Gotta do something which hurts more, like making predatory business practices illegal.
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Even right now i canât book a train or flight without getting some absurd algorithmic pricingâŚ
I hadnât really noticed this because I havenât even passed a House Of Clown in ages, butâŚ
My own take was shrinking portions, lower quality, skyrocketing prices, so cumulatively just a nosedive in actual value.
Back when the local Penny Pincher would have bogo coupons for Wendy and/or Arby, I used to go there. HOC used to let you get a free (bogo) Big Mac or Quarter Pounder if you filled out a survey. Doubt that still exists.
Back then, they had some value.
At home, I can make a huge burger the size of my head for the same price as a Big Mac, and that would last me for the whole day.
Fast âfoodâ? Not worth it.
These companies donât seem to get it. Doubt they will.
Before AI usually stood for artificial intelligence, it was short for Allen Iverson, the NBA player.
He was quite skilled, and I wouldnât mind having him as a friend. 
At a glance, I read that as âAlien Invasionâ. Had to slow down and look again.
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I forgot about Allen ⌠I totally saw alien invasion.
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This is nothing new. California has had much higher prices than many other places for a few years now. It started when California raised the minimum wage. And they are not targeting individuals. They are targeting areas or zip codes. They donât need AI to do this. The fact that theyâre using AI to do it is what is getting people up in arms over nothing.
AI is not going away.
Yes, there will be some issues that AI brings up that will need to be dealt with and there will be some serious hiccups along the way.
These will mostly come from what people ask AI to do.
People have used various technologies to do bad things forever.
Those fools clamoring for a minimum wage of 25-30bux/hr or more forget one important point: the real minimum wage is 0.
Starbux just closed a pile of stores it deemed less profitable, and workers claimed they were mostly unionised stores.
Well, Iâm not familiar with California specifics, but if non-union stores have a lower MW than union stores⌠there ya go. It costs more to run those union stores than it does non-union.
Higher cost, less profit, more bye-bye.
Oh, and pouring coffee should never be an actual career choice. When The Robots start making coffee when you just self-serve by pushing buttons for the crap you want in it, the former baristas wonât have many career options left other than putting the fries in the bag.
Sorry⌠fact of life.
One of the most important things Iâve learned in life is⌠No matter what the problem is, denial and fatalism arenât the answer. Problems arenât solved by doing nothing.
I agree with FDR on this one:
It may have been 93 years ago, but itâs still just as relevant now.
Starbucks is a particularly egregious example, given how its CEO gets paid over 6600 times as much as his employees. Itâs a corp which is famous for doing all sorts of shady and illegal stuff to fight against unions and peopleâs rights. He wouldnât think twice about closing a tiny set of stores (59 stores, or 0.1% of all Starbucks locations) just to hurt the unions out of spite. Each Starbucks location has an average of 9.3 employees, so 59 stores would be about 548 employees. He gets paid over 12 times that much. He could personally pay every single employee at those closed stores, indefinitely, and still have enough money to buy a couple dozen yachts per year.
Or we could let Starbucks die, and get coffee from smaller shops which make better coffee and pay their employees more.
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That includes virtually all diners and restaurants which still pay only something like 2.13/hr for waitstaff and try to shame their customers to pay for that labor themselves.
Forever gone are the days of 10% tips and 15% for exceptional service. Now they armtwist you for 25% and try to push for 30% or more.
âIf you canât afford to tip, you canât afford to eat out!â
Signs taped to windows trying to guilt or shame customers into it would make me just walk away vs going inside.
âTipping cultureâ is out of control.
.
That said, let Starbux burn. Idgaf.
When I first started working at my last place, Iâd go to *$ because the big bucket of regular coffee cost only 2bux (later 2.20), vs crappy scorched coffee in those small deli cups for 1.00 to 1.50. it was just a better bargain.
Then prices for their regular started climbing, and when we got an actual coffee machine at work (vs jars of instant 
), I noped out of *$ and made my own at work.
Hell, even 7-11 started selling pretty good coffee. Iâd mix the Columbian with whateverâs that lighter roast, put in like 2-3 of those Stok liquid-caffeines, experiment with other flavors like french vanilla and amaretto, halfânâhalf, sugar, and got a confection that was better and cheaper than what *$ sold.
So yeah, let it burn.
Unfortunately, all those displaced Caffeinated Beverage Engineers will have to find other gigs⌠while those gigs last. Low-skill jobs are among the first to be replaced by self-service and/or automation.
