Thanks to Big Tech, our dystopian moment grows darker by the day. Our near future will be defined, in part, by a three-headed hydra. Mark Hurst examines the emerging crises of money, water, and truth.
What if the retailer that sold you both of these items had raised their prices slightly, just for you, based on your previous shopping habits? Because it had access to data that pigeonholed you as a stressed-out parent who won’t notice that you’re being upcharged for medical supplies, especially at 5 a.m.? Because it could? This is known as surveillance pricing, and a recent study from the Federal Trade Commission suggests that it happens all the time.• A complementary problem is surveillance wages. From Uber for Nursing: How an AI-Powered Gig Model Is Threatening Health Care (Roosevelt Institute, Dec 17, 2024):
“Gig nursing apps may determine pay by what the firm knows about how much a nurse was willing to accept for a previous assignment, how often they bid for shifts, or how much credit card or other kinds of debt they might hold.”• From The Markup (March 13, 2025), a story about a California bill to combat surveillance pricing:
Amazon, ride-sharing apps, travel companies, and retail giants such as Staples and Target have engaged in the practice, which can set different prices for customers based on factors including internet browsing data or where they live. In one recent example published by SFGATE, a person in the Bay Area was offered a hotel room for $500 more than people in less affluent areas.• Delta Announces New System Where AI Makes Up the Price for Your Ticket on the Spot (Futurism, July 18, 2025)
companies are now using location data, browsing history and demographic background to individualize prices. . . . The Stop AI Price Gouging and Wage Fixing Act of 2025, which Casar will introduce Wednesday, would prohibit the use of surveillance-based price and wage setting. The bill comes on the heels of a study by the Federal Trade Commission and as some states seek to ban surveillance pricing as well.• How Uber Became A Cash-Generating Machine (by Len Sherman, June 23, 2025):
. . . Casar noted that Delta Air Lines is one company that is integrating AI into its pricing. On an investor call this month, Delta president Glen Hauenstein said the airline's goal is to have a fifth of all its fares set by an artificial intelligence program, up from 3% currently. But the company disputed in a statement that prices would be set based on personal information.
Uber’s upfront pricing policy largely decoupled price and pay from trip time and distance, enabling Uber to selectively raise prices closer to an algorithmically-determined maximum each consumer might be willing to pay for a given trip, while lowering pay to an algorithmically-determined minimum any nearby driver might be willing to accept.Also:
. . . Before upfront pricing, Uber’s rate card policy guaranteed drivers a minimum pay level on every trip – no exceptions. But under upfront pricing, Uber can pay whatever any driver is willing to accept on each trip.
In fact, on 28% of 2024 trips, our profiled driver was paid less than he would have earned had the rate card from two years earlier still been in effect, despite double-digit inflation in auto operating costs over this period.
A data center like Meta’s, which was completed last year, typically guzzles around 500,000 gallons of water a day. New data centers [will] require millions of gallons of water a day.Some places will have to start rationing water - to enable AI slop.
After Meta broke ground on a $750 million data center on the edge of Newton County, Ga., the water taps in Beverly and Jeff Morris’s home went dry.This is a problem throughout the region:
The couple’s house, which uses well water, is 1,000 feet from Meta’s new data center. Months after construction began in 2018, the Morris’s dishwasher, ice maker, washing machine and toilet all stopped working, said Beverly Morris, now 71. Within a year, the water pressure had slowed to a trickle. Soon, nothing came out of the bathroom and kitchen taps.
The Morris’s experience is one of a growing number of water-related issues around Newton County, which is a 1.5-hour drive east of Atlanta and has a population of about 120,000 people. As tech giants like Meta build data centers in the area, local wells have been damaged, the cost of municipal water has soared and the county’s water commission may face a shortage of the vital resource.• Why Do Data Centers Use Water? from "Data Center Water Usage: A Comprehensive Guide" by Mary Zhang, Jan 17, 2024:
The situation has become so dire that Newton County is on track to be in a water deficit by 2030, according to a report last year. If the local water authority cannot upgrade its facilities, residents could be forced to ration water.
While water cooling is efficient and particularly effective in managing high heat densities, making it a preferred option for large ‘hyperscale’ data centers, it raises environmental concerns. One of the primary issues is the significant water usage, which is a pressing concern, especially in regions facing water scarcity.
Ryff, a stealthy L.A.-based startup founded in 2018, helped Coca-Cola insert images of Coke bottles and banners into classic footage from past tournaments, like UCLA’s 2006 finals run and North Carolina State’s improbable championship in 1983.• A.I. Is Poised to Rewrite History. Literally.: “The technology’s ability to read and summarize text is already making it a useful tool for scholarship. How will it change the stories we tell about the past?” (gift link, Bill Wasik in the NYT, June 16, 2025). Excerpts:
[Ryff cofounder Roy] Taylor himself is reluctant to seek out too much publicity for fear of a backlash. . . . “We believe the general public, if they have a preference, veer towards being less comfortable with digital anything right now,” Taylor said.
there is, I confess, something seductive about the idea of letting A.I. read for me . . . it seems inevitable that historians and other nonfiction writers will turn to it for assistance . . . But it also seems inevitable that this power to help search and synthesize historical texts will change the kinds of history books that are written.But with recent studies about LLM usage causing cognitive decline, deskilling, even psychosis – not to mention the constant threat of errors (so-called "hallucination") creeping into results, is it worth it?
When I asked Stacy Schiff, the author of decorated biographies of Cleopatra and Véra Nabokov, about the notion of consulting A.I. on how to structure a piece of writing, she replied, “To turn to A.I. for structure seems less like a cheat than a deprivation, like enlisting someone to eat your hot fudge sundae for you.”And then there’s the Greedo-shot-first problem...