Not just groceries. I’ve been trying to move as much of my business as possible to private/local options.
- Credit union for financial services
- Local pharmacy instead of Wallgreens/CVS.
- Independent barber shop instead of a national chain.
- Local mechanic instead of taking my car back to the dealership for service.
Making these changes is not only my own small expression of disapproval against the behavior of corporate America, but it also keeps more of my money circulating within the local economy where it helps to strengthen the community instead of being shipped off to Wallstreet.
Absolutely. I’m as skeptical as anyone of companies cramming AI where it doesn’t belong, but this story is just Hertz being a shitty company and using AI as a scapegoat. Anyone with two braincells to rub together knows that when you’re implementing a new automatic system like this, you start out with the sensitivity turned way down and give human employees an easy way to override its rulings.
I’m happy to believe that the people running Hertz are dumb, but there’s no way they’re that dumb. They did this on purpose because they knew it would make them a ton of money in bogus fees, and they could just shift all the blame onto the AI.