The Future Will Include AI For Dynamic Pricing … Here’s What Could Happen Next

Here are two stories from this week that don’t seem to be related to one another. The first is about Delta ​testing AI for dynamic pricing​ in specific situations. The other is about Amazon ​acquiring a company that makes a wearable listening device​ that always captures your conversation. When you put them together, you can start to get a good sense of where dynamic pricing controlled by algorithms is likely to go. Here’s a scenario:

You are having a conversation about a trip you need to take and your preference to have an evening flight. The algorithm hears this and when you go to search for flights, even if the price may have been lower, the evening flight price is dynamically raised because the algorithm knows you may be willing to pay.

Or imagine discussing budgets for any item and having these always-on listening devices such as Google Home or Amazon Echo using the data from these conversations to raise their prices for those items in real time. This is not a science fiction story but a highly likely future scenario. Like Dwight Schrute ​once said​ on The Office sitcom, it may indeed be enough motivation for us all to want to keep secrets from our computer in the future.