Hubert,
It appears there is some confusion. I certainly never suggested that YOU were
one to conflate AI with ChatGPT. I was referring to the reader for whom the
paper was written (by many of their own admissions). Certainly no offense
intended, and I understand how that would be insulting, but it's a simple
misunderstanding.
If you reread the response, I think you'll find that misunderstanding to be
easily resolved. Â
But, if that simple quote was somehow mis-interpreted as a personal insult, how
much of the original response was due to the same mis-reading? Â
In the end, it doesn't matter. My only ask is that you pause to make sure you
understand what you're reading and in what context before you publicly pronounce
someone else's work as "a useless load of hot air" and that it "provides
absolutely no value."Â Â
Keep it professional.
Courtney
On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 1:29 PM Hubert Horan via Mifnet
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Sorry for delayed response I have been riding trains in Central and South
> Asia. I am emailing this response to you at the same time I am posting it on
> Mifnet
>
> My 19 Sep post was in the context of a Mifnet discussion that began in July
> that had been provoked by industry press reports that Glen Hauenstein had told
> investors that Delta expected major returns from its ongoing project to have
> “artificial intelligence” set prices. My original July post suggested that if
> Hauenstein’s claims could be confirmed this could be one of the biggest
> stories in aviation, we need to figure out what’s actually going on. The July
> discussion focused on three questions:
>
> 1. Was the Delta/Fletcherr “AI” project designed to give Delta the ability to
> implement first-degree price discrimination (whether implemented now or in the
> future) so that individuals making identical pricing requests at the same
> point in time might be shown different prices based on Delta’ perceptions of
> their price elasticity?
>
> 2. What exactly did Hauenstein mean when he said AI would set Delta prices?
> What would Large Language Model/Generative AI pricing do differently than
> Delta’ longstanding PYM processes? Was Delta expecting “AI” to make marginal
> improvements to its longstanding RM function or significantly transform them?
> If the latter, what major RM shortcomings would “AI” solve? What totally new
> capabilities would “AI price setting” introduce?
>
> 3. In order of magnitude terms, were the revenue gains from introducing “AI
> pricing” likely to be incremental/useful or huge/competitively powerful? Was
> increased revenue from first-degree price discrimination an important part of
> the reason for Hauenstein’s optimism with his investors?
>
> Â
>
> Neither Delta’s public statements nor subsequent press coverage provided clear
> answers to these questions. Subsequent Delta statements implied they don’t
> intend to introduce first-degree price discrimination, but they haven’t ruled
> it out in the future and have made no effort to demonstrate that the big gains
> Hauenstein is promising investors come from sources other than first-degree
> price discrimination. Â Again, the comment from Senator Gallego who thinks
> Hauenstein is either lying to his investors (about huge potential gains) or to
> Congress (about disavowing first-degree price discrimination).
>
> The subsequent Mifnet discussion recognized that any effort to implement
> first-degree price discrimination would be a huge industry issue but would
> face a variety of challenges. While we could speculate, no one seemed able to
> confidently answer the three questions.
>
> Once Ronell distributed your paper, the question for the Mifnet discussion was
> whether it helped answer the three questions. I stand by what I told the
> Mifnet on the 19th—no it didn’t, and I provided explanations with direct
> quotes justifying that conclusion. Your response not only failed to clarify
> how you would answer the three questions but ignored almost all the evidence I
> presented demonstrating that you didn’t have clear answers to those questions.
>
> Will the AI project enable first-degree price discrimination? Biggest question
> of all. We all know airlines have long had access to lots of “personal
> information.” But is the Delta/Fletcherr project designed to change the use
> this information so Delta can show different prices to different customers?
> Your paper ignored this, and when I highlighted it in my post of the 19th you
> ignored it again. Your paper misrepresented public concerns about the use of
> anti-competitive market power in order to capture consumer surplus as concerns
> about data privacy. Your response ignored my objection that the single quote
> from a Georgia TV station you used to represent the backlash to Hauenstein’s
> statements similarly misrepresented the industry/public debate over
> first-degree price discrimination.
>
> Will AI drive major, dramatic changes to Delta RM, and if so how? No one could
> read your paper without missing your Very Strong Implications that this is a
> Really Big Deal. Your paper used the words revolution/revolutionary ten times.
