alt Hacker NewsMaryland to ban A.I.-driven price increases in grocery stores
Comments
> Merchants face fines of $10,000 for running afoul of the law, and penalties of $25,000 for repeat offenses.
Another limp-wristed penalty. Why not something like "$1,000 per dollar that you received as payment for prices in violation"? Customer buys a $5 can of beans that was AI-priced, you owe $5,000. They buy another can, you owe another $5,000. You have it set for the whole store, wham, you now owe 1,000 times your gross revenue for that day. Better damn well not do it.
The end goal must be to emulate US healthcare where nobody knows what things cost and you find out only months or years after buying.
Why grocery stores only? It’s also unclear how this will change anything - don’t the grocery stores in richer areas already charge more? I’ve noticed Whole Foods prices are not the same across all stores even in the same state.
This doesn't look like a cure for cancer like I was promised.
I'd like to see fair pricing for airlines tickets too.
Grocery stores have smaller margins and more options compared to pretty much any industry, yet politicians seem to think they are the cause of all of our ills.
Doesn't this then open a market for "vpn style" apps that make everyone look broke? Get the lowest prices (ie market/baseline) on every interaction from food delivery to airplane tickets?
Why share locked articles? Why would you do such a thing?
Isn't the Free Market already a form of AI that does exactly that? How can you ban tools for measuring the value of things?
Good! Surveillance pricing needs to be regulated, it distorts supply and demand massively because one party (pricing service providers, big chain stores) has a MASSIVE information advantage other the others (end customers and small shop owners). It's going to finalize the transition from a free market to a oligopoly in the retail sector. It's basically socialism for a few powerful corporations.
Why just grocery stores? Why not ban selling or purchasing our information to and from data brokers. Like for all uses.
That shit is evil
Isn't this level of price discrimination in a round about way just a worse form of communism? If the algo decides you can pay X% of your worth for an item, and X% of my worth for the same item even though the absolute dollar amounts are different, isn't that strange?
Another attempt to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand.
https://archive.is/2026.05.01-224445/https://www.nytimes.com...