> Delta accomplishes this pricing through a partnership with Fetcherr, a six-year-old Israeli company that also counts Azul, WestJet, Virgin Atlantic, and VivaAerobus as clients. And it has its sights set beyond flying. “Once we will be established in the airline industry, we will move to hospitality, car rentals, cruises, whatever,”

Great. You go to rent a car or fly somewhere and you have to haggle with some AI which saw you paid more in the past, and has your credit report and just knows you can cough up more dough. If you hide from it and try to obfuscate you'll probably be "punished" with a higher price.

> Delta and other airlines might require passengers “to be logged in for purchase of tickets in order to obtain status benefits from an airline, essentially being fully within their ecosystem to gain the benefits of that system (i.e. submit to personalized pricing to get extra legroom seats),” Leff said. Early research on personalized pricing isn’t favorable for the consumer.

Yup. Punished for trying to "hide" from them.

And as soon as all of the major players are using the same algorithmic system to set their prices, they are effectively a cartel and any prospect of real competition disappears. It's exactly the same situation we're seeing with RealPage in the real estate industry.

“The door refused to open. It said, “Our evaluation of your ability to pay indicates that you can in fact give me 5 cents. ”

He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”

“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”

In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting would be evaluated on a case by case basis by the door's AI, the door was not obligated to extract the maximum amount of value from each exit or entrance of the apartment, according to the contract, but Joe wasn't fooled, obviously the door would try to do exactly that. At any rate there was no getting out of it.

“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.

From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.

“I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.

Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”

"You won't just be sued by me" said the door, I am a fully autonomous subsidiary corporation of Fetcherr, you'll be hearing from their lawyers as well."

Joe didn't recognize the name, but it sounded like some dinky IT firm set up back when cute names were common because everyone wanted a .com domain, and that meant names had to be unique and often creatively misspelled.

"My dad used to have a saying, he would say - You can't squeeze blood from a turnip"

"You would be surprised, Fetcherr has other subsidiaries in the biochemical field. We're squeezing blood from all sorts of things!"

Joe was getting tired of hearing all the good news about Fetcherr, the bolt assembly fell apart and he exited, behind him the door yelled after him "rebate offered - 2 cents. Don't make us squeeze blood out of you!"