> Delta/Fletcherr “have begun to automate airline pricing.” As I said on the
> 19th, any RM function can be improved, but your response ignored my stated
> concern that all of the improvements your paper cited sounded like things
> airline RM has been doing for years and fall well short of things one could
> call revolutionary. Delta airline pricing isn’t currently automated? Airlines
> are incapable of implementing their RM models? Airline data isn’t properly
> warehoused? I invited you to offer concrete illustrations of major Delta RM
> shortcomings that the AI project could fix; your reply failed to offer any,
> much less ones that could be considered revolutionary.
>
> Is Delta’s introduction of “AI pricing” something with the potential to
> massively increase revenue and disrupt industry competition? No one could read
> your paper without missing your Very Strong Implications that this will have
> Really Huge Benefits.  Delta/Fletcherr “AI pricing” approach could increase
> revenue by 10%, could be higher than 10%, and Delta’ competitors are ceding a
> big revenue advantage by failing to adopt the Delta/Fletcherr approach. You
> ignored my objection that this potential wasn’t qualified in any way and if
> taken at face value would produce the biggest profit gain in industry history.
> You then insisted that the existence of uncertainty meant you could ignore my
> objection that you hadn’t provided the detailed concrete examples that a
> conclusion this powerful would normally warrant or explained why major
> airlines like Delta were unable to achieve them in the past.
>
> The AI company claims revenue improvements of 10% due to pricing optimization
> from the model. We do not know if Delta is seeing the claimed 10% in their
> test cases, but we do know the airline is very, very satisfied with the
> results."
>
> You were the author of this paper. By endorsing Fletcherr’s specific 10% claim
> and Delta’s very satisfied comment you are clearly telling your readers that
> you believe gains of this magnitude are highly plausible. Of course Delta
> hasn’t publicly committed to specific improvement targets. That fact isn’t
> “adding context and nuance”. It is trying to avoid accountability for the
> findings and opinions you’ve presented and trying to blow off requests that
> the findings and opinions you present be properly substantiated.
>
> Now if Delta/Fletcherr are really focused on creating a first-degree price
> discrimination system perhaps adjectives like revolutionary and claims of $5
> billion annual revenue gains might become a bit more plausible. The Mifnet
> (and a great deal of other industry) discussion is trying to figure out if
> that’s what happening. But your paper steadfastly refused to address the issue
> and refused to offer any explanation of how revolutionary/multi-billion-dollar
> improvements could be possible, if Delta was being fully honest when it told
> Congress that it had no intention of introducing first-degree price
> discrimination.
>
> There was nothing in your response that claimed that anything I’d said on the
> 19th was factually wrong or could be challenged using public evidence. Instead
> it focused on a lot of emotional points that frankly don’t make much sense.
>
> You were “disappointed” you hadn’t received my comments in advance. Your
> published paper was not published at a discussion forum and did not
> specifically invite comments. As you said, your paper was offered as a
> contribution to industry discussion and that’s how it was taken when Ronell
> distributed it to Mifnet participants. Mifnet participants comment on lots of
> external comments about industry issues.
>
> I recognize that you were not directly involved when the Mifnet first
> discussed the three questions about the Delta/Fletchrr approach, but I don’t
> see how anyone could discuss anything related to airline AI pricing without
> considering them. You complained that your paper said it wasn’t addressed to
> experts in data science but I’m not aware of anyone on the Mifnet who is on
> the cutting edge of data science and nothing in my post involved data science
> issues. Your complaint of objections coming from people who conflate
> “artificial intelligence” with ChatGPT assisted internet searches is
> strawmanning and a bit insulting.
>
> You claimed my post was “angry”, “disingenuous” “appears to have been taken
> personally, somehow. Perhaps someone forwarded the paper to the poster with a
> nasty note?” and was an attack on your integrity. None of these emotional
> comments referred to any specific thing I’d written and I found these aspects
> of your reply unwarranted and totally unprofessional.
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Revised: 20250507
>
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All posts sent to the list should abide by these policies:
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2) Posts are always off the record, absent specific permission from the author.
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