Episode 54 Bonus (Oct 2026): From the Care of Bodies to the Care of Minds; Library Journal, October 27, 2026

 Dave Lankes, Library Journal ; Episode 54 Bonus (Oct 2026): From the Care of Bodies to the Care of Minds

"This special bonus episode is from a keynote address delivered at the opening of the new ESSECI Public Library in Cuneo, Italy, at the end of September 2026. “From the Care of Bodies to the Care of Minds” explores what libraries can and must become in an age of generative AI, declining trust, and profound changes in how people create knowledge. Dave argues that libraries offer something machines cannot: accountable human relationships grounded in community. He calls on libraries to move beyond repositories of information and become platforms for conversation, cultural heritage, creativity, and collective action."

All the latest updates on AI data centers; The Verge, October 28, 2026

 Verge Staff and Justine Calma , The Verge; All the latest updates on AI data centers

"Massive new data centers are the physical foundation for tech companies’ hopes and dreams for AI. But the rush to expand warehouses full of energy-hungry servers has also kicked up fights across the world over their impact on power grids, utility bills, nearby communities, and the environment.

From audacious plans to launch data centers into space to the latest legal battles over pollution, The Verge has the biggest news and reporting surrounding data centers."

To make AI morally good, tech companies are turning to religion. But some say it isn’t that simple; AP, October 25, 2026

 KRYSTA FAURIA, AP; To make AI morally good, tech companies are turning to religion. But some say it isn’t that simple

"Religion is more than a set of rules to follow

For decades, scholars have pushed back against a widespread view of religion as a set of rules or principles that can be divorced from the “messy, practical, ad hoc” ways adherents live, argues Webb Keane, an anthropologist at the University of Michigan.

The idea that religion can be separated from things like culture and politics remains entrenched, even though it suffuses both in many ways. Some worry that AI companies, as they ask various faith leaders to answer ethical questions, will further perpetuate a theory of religion that fails to recognize the importance of doctrine, ritual and relationships.

Here’s the issue, Keane argues: If you assume that religion overall can offer a distinct set of extractable moral principles, using it to train AI risks prioritizing certain traditions and distorting others — particularly when it comes to faiths that do not see themselves primarily as a system of ethics.

“There’s a very conventional way of thinking of religion as a rule book,” he said. “It is certainly very tied to scriptural religion, and the scriptural religions at the end of the day really turn out to be the Abrahamic religions.”"

BC Professor Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over Use Of Copyrighted Textbooks; The Heights, October 25, 2026

Nikita Osadchiy , The Heights; BC Professor Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over Use Of Copyrighted Textbooks

"A Boston College finance professor is among six textbook authors suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, alleging the companies downloaded their books from pirate websites and used them without authorization to train their large language models (LLMs), including ChatGPT.

“OpenAI reproduced Plaintiffs’ and the Class’s Works without authorization by downloading them from shadow libraries, copying them into datasets and computer memory, converting them into training-ready formats, and copying them into the materials used to train their LLMs and ChatGPT,” the textbook authors argued in their complaint. 

The suit seeks to represent every textbook author whose copyrighted work OpenAI or Microsoft allegedly copied. 

Alan Marcus, the Mario J. Gabelli endowed professor of finance at the Carroll School of Management, filed the proposed class-action lawsuit on Aug. 14 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York alongside five current and former professors from across the country. 

The plaintiffs name Microsoft in the lawsuit for its role in building the infrastructure on which OpenAI trained its models and profiting by building those models into products like Bing Chat and Copilot, the complaint alleges."

Anthropic IPO filing warns some risks may be uninsurable. AI coverage will be issue for every company; CNBC, October 28, 2026

 Kevin Williams, CNBC; Anthropic IPO filing warns some risks may be uninsurable. AI coverage will be issue for every company

"Anthropic’s IPO filing includes many words covering many risks, from IP theft to security incidents, data loss, climate change, rogue agents and all the way to an existential crisis for humanity. Embedded in all of the risk language are basic questions about insurance: What’s going to be covered? Is it even possible to provide a policy for all of the ways that AI could go wrong? Anthropic, even with more cash than almost any company in America, couldn’t answer that question with confidence."

