News and notes from around the interweb:
- Marriott will take away room assignment and elite upgrades from the front desk and turn it over to AI instead of giving hotels a priority list of guests to manually assign upgrades to, “Marriott will shortly be deploying an AI tool that will automate the task of hotel room assignments for front desk staff.”
The goal is cutting back on labor cost, “taking hours and hours of manual work — all that heads down work the associates do — and in a fraction of a second, 1.2 million rooms can be assigned.” The computer is likely to be more compliant than humans, but it comes down to upgrade rules and Bonvoy just eliminated their commitment to assign best available room to elites.
- The D in D0 stands for Dirty.
Yuck! Hey @AmericanAir, I do understand that when flights are delayed, turning an aircraft quickly is important. But not cleaning this sticky mess from AA1698 was really nasty. Everything was covered, even the top side of the tray table. I need a shower. pic.twitter.com/OmoOxk8May
— Jared (@phillyguy001) June 5, 2025
- TSA agent accused of stealing money from passenger during screening at Pittsburgh International Airport Many such stories. (HT: Joe)
- The nondelegation case against Trump’s travel ban
- I’m actually writing this from a Delta flight out of Los Angeles, across from an actress whose films… are not in the inflight entertainment system. Bummer.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus caught someone watching ‘Veep’ on a plane while she was sitting behind him
byu/Hopai79 indelta - Southwest Airlines flight attendants throw an inflight kindergarten graduation the one thing about the airline that is still good.
View on Threads
- The Delta Difference.
Don't pack anything breakable in there! You're flying those not so friendly, friendly skies! pic.twitter.com/FYHVI9pzQ9
— Croxxed Out (@FLCons) June 5, 2025
- Chase Now Allows Self-Service Moving Credit Line From One Card to Another
“Cut back on labor costs…” ok, so, literally ‘profits over people,’ yet again. Listen, I don’t mind if using software gets the job done, but I highly doubt that this change is going to result in any more upgrades than before. Generally, it seems like properties say it’s ‘unavailable’ by default and there’s often little way to ever verify. Basically, it’s a scam.
Let’s be clear. This will almost certainly not be implemented at the 70% of properties NOT managed by Marriott. Marriott can really only control its operations at the properties it manages. That’s a little under 30% these days. Of course, some will argue Marriott can’t even control properties it operates. That aside, this is 100% about reducing staff and lowering costs. Why pay for a rooms manager to do this if AI can?
@1990 – per my previous response to you I spent my entire career in IT. I actually took an AI course in college in the late 70s but it had nothing in common with what AI does today. Your comment about profits over people (which corporations frankly should always do to improve shareholder performance which is their primary objective) will only become more of an issue. I don’t know if you are aware but AI code generators are already eliminating many entry level IT jobs. Also, there was an article recently that stated there will be a tipping point (likely in next 12-18 months) were millions of jobs will be quickly eliminated by AI. Help desk/customer service, journalism, programming, etc will be heavily impacted and practically no white collar job is immune.
There was a projection that we could see record GDP and productivity due to AI but also 10% unemployment at the same time. As someone who spent my career in IT and also am very interested in economics and business this would be a fascinating occurrence as we have never had to deal with record growth and concurrent high unemployment. Frankly, as someone that is retired and heavily invested in the markets it likely will be the golden age for me but I’d sure hate to be starting my career right now.
Also there is an article today on Axios about how even the leading AI companies don’t really understand how the machines come up with their responses or some of the actions they take (some are retaliatory toward people or groups). This isn’t traditional programming where the machine does what you tell it to, AI LLM engines are programmed to assimilate large pool of data and then independently come up with answers. There is a lot of “black box” logic in there that event the people most knowledgeable about them (OpenAI for example) don’t understand.
Seems like a stretch to call it AI, other companies have been implementing programs like this for decades.
Just because you call it AI doesn’t mean that…it’s AI…or even requires AI! Seems like just an attempt to use a buzzword of some sort.
@1990 AI represents the next disruptive innovation in the workforce. The automobile, the assembly line, robotics, the internet. Each had a profound impact on labor, eliminating the need for some roles and creating new roles elsewhere. Each time, we’ve adapted and ultimately done better.
Implementation of AI doesn’t have to be as monolithic in its intent as you and @AC describe. It can enhance profits AND benefit the workforce and humanity.
We are adopting AI in new and exciting ways in healthcare. It’s changing some jobs and reducing the impact of staffing shortages elsewhere. Nothing is good or bad. It’s how you use it that makes it one or the other…or neither.
“AI” is just another name for “Fancy Statistics.”
@AC & @Parker — I’m not an AI ‘denier,’ yet I also feel there is an excessive ‘hype’ by its backers (investors, tech-bros) and simply those in media (it gets ‘clicks’ and ‘eyeballs’ to discuss it) that stand to make a lot of money by promoting it as an inevitable, market/humanity defining innovation… just like Fin-Tech, ‘there’s an app for that,’ Dot-Com, and PCs, before it. Some of that is true, though, the idea that everyone is out of work in 2-5 years time is hyperbolic. Companies that get ride of their workforce because of the false promises of AI are going to be let down. It’s still too early for that.
Relatedly, for geopolitics, we’re creating an artificial ‘arms race’ on this, too, causing advocates to urge unlimited investment so that we ‘don’t let the Chinese win’… fine, I’m no fan of the CCP, and certainly want us to prevail against their worldview. Yet, shouldn’t we be building more low-cost ‘drones’ and ‘anti-drone’ technology like the Ukrainians have been, instead of pretending like ‘AI-everything’ is the end-all, be-all for the future of war, labor, markets, culture, and continued existence of ‘life’ on the planet. It’s certainly a lot to ponder. Maybe we’re overthinking it.
What is the difference if a person says “no upgrade for you!” Or an AI bot says “no upgrade for you!”?
My only real concern is that Marriott will now be forced to add an AI service fee to your bill so that you can help pay for your own upgrade rejection.