Pearl River      There’s so much hype these days about artificial intelligence that taking it all with a grain of salt seems the best course.  Our tech masters are in a life-or-death competition that’s driving way too much of the economy now, as they try to sort out who or what will be the winners and losers in this dog-eat-dog affair, which usually translates into all of us taking a beating.

I ran into a piece not long ago that made the case that AI could be a boon for consumers.  The claim was that it reduced disparities in access to critical information that sellers might have yet obscure in dealing with consumers.  Some economists argue that “asymmetric information…has been rendered empirically obsolete.”  The examples include Carfax for vehicle data, Lyft and Uber for correct routes for taxis, and Tripadvisor for food and lodging.  Frankly, I’m not wildly comfortable about any of those outfits standing up for consumer nirvana.  It also may just be a matter of degree.  To date the areas with stark information advantages for companies, like health care, home renovations, and the like have only shifted from 30% to 25% in the US.  In short, we’re going in the right direction, but still have a long way to travel.  In healthcare, for example, the AMA estimates that a $100 billion annually is spent in poor care and excess treatments, and that’s doctors talking about health care.

We all might wonder how the AI advocates think this will make a difference?  There’s some evidence that early adopters of things like ChatGPT, especially among younger people, lead many to believe they wouldn’t think of buying or signing a contract to buy a car or virtually any legal document without running it through the system.  Many are also using such systems to draft consumer complaints when they feel they were wronged, substituting no advice for at least some advice.  Once again, not to raise my eyebrows too archly, the advantage in securing responses for example in the more than one-million received by the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, researchers found that “49% of AI-assisted complaints received relief compared with 40% of human-written ones,” which is an improvement, but not a sea change.

Going up against companies that are wildly adopting AI also seems like we’re batting with our foot in the bucket.  I’ve seen too many examples even in these early days where many of these outfits are adopting something like individualized “surge pricing,” where they adjust the price based on their algorithms that chart the consumer’s desire.  Recently, my son was looking to replace an old model TV for a smart TV.  He went online to check out Walmart, and what he wanted was priced at over $600.  Wisely, he decided to actually go to the store and take a look.  For his trouble, he walked away with the same TV for $268, less than half of the web offering.  I’m not a computer expert, but don’t tell me that wasn’t AI doing the talking and stalking.

For most consumers, this brave new world of AI, I fear, will be a lot like the old world where caveat emptor – let the buyer beware — continues to be watchword for all of us all of the time.