Owners of Elvis Presley’s Music Sue Anthropic for Copyright Infringement; The New York Times, October 25, 2026

Derrick Bryson Taylor, The New York Times; Owners of Elvis Presley’s Music Sue Anthropic for Copyright Infringement

The $41 million lawsuit contends that the A.I. company used Presley’s music to train its models without permission. Anthropic disagrees with the claims.

"The owners of Elvis Presley’s music sued the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, saying it trained its models on more than 200 of Presley’s songs without their permission, and accusing it of copyright infringement.

The suit, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of several parties, seeks a jury trial and more than $41 million, or $150,000 per song, in damages.

The owners of the music, who include the licensing company Authentic Brands Group, Raleigh Music Publishing, multiple trusts and at least one individual, also accused Anthropic, the company behind the popular chatbot Claude, of circumventing measures used to protect the music and removing or altering copyright management information from the songs."

Gulliver fans celebrate three centuries of Jonathan Swift’s classic satire; The Guardian, October 28, 2026

 Rory Carroll, The Guardian; Gulliver fans celebrate three centuries of Jonathan Swift’s classic satire

"In March 1726, an Irish clergyman visited London and arranged for a courier to deliver a manuscript to a publisher under cover of night. The dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin knew his novel would cause trouble and wanted to publish it anonymously.

His name was Jonathan Swift and the story was called Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. The satirical work was published that October and is better known 300 years on as Gulliver’s Travels.

An immediate sensation, it skewered Georgian pretensions and entered popular culture through translations, children’s versions, comics and films. The anniversary is now being celebrated at Swift’s alma mater, Trinity College Dublin, and at events around Ireland.

Exhibitions, festivals, seminars, art competitions and workshops are exploring the origins of Swift’s masterpiece, its retelling through a feminist lens, and its prophetic depiction of a society in thrall to a form of artificial intelligence...

Gulliver’s experiences in Laputa, a floating island dedicated to arts and science, resonated with our era’s anxieties about technology, said Douglas. Its inhabitants seek to extract sunbeams from cucumbers and obtain knowledge via an “engine” of wires, handles and paper that can produce tracts on philosophy, poetry and mathematics “without the least assistance from genius or study”."

Neil Young sues Trump for $10M over unauthorized use of 'Rockin' in the Free World'; ABA Journal, October 27, 2026

 AMANDA ROBERT , ABA Journal; Neil Young sues Trump for $10M over unauthorized use of 'Rockin' in the Free World'

"Legendary musician Neil Young is suing President Donald Trump for $10 million over his use of song “Rockin’ in the Free World” at a midterm election rally in Ohio in early October.

In an Oct. 26 complaint, which was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, Young alleges that the PAC Trump 47 Committee played his song before Trump took the stage at the rally in Youngstown, Ohio, despite promising not to do so in a settlement six years ago...

“‘Rockin’ in the Free World’ is a blistering anthem that contrasts the hollow promises of American political rhetoric with the harsh realities faced by the poor, homeless and forgotten,” Young said in his complaint, which seeks relief for copyright infringement. “The lyrics paint vivid street-level portraits—a mother discarding her baby, addicts lost in despair, garbage piling in the shadows of prosperity—while the repeated chorus delivers a savage irony, celebrating freedom that clearly isn’t shared by all.”

“In short, the song is the opposite of everything that Donald J. Trump stands for,” Young added."

AI Billionaires Are Flooding Money Into Politics to Influence Elections, But It’s Backfiring; Futurism, October 24, 2026

Frank Landymore, Futurism ; AI Billionaires Are Flooding Money Into Politics to Influence Elections, But It’s Backfiring

Even a whiff of AI money seems to disgust voters.

"Unreasonably wealthy AI plutocrats are pouring billions of dollars into US elections. 

Elon Musk alone has pumped more than $445 million into Republican campaigns ahead of the midterms, after spending a near-equal sum to get president Donald Trump elected in the last election cycle. Leading The Future, a Super PAC backed by OpenAI and Palantir cofounders and prominent tech venture capitalists including Marc Andreessen, has amassed $140 million to dole out to pro-AI candidates.

But all that money doesn’t seem to be helping the AI industry’s interests, because its image is still in the toilet.

A new analysis from Guardrails Action, an AI accountability advocacy group, found that voters in key battleground states still harbor mostly negative feelings towards the AI industry, with the tech being such a toxic topic that it’s potentially driving voters to cross the aisle."

