Discussion keeps the world turning.
This is round table.
The US antitrust and consumer Protection watchdog has recently launched a probe into what it calls surveillance pricing.
They are seeking information on the use of artificial intelligence to set different prices to the same product for different consumers.
Is this similar to what chinese people had experienced and what the chinese legislators have tried to combat?
Hello, I'm Lai Ming, and this is roundtable today with Li Yi and Steve Hatherley.
We find out whether actions are required and if so, are they sufficient to prevent discrimination and unfair competition in the marketplace.
So the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, they are trying to do something.
They're investigating into issues of companies trying to collect information about consumers in the US and using the data to determine different prices for different customers.
They are indeed, and this isn't a new issue per se, but how they're doing it seems to be the new thing.
How this story came about in the news this time is kind of interesting.
So here's what happened.
There was a reporter from CNN.
Her name was Elizabeth Buchwald, and she got a text message from a friend saying, oh, Starbucks has a buy one, get one free promotion.
Open up your app on your phone and you'll see it there.
Elizabeth opened up the app on her phone, but there was no buy one, get one free promotion there.
So she thought, huh?
What's going on?
So what she did was, now, remember, this is a CNN reporter, right?
So put on her reporter hat and went to work.