There’s a term doing the rounds right now: surveillance pricing. The short version is that a company uses data it has collected about you, your location, your browsing habits, your income bracket, your postcode, to decide what price to show you for a product. Not a universal price. Your price. The one an algorithm has decided you’re likely to pay.

The Washington Post is now facing a class action over exactly this. The allegation is that subscription prices were personalised based on collected user data. Different people, different prices, same product.

The recent debacle at the Chicago Sun-Times, where AI-generated book recommendations and fictitious experts made their way into print, has left me shaking my head while sipping my afternoon brew. Mind you, this isn’t just a simple editorial oversight - it’s a glimpse into a future that’s arriving faster than we can prepare for it.

Working in tech, I’ve witnessed firsthand how AI tools can streamline processes and reduce workload. But there’s a critical difference between using AI to enhance human capabilities and completely replacing human judgment. The Sun-Times incident perfectly illustrates what happens when we cross that line.