Put Your A.I. Agents to Work With These 5 Killer Tasks; The New York Times, October 25, 2026

 Brian X. Chen, The New York Times; Put Your A.I. Agents to Work With These 5 Killer Tasks

When you start using Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s dots for these tasks — like applying for jobs and booking hard-to-get restaurant tables — you may never go back.

"Since its debut last month, Meta’s Muse, the artificially intelligent assistant that performs tasks on a user’s behalf, has been the most downloaded phone app. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has responded with a competitor called dots, a similar assistant that costs $100 a month to use.

Welcome to the era of agents, digital assistants that use our devices for us. Though they share many similarities with chatbots, agents like Muse and dots serve a different purpose. Chatbots primarily provide answers to questions. Agents are essentially bots with their own computer and web browser, so they can do more complicated things like applying for jobs, booking restaurant tables and sending emails."

Most Americans say AI is bad for society, oppose more data centers: ABC/Post/Ipsos poll; ABC News, October 23, 2026

 Emily Guskin, ABC News; Most Americans say AI is bad for society, oppose more data centers: ABC/Post/Ipsos poll

"A majority of Americans say artificial intelligence is a bad thing for society and about two-thirds oppose the construction of new data centers in the U.S., with opposition even higher to building data centers in people's own communities, according to an ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel...

Younger Americans are more likely to say AI is bad for society than older Americans: 65% of Americans under 30 say AI is bad for society along with 59% of those 30 to 39. A slimmer majority of Americans 40 and older say AI is bad for society (53%)...

Risks and benefits of AI

When Americans were asked about various potential risks with the growth of AI, majorities say that most of the possible consequences are a "high risk."

Nearly three-quarters of Americans, 73%, say there is a high risk of AI hacking secure computer systems, including majorities across partisan groups and age groups...

Two-thirds of Americans say the federal government is not doing enough to regulate the growth and development of AI technology, including majorities of Democrats (80%), independents (66%) and Republicans (54%)...

Two-thirds of Americans (66%) oppose the construction of new data centers in the U.S., growing to 72% when asked about building a new data center in their community."

Trump’s ‘Smart Wall’ of A.I. Cameras Is Watching the Border, and More Than a Million People; The New York Times, October 22, 2026

Bora Erden and Nicholas Nehamas, The New York Times; Trump’s ‘Smart Wall’ of A.I. Cameras Is Watching the Border, and More Than a Million People

"For decades, Republicans and Democrats agreed that a “smart wall” of surveillance cameras and other high-tech equipment would be a potent tool to stop illegal immigration and drug trafficking across the southern border.

Now, the smart wall has arrived — and it is more powerful than many could have imagined.

Already, more than one million people in the United States and Mexico live in areas along the border where they can be seen by A.I.-powered surveillance towers, a New York Times analysis found. At least four million more live within view of an older generation of cameras that the government plans to retrofit with A.I. technology.

And the Trump administration has secured more than $1 billion to build 1,500 new A.I. towers. The goal is full coverage along the U.S. border with Mexico, and there are plans to install towers near Canada, as well as in coastal areas and in Puerto Rico.

But a rising public backlash against A.I. and growing anxiety over mass surveillance have left some communities with an uncomfortable question: Is the potential loss of privacy worth it?"

Deciding with fake images: More candidates are using AI in political ads to get your vote; NBC NEWS, October 23, 2026

 Anagilmara Vílchez, NBC; Deciding with fake images: More candidates are using AI in political ads to get your vote

At least 220 ads — mostly Republican — generated or enhanced with artificial intelligence have circulated in the lead-up to the midterms, at a cost of almost $137 million.

"Evette is not the only one whose image was manipulated in the lead-up to the midterm elections. The Wesleyan Media Project, a group of experts that tracks political propaganda in campaigns, identified at least 220 ads produced or enhanced with artificial intelligence by candidates or political action committees this election cycle. They cost just under $137 million.

It’s a significant leap in the use of this technology compared to 2024, when the investment in AI was less than $50,000 during the presidential election. As of May of this year, the money spent on these AI ads was already $20 million."

Supreme Court recusals stop music case in its tracks, strike warning note; NPR, October 21, 2026

Carrie Johnson, NPR; Supreme Court recusals stop music case in its tracks, strike warning note

"No quorum, because four of the nine justices recused themselves. The court did not explain why Sonia Sotomayor, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson stepped away from the case.

