Thursday, December 12, 2024

AI Is ‘Helping' With Your Online Holiday Shopping, Whether You Like It Or Not *

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These programs make recommendations based on purchase history, browsing behavior and demographics. They also sharpen the results from online product searches, adjust prices based on competitive factors, and improve product placement or promotions. AI-powered customer service can answer questions and take orders. AI can even enable apparel shoppers to virtually ⁘try on⁘ clothes to see if they⁘ll fit.

This integration of AI with routine tasks of our everyday lives isn⁘t new, but its ubiquity is growing. Voice-operated digital assistants like Apple⁘s Siri, Amazon⁘s Alexa and Google Assistant remind us of appointments, tell us if it⁘s cold outside and control smart devices at home. The ChatGPT program and its imitators help draft emails and term papers. AI-powered streaming platforms like Netflix and music services like Spotify make uncanny recommendations, sometimes seeming to know our interests better than we know ourselves.

Merchants say their embrace of AI creates more efficient and personal shopping experiences. If Santa can tell when you⁘ve been bad or good, as the Christmas carol goes, imagine what a computer analyzing every keystroke can surmise about you and your holiday shopping list.

In the U.S., this incursion is largely unregulated, which could be risky based on how AI is being used. The European Union has developed a sensible AI regulatory framework that rates the risk from ⁘minimal⁘ to ⁘unacceptable.⁘

Minimal risks include spam filters that use AI to better screen out junk emails and the like. An unacceptable risk threatens fundamental rights, such as using facial recognition and deepfakes to influence elections. Under the EU system, that⁘s not allowed.

⁘High-risk⁘ AI covers a lot of sensitive ground, from managing road traffic to grading students and evaluating employees. The risk comes from the potential for things to go badly wrong, and the EU requires those systems to meet stringent standards before being unleashed on the public.

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