We should be tech literate enough here to know that “AI” has become a near meaningless term that encompasses all sorts of technologies and the differences between the two version of AI in your comparison are big enough to make this a false equivalency.

I think that you are misinterpreting their intent. Delta Air Lines' President Glen Hauenstein said:

    > the company's AI price-setting technology sets fares by predicting "the amount people are willing to pay for the premium products related to the base fares."

As someone who regularly gets quoted higher prices than others for the same airline ticket, I totally agree, but given that I know that airlines make razor-thin margins (often less than 5%), it's not totally obvious that this can be attributed to greed or malice. It's possible the airlines that set their prices "honestly" simply do not exist because they can't compete.

The article is about using "AI" for more frequently updated dynamic pricing. However, the company they hired says they don't use personal data. And logically, how would that even work? Price look-ups come from all sorts of aggregators via booking systems that don't helpfully pass along your info or allow Javascript to be ran to fingerprint your system/browser. It could work if you shop for fares on the airline's website.

Yeah, this has that schoolyard "hey, no fair winning, new rule only I get the good ball!" energy all over it.

Unfortunately I expect this to get continually worse for the foreseeable future. We already have "we can use AI to crack things but you can't" pretty well in place and that is just the harbinger. Companies can use AIs to "nudge" us to their heart's content but we can't use AI to counter it is pretty obviously going to be something they push for.

"Rules for thee but not for me" is the default unless there are strong efforts to counteract it.

> to set each individual shopper's price as high as possible

Or, equivalently, lower the price for those who couldn't afford it otherwise, while still remaining profitable. As others have said here, airlines are low margin, so what it means is that everyone who pays more effectively subsidize those who pay less.

How fair it is depends on your definition of fairness. If your definition of fairness is that everyone should pay the same price for the same service, from a poor, indebted student to a billionaire, then it is unfair. If it is more about giving everyone the same opportunities, then individual pricing can be seen as fairer. The wealthy business traveller will see it as price gouging, but will fly anyways because he can afford it, but the student will be able to fly when he otherwise wouldn't be able to.

Customers using AI for their advantage, as to pay less than they can afford will change the dynamic. Instead of a system where travelers pay as much as they can afford, we get to a system where those who don't know how to use technology to their advantage subsidize those who do, which, to me, is the least fair of all.

Now, you are free to use any trick you want to pay less, in the same way that airlines are using every trick to make you pay more, that's the game, and I am certainly playing it myself. The law and regulations are the rules, and to me, it does not unfairly favor the airlines, otherwise, they would have much higher margins.