Incident 407: Uber's Surge Pricing Reportedly Offered Disproportionate Service Quality along Racial Lines

Description: Uber's surge-pricing algorithm which adjusts prices to influence car availability inadvertently caused better service offering such as shorter wait times for majority white neighborhoods.

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Alleged: Uber developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed poor neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
407
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2016-02-03
Editors
Khoa Lam
Uber seems to offer better service in areas with more white people. That raises some tough questions.
washingtonpost.com · 2016

The goal of Uber's surge-pricing algorithm is to influence car availability by dynamically adjusting prices. When surge is in effect, and prices are higher, the idea is that the supply of drivers is increased while at the same time demand i…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.