How AI Can Help Companies Set Prices More Ethically

More than ever, companies are able to tailor prices across people, places, and time. They do this to maximize profit, and sometimes simply to survive. We're in a new era of supercharged price discrimination, made possible by two major scientific and technological trends. First, AI algorithms -- often trained on highly detailed behavioral data -- enable organizations to infer what people are willing to pay with unprecedented precision. Second, recent developments in behavioral science -- often invoked with the tagline "nudge" -- provide organizations greater ability to influence their customers' behaviors.