But the watchdog group Fix the Court has an idea: All four of those justices have book deals with Penguin Random House, part of a German conglomerate that's a party in the music copyright case.

"When you have a financial stake in a party or your finances could somehow be impacted by the outcome of a case, under federal law and the Supreme Court code of conduct, the justices are supposed to recuse," said Gabe Roth, who leads Fix the Court...

Three years ago, the Supreme Court published a code of conduct. But the long and short of it is, the justices largely police themselves.

Blackman, the law professor, said Congress should pass legislation to address the book royalties issue...

Tim Kappel is a lawyer for the songwriter in the case the court declined to hear. In a written statement, Kappel said the recusal speaks to the broad impact of copyright law and the expansive definition of what it means to be an artist."

Publisher cuts ties with Quebec author accused of AI use in award-winning novel; CBC, October 21, 2026

Annabelle Olivier , CBC; Publisher cuts ties with Quebec author accused of AI use in award-winning novel

Thélyson Orélien had denied AI use, admitted to past plagiarism

"Montreal publishing house Éditions du Boréal announced Wednesday it is ending its professional relationship with Thélyson Orélien — a Haitian-born, Quebec-based author. 

In a news release, the publisher said new information, confirmed over the course of recent days, indicates that artificial intelligence was used in the writing process of Orélien's novel, C’était ça ou mourir, published earlier this year."

Meta quietly delays controversial update that critics say will allow website scraping; Fast Company, October 23, 2026

 SARAH FIELDING, Fast Company; Meta quietly delays controversial update that critics say will allow website scraping

"Earlier this month, Meta Platforms announced controversial new commercial terms of use for business accounts that critics said would give the social media giant broad authority to crawl and scrape web content associated with those accounts.

The new commercial terms—met by strong outrage from news publishers that produce online content and rely on Meta’s platforms for distribution—were set to go into effect on Friday, October 30.

Now, without any notice, Meta has pushed back the date of the change by three weeks to Friday, November 20. The delay comes one day after a major trade group for news publishers sent a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding that the forthcoming terms be withdrawn.

Despite the delayed date, the controversial language in the updated terms appeared to still be intact as of Friday...

On Thursday, October 22, the News/Media Alliance, which represents over 2,000 publications, wrote an open letter to Zuckerberg demanding that the company withdraw the updated commercial terms of use before they go into effect. 

The letter points to concerns that Meta will use publishers’ own content to compete with them, while giving them minimal ability to use Meta’s services and block ad crawlers. It further states that the new terms of use “grant Meta the right to exploit, without prior permission or fair compensation, journalism”

“These harms threaten the financial viability of the free press,” the letter, signed by News/Media Alliance president and CEO Danielle Coffey, further states.

It continues: “Once Meta has copied publishers’ content and built it into its products, the harm will be practically impossible to undo.”

The Myth of Safe AI; The Atlantic, October 22, 2026

 Matteo Wong , The Atlantic; The Myth of Safe AI

Silicon Valley promises to make AI benevolent. That may be technically impossible.

"Three months prior to the launch of ChatGPT, OpenAI published what would prove to be a prescient blog outlining the firm’s approach to ensuring that its AI models would be safe and beneficent. This goal, known as “alignment”—as in, aligning AI with human values—is nebulous, grand, and perhaps the AI industry’s most foundational promise. The notion is right there in OpenAI’s mission statement to ensure AI “benefits all of humanity” and listed as one of Anthropic’s “primary” goals.

Yet even in the summer of 2022, OpenAI was admitting a sort of defeat: “There is currently no known indefinitely scalable solution to the alignment problem,” three of its researchers wrote in that same blog post, adding that developing one “is likely very difficult.”

If the goal of keeping AI beneficial to mankind sounds rather vague, it is. Four years later, the alignment problem remains unsolved, and for that matter, there isn’t consensus about what the problem even is. Meanwhile, AI bots are autonomously hacking sovereign nations. And sending fake murder tips to police hotlines. And creating aliases to launch phishing campaigns. OpenAI and Anthropic still can’t really tell you what an aligned AI model looks like. But anybody can tell you it doesn’t look like this.

The most influential AI executives and investors in the world fundamentally disagree about the nature of the technology and, more pragmatically, how to make their products safe."

