AI Gas Cartel? BP, Walmart and 7-Eleven Sued for Fixing Fuel Prices

A group of furious California drivers filed a class-action lawsuit accusing major fuel retailers of using an AI tool to artificially inflate gasoline prices. The lawsuit targets fuel heavyweights like BP, Circle K, Marathon Petroleum, 7-Eleven, Walmart, and Albertsons, alleging they conspired to kill local competition.

According to the legal complaint, these corporate giants bypassed antitrust laws by delegating their pricing decisions to a single cloud-based software developed by a British company called Kalibrate. Instead of analyzing local supply and demand like honest businessmen, this algorithm allegedly scooped up competitor pricing data to coordinate highly-priced synchronization across 1,700 gas stations.

The drivers claim this algorithmic tag-team drove pump prices up by 30 cents per gallon in areas where the software was heavily deployed. In some extreme cases, prices surged to an astronomical $7 per gallon. For context, California drivers already suffer the nation’s steepest fuel costs, averaging $5.58 per gallon compared to the national average of $3.93.

This legal battle highlights a growing regulatory crackdown on software-assisted cartels. Just recently, New York passed a bill banning landlords from using algorithmic tools to set rent prices, explicitly stating that using such software constitutes an automatic conspiracy.

It seems the dream of a free market has officially been upgraded to a subscription-based AI cartel. While tech evangelists promise that neural networks will save humanity, corporations have quickly figured out that their best use case is making sure no consumer ever catches a break. The courts will now have to decide if a robot can be sent to prison for price gouging, or if the algorithm is simply too profitable to stop.

Source: Reuters