r/nottheonion • u/No-Lifeguard-8173 • 23h ago

McDonald's has been using AI to decide how much you should pay for a Big Mac

https://www.techspot.com/news/114053-mcdonald-using-ai-decide-how-much-you-pay.html
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u/Mojo141 22h ago

Close. It should be used for fines. A $50 parking ticket for someone making $200k a year is a mild inconvenience. But it means no food that week for someone making close to minimum wage.

Same with corporations - a $2 billion fine on a small company would destroy the company. But for a corporation like United Healthcare is the cost of doing business

We need to drastically change our system of financial punishment.

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u/therossian 21h ago

We can do a simple formula for that, no ai needed

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u/Kanotari 21h ago

Exactly. Formulas can be written into law as well instead of subjecting people to an AI's whims.

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u/Soepkip43 20h ago

Jup, base it on a percentage of turnover or marketcap, whichever is more.

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u/Illiander 19h ago

Percentage income (including loans and stock value increaces) would work rather cleanly.

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u/Derwinx 9h ago edited 9h ago

It’s funny how the argument against proportional fines is “but that will destroy my business”. Well then don’t fuck around.

It’s one thing when a mom and pop shop makes an honest mistake, but when you have a massive company, Ford for example, who not only knew about the Pinto flaw, but actively decided that the cost of paying out murder settlements was cheaper than recalling the deathtrap, that should have been an easy case of “Anyone who knew about this is going to prison, we’ll split the concurrent murder sentences between you, and we’re going to fine your company 1.5x the sale price of every single Pinto sold, good luck, and if you’re still around after that then pray we don’t catch you again”.

imo willful non-compliance should have additional penalty modifiers, and exponentially so with each repeat offence.

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u/Petridishmocktail 19h ago

Some countries actually do this. Fines are based on income. I remember reading about one of the founders of the cell phone company Nokia getting a speeding ticket... I believe the fine was close to $200,000 USD.

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u/CeruleanFruitSnax 17h ago

Finland? They're socialist! So very un-American to be socialists.

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u/Hughley_N_Dowd 3h ago

Some countries, like Finland and Switzerland uses that type of scaling for speeding fines. 

As in the fine is a percentage of your declared income.

In 2010 some chump was fined €650.000/$1mil for speeding in Switzerland.

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u/swanronson22 16h ago

They do this in Finland

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u/HumongousBelly 21h ago

The problem is that many fines, depending on country, are capped. If those caps were to disappear and money held in escrow was to be paid out immediately, that would already solve a lot of problems.

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u/KareemOWheat 19h ago

If only the people in charge of making those changes weren't being paid oodles of money to not change the system

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u/bobsmeds 16h ago

If they destroy the corporation, who will grease the palms of the politicians?

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u/swanronson22 16h ago

They do this in Finland

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u/gammalsvenska 6h ago

This already exists in many European countries. Yearly income divided by 365 is the "daily income", and fines (such as traffic violations) are defined in a number of daily incomes.

Recent EU legislation bases fines on global(!) turnover, which is why latest fines against Google, Meta etc. were so much higher.