Writers get some plagiarism protection with new AI-cloaking tool; AV Club, October 20, 2026

 Dennis Perkins  , AV Club; Writers get some plagiarism protection with new AI-cloaking tool

"With writers everywhere understandably pissed that voracious AI tools are increasingly stealing their original works to train other AI tools, the Writers Guild of America East has some welcome relief. According to a WGAE press release today, all guild members will have access to Cloak, a patent-pending new software which will prevent most AI engines from “ingesting” their content. 

According to the Guild, writers can use Cloak to submit work to producers, agents, actors, and other actual humans who might want to read it, while ensuring no AI snooping agents can pilfer their hard work for nefarious, tech bro, copyright-dodging purposes."

Hundreds Sue Meta for Copyright Infringement, Rejecting Class Action Payouts; Publishers Weekly, October 21, 2026

Ed Nawotka , Publishers Weekly; Hundreds Sue Meta for Copyright Infringement, Rejecting Class Action Payouts

"Nearly 300 authors filed copyright infringement claims against Meta Platforms on October 19 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleging the company trained its AI models on pirated copies of their books and, more recently, on physical books it bought and scanned without a license.

Rather than join a class action suit, in which a few named plaintiffs sue on behalf of everyone, each author is pursuing an individual claim...

Plaintiffs range in prominence: Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the Maisie Dobbs mysteries; Reyna Grande, a memoirist; Mark Spragg, a novelist; Rachel Nuwer, a journalist; Silvia Foti, author of The Nazi’s Granddaughter; and Minxin Pei, a scholar on China.

All of the authors signed up through ClaimsHero, a platform that partnered with Freedman Normand Friedland and Stris & Maher last fall to recruit authors to opt out of the $1.5 billion Anthropic settlement and sue on their own. The new suits arrive as the first cases from that effort approach trial.

Suits brought by Chicken Soup for the Soul, by academic publisher Cognella and by Cambronne, the company of journalist John Carreyrou, are among the related cases against Meta scheduled for jury trials beginning May 3, 2027."

Acclaimed Author Denies Using A.I. but Admits Plagiarism; The New York Times, October 13, 2026

Ségolène Le Stradic, The New York Times; Acclaimed Author Denies Using A.I. but Admits Plagiarism

"A Haitian-Canadian author accused of literary malpractice — including plagiarizing other writers and using artificial intelligence to write his award-winning new novel — has admitted to the plagiarism but denied using A.I. to write parts of the book.

The author, Thélyson Orélien, apologized in a statement on Tuesday for claiming “as my own texts that are not mine” — a reference to recent accusations that he had plagiarized the content of opinion articles and a short story that he published more than a decade ago.

But Mr. Orélien said that it was “slander and heresy” to claim that he had used A.I. to write parts of “It Was Either That or Die,” a novel published this year to initial acclaim.

“I did use research tools here and there, particularly when it came to foreign idioms,” Mr. Orélien said of writing that book, without clarifying what those tools were. “But no sentence in this book was created by a machine,” he added."

Meta Ordered to Pay $25 Billion for Deceiving Users on Privacy; The New York Times, October 21, 2026

  Eli Tan and Cecilia Kang, The New York Times ; Meta Ordered to Pay $25 Billion for Deceiving Users on Privacy

The penalty, one of the largest levied against the tech giant, stemmed from a lawsuit by New Mexico claiming the social media company had misled users about their data privacy.

"A New Mexico judge ordered Meta to pay $25 billion on Wednesday for deceiving users about its data privacy practices, one of the largest penalties levied against a tech giant.

New Mexico sued Meta in 2021 over a scandal involving the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, saying the social media company had misled users with its public statements about their data privacy. Last month, after a two-week trial, a jury in the State District Court in Santa Fe ruled against Meta, saying the company had committed 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws. Each violation carried a penalty of up to $5,000.

On Wednesday, Judge Francis J. Mathew of the State District Court in Santa Fe issued the landmark penalty. 

The move was another blow to Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, as it has racked up court losses over the harms that its social media platforms have caused users. States and consumers have filed thousands of lawsuits over issues such as how Facebook and Instagram endangered child safety, led to social media addiction, used people’s data without their consent and infringed on their privacy."

