Firms including BP and 7-Eleven accused of coordinating prices to ‘wring more money from pockets of consumers’
  • DrakeAlbrecht@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3 hours

    Chevron: “Ha! You won’t catch us using AI, our prices have always been ridiculous!”

  • 🇨🇦 tunetardis@piefed.caEnglish
    2 hours

    Like do you really need an AI to do this? It’s been going on for years where I live. It’s not hard for all the local gas stations to collude to raise prices. It’s easier than ever when you have the likes of gasbuddy crowd-sourcing all the price-checking.

    • terabyterex@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2 hours

      i like to point out that companies are using ai to be a boogeyman to distract you. take every article tou read and remove ai from the text or replace it with automation/algorithm.

      even the jobs. 5 years ago it was “company lays off 10000 employees” response was “fuck management” – today they are doing the same thing but add “because ai” and everyone now says “fuck ai”.

        • acosmichippo@lemmy.worldEnglish
          13 minutes

          how does the logic work so it’s not their fault? if they are price fixing they are price fixing, the mechanism doesn’t matter.

          • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1 hour

            It didn’t work for the RealPage rent price-fixing lawsuit.

      • Rioting Pacifist@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2 hours

        Is it illegal if they don’t collude?

        The but that makes using AI illegal is if they all use a common platform/service.

      • 🇨🇦 tunetardis@piefed.caEnglish
        2 hours

        It certainly is. They get caught once in a while. The first time it happened was when I added the term “oligopoly” to my vocabulary.