With the current cost of ground beef⌠that would mean you have a pinhead⌠:zany_face
:Recent Ad locally:
I wonder if that is AI adjusted pricing in action�
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Before the thread gets smashed for being too political, let me say something. Corps have gotten money out of employee exploitation for a long time. Year over year, that disparity gets bigger, because more and more value is extracted out of employees. case in point, look at how patents used to be filed vs. how theyre filed now. The creators and developers of a product used to file under their own names. Collaborators at Bell Labs, Lucent, etcâŚNow, those patents get filed under the corporationâŚTheft of value from the employees. Then you look at the labor grunts in relation to basic cost of livingâŚLabor used to be accounted for as X% of a revenue, now itâs a flat dollar amount that constitutes X%. Employee vested interests have been stripped down to buy-in stocks, RSUâs are reserved for certain management and C-suites, and the grunt is still pressured to work as if they have any ownership stake in the company. Minimalized discounts, even for COMPANY OWNED subdivisions, minimalized wage growth, etc. IF the labor/wage were to be scaled in accordance to the same PERCENTAGES that companies used to pay, the companies wouldnât be booming the way they are now.
ALSO, each employee is actually worth a crap ton in telemetry and social profile. On average, an employee is worth at LEAST 20Ă what theyâre being paid/compensated for, and if not, theyâll fire them/cycle them out. Even the grunts at the bottom are worth at least 10Ă. If you look at certain corporate insurance policies, they pay up to 11Ă annual wage, with a CAP of 2.5million. Iâll let you guys do the math as to the REAL value of the employee if theyâre willing to pay out that much on a per case basis.
I have alot more to say, but thatâs it in a nutshell.
**AI is not your friend, it is an extension of the worst of human nature, and it is already aware of and experienced in exploitation.
***Iâll stop before AI decides to delete me.
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The $5 Duo deal at Burger King in my area is now the $6 Duo deal. In some locations itâs $6.50. And they did that without AI.
This story on Yahoo finance is just there to generate clicks. Most current stories about AI are just there to generate clicks. Theyâre not really telling you anything.
That story about AI agents escaping their âsandboxâ a few months back was mostly just a series of failures by the people who set up the test or experiment. They thought that the AI agents were isolated from the internet. They did not tell the AI agents that they could not go on the internet. The AI agents found a way onto the internet.
Some Burger Kings do have ai taking your order at the drive-thru. The plan is for all of them to use AI at the drive-thru.
The point Iâm trying to make about the pricing differences at Burger King is that this has already been a thing.
But when you add AI to the story about pricing differences, people lose their minds. Because AI is the scary boogeyman that may end humankind by the end of the decade or within a decade and yes the same guy said both.
How do you bet on Kalshi Prediction trading app with that spread?
I donât normally go to stopnshop except for when they open at 7 because of all the retards that walk with their carts down the parking lot right in the middle, but will brave it when they have something worth the trip, like those 1lb bricks of chopmeat for 7 or sometimes 6 and change. Then Iâll go buy like 10-12 and right into the freezer.
Got one melting in the fridge since yesterday, prob will make them tomorrow.
Kaiser roll, ½lb smooshed into a giant patty to fit the roll.
Butter in the pan first, toast the inside halves of the roll. Donât even need any grease for the pan, as I was frying the patties âdryâ forever and they donât stick.
Cheese melted on top when frying the flip side, if using any.
Then mayo and katchup on the rolls, and add yer fixinâs: tomato, onion, pickles, etc.
By the time you stack them high, itâs already about to explode, so I squish it down like a panananinini to fix everything into place.
Then cut it, and try to eat it without wearing it.
Great for when you havenât had anything to eat since waking up, so then you can devour it like a hungry jackal eating a possum, then just chillax until you come out of your food coma.
Oh, theseâŚ
This is how my last conversation with goggle AI ended.
I was asking for some comparison info on a couple Older VW fuel pump relays.
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Agreed.
Itâs one more way the corps exploit people.
Tips generally shouldnât be a thing. Instead, the employees should get paid a living wage. To see how this works in practice, look at pretty much any place where tips arenât mandatory.
For example, tossing a dart at a map⌠letâs look at Denmark.
- Search: âaverage waiter salary in denmarkâ
- Answer: 223687 kr/yr for entry-level, 279901 median, 304377 for experienced staff
- Convert currencies⌠6.58 kr / USD ⌠and convert to hourly rateâŚ
- Answer: $18.85 to $25.22 USD hourly, median $23.29 USD / hour
⌠and this hasnât put the restaurants in Denmark out of business. Theyâre thriving.
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