Mom Calls Out School for Making an AI-Generated Photo of 6-Year-Old Daughter as an Adult (Exclusive); People,October 20, 2026

 Georgia Slater, People; Mom Calls Out School for Making an AI-Generated Photo of 6-Year-Old Daughter as an Adult (Exclusive)

"Anderson also raised concerns about how schools are using AI and whether parents are consenting to using these systems.

“I think the initial concern was ultimately the privacy implications. What software was used? Was it an outside platform? What happens to those pictures after? Did any of us actually consent to that?” she says. “Those are questions I think every parent deserves answers to.”

“Children cannot meaningfully consent to this sort of use; I think our children deserve protection, not only of their image, but of their minds,” Anderson adds."

New AI tool can predict cancer survival by a single patient selfie, study suggests; The Guardian, October 19, 2026

 Andrew Gregory, The Guardian; New AI tool can predict cancer survival by a single patient selfie, study suggests

"Doctors have developed an artificial intelligence tool that can predict a cancer patient’s chances of survival from a single photograph of their face.

The AI system was custom-built by experts at Mass General Brigham, a nonprofit, integrated academic healthcare system in Massachusetts, to estimate biological age and directly predict survival outcomes in patients diagnosed with cancer.

It is one of the most comprehensive demonstrations to date of how AI analysis of a selfie could help assess a patient’s health and potentially guide their medical care, and was trained on data from more than 40 million facial photographs across a range of ethnicities and ages.

Details of the breakthrough were published in the Lancet Digital Health journal."

AI agents are only as good as the personal information you share. That raises privacy concerns; WRAL News, October 19, 2026

 WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS , WRAL News; AI agents are only as good as the personal information you share. That raises privacy concerns

"Many have welcomed AI agents into their online lives, and raved about how personalized assistants like Muse can handle everyday tasks with ease — from snagging a dinner reservation or planning a trip, to organizing email inboxes. But like other AI bots, the agents are only as good as the information they have access to. They perform better the more they know about a user — and perhaps also that person’s friends, family and even colleagues. That raises privacy concerns."

Always on, always listening: New AI devices are pushing legal limits and could put users in jeopardy; CNBC, October 18, 2026

 MacKenzie, Sigalos, Annie Palmer , CNBC; Always on, always listening: New AI devices are pushing legal limits and could put users in jeopardy

"Many state wiretap and eavesdropping laws are written around whether a private communication was intercepted or its contents were acquired — not simply whether a conventional audio recording was created. 

Colin Zick, a privacy and data security attorney at Foley Hoag, said Apple appears to have learned from the first wave of litigation over voice assistants. But the new technology raises questions those earlier cases never had to answer: Can a system that is continuously listening, interpreting speech and turning it into a summary still amount to an interception if it never saves the underlying audio?

Some state laws define interception broadly. Massachusetts, for example, defines an intercepting device to include equipment capable of “transmitting, receiving, amplifying, or recording” a communication, while the “contents” of a communication can include its substance and meaning. 

In Zick’s view, a device that continuously receives speech and produces a written summary could potentially fall within that language even without retaining an audio file.

And in some states, the bigger legal risk may fall not on Apple, Amazon or other AI gadget makers but on the person wearing the device."

Consumer apprehension grows as US retailers adopt AI-assisted pricing tools; AP, October 18, 2026

  DEE-ANN DURBIN AND ANNE D’INNOCENZIO, AP; Consumer apprehension grows as US retailers adopt AI-assisted pricing tools

"U.S. consumers aren’t just frustrated with high prices. They’re angry and confused about the increasingly high-tech ways that restaurant chains and major retailers are setting those prices.

Digital price tags are rapidly replacing paper ones in grocery aisles. Artificial intelligence tools help businesses decide what to charge by predicting how customers might respond. Terms like “dynamic pricing” and “surveillance pricing” are stirring anxiety on social media, where users wonder if different people are getting different prices for the same product. 

Americans have grown accustomed to changing prices when booking flights, hotel rooms and rides, but the prospect of everyday spending shaped by algorithms they don’t understand and personal data they may not realize they’re sharing has touched a nerve.

“There are major tensions happening right now between who’s really going to have the power with some of these algorithms and usage of bots and AI: the companies or the shopper,” said Katie Thomas, who leads an internal consumer behavior think tank at the management consulting firm Kearney."