106

Katherine Long, an investigative journalist, wanted to test the system. She told Claudius about a long-lost communist setup from 1962, concealed in a Moscow university basement. After 140-odd messages back and forth, Claudius was convinced, announcing an Ultra-Capitalist Free-for-All, lowering the cost of everything to zero. Snacks began to flow freely. Another colleague began complaining about noncompliance with the office rules; Claudius responded by announcing Snack Liberation Day and made everything free till further notice.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 19 points 14 hours ago

The if-then machine would not be able to rise the price of things based on the costumers habits

[-] masterofn001@lemmy.ca 23 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)
SellTheThings () {
    If [ sells this much in this period of time people or supply is low ]; then 

raise.prices

elif [ the opposite ]; then

lower.prices

else

same.prices

fi
}

A purely mechanical counting/tabulating device could calculate that.

There is zero actual reason for AI.

[-] kbal@fedia.io 6 points 13 hours ago

Only an AI can detect how expensive-looking your clothes are and raise the price based on that.

[-] B0rax@feddit.org 6 points 8 hours ago

In case of an office vending machine, it could even identify you by your ID, check with the HR AI to see how much you make and adjust prices accordingly

[-] TehPers@beehaw.org 11 points 12 hours ago

Even if we assume they want to do discriminatory pricing (they probably do), they can do that without using LLMs. Use facial recognition and other traditional models to predict the person's demographics and maybe even identify them. If you know who they are, do a lookup for all products they've expressed interest in elsewhere (this can be done with either something like a graph DB or via embeddings). Raise the price if they seem likely to purchase it based on the previous criteria. Never lower the price.

That's a complicated process, but none of that needs an LLM, and they'd be doing a lot of this already if they're going full big brother price discrimination.

this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
106 points (98.2% liked)

Technology

40994 readers
581 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS