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Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

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Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#141

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #135
DudeOpotomus wrote: post #100

If I got one of these I'd pay it and never, ever, ever stay at any hotel owned by the entity again. Being that I spend $25k-50k a year on hotels, their loss is a small hotel's gain. In fact, whoever does this will lose my business ahead of time as I will never stay at any hotel that uses this service. A few minutes on Tripadvisor and you'll know. Such incredible business myopia. Hotels are one of the few businesses t…

It’s tricky because the chains (like “Hyatt”) don’t actually own any hotels. They are generally owned by local ownership groups and it can be hard to figure out the real owner. That’s also why one Hyatt could be 5/5 and another 1/5. The chains don’t do a great job of quality control.

That's a cop out. What's the point of a brand if quality control is all over the place?

Most McDonald's are franchises, and they famously give very similar experiences wherever you are. Not identical, obviously, but a Big Mac is a Big Mac.

This is absolutely on Hyatt corporate. They should have policies regulating these types of detection systems.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#142

Post by jfengel »

john-h-k wrote: post #109
vkou wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A number like 84x implies that it's almost entirely false positives.

It doesn’t imply that. I’m pretty sure it is all false positives, but that number does not imply that. It could simply be that only ~1 in 84 smokers was being fined before

A large number of false positives would likely show up as a deluge of negative reviews. "They charged me $500 and I've never smoked in my life". Surely some of those would be lies, and you'd have to dig them out from the existing pile of petty grievances that result in bad reviews. But I suspect it would still be pretty clear if there were that many false positives.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#143

Post by yellow_postit »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #4

Synopsis and excerpt: [Rest] markets itself as a way to "unlock a new revenue stream" with the help of a "robust algorithm" for detecting smoking. Hotels where these sensors are installed rack up complaints and negative reviews, after Rest sensors register false positives - thereby unlocking that revenue stream for the hotels. The awesome thing about black-box algorithms is they can't be challenged when they're wrong…

Watch it turns out you can tune the FP rate like how casinos can set the win rate on slot machines.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#144

Post by egypturnash »

DudeOpotomus wrote: post #131
vintermann wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Often I wonder if some scammers (and this is totally a scam) basically pay a premium to feel like they've outsmarted people, or for the smirking satisfaction that their victims can't do anything about it. Some scams are so much work for so little gain, or so obviously counterproductive in anything but the short term, that it seems like that.

No, it's just stupidity and myopia. Like those screens that replaced glass beverage cases in liquor stores a few years ago. Not one customer liked them. Not one customer wanted them and the results were beyond terrible. People literally stopped buying. But people actually invested millions into that company and other people actually bought their products and thought "gee this is great". Imagine how disconnected you h…

I seem to recall hearing that there was a person high up in the management of at least one of the store chains that did this who had a ton of financial interest in the company that made those door-screens.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#145

Post by giraffe_lady »

wombat-man wrote: post #79
sneak wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AmEx used to be good about doing chargebacks generally, but they once sided with the merchant during covid when I was sold an impossible itinerary and cost me $2k. Since then I realized that I won’t always be able to do a chargeback, and I am much more cautious with vendors.

Chase was really weird about doing a chargeback for me when a restaurant charged me a second time under a different name a month after my visit. It took several phone calls and they eventually credited my account but they would not do a chargeback. Two identical charges a month apart. I could show that I wasn't even in the same state for the second one.

Yeah the frequent advice to just do a chargeback as a consumer protection action is out of date. It is quite hard to get a bank or CC company to do one now even if you have solid evidence you're in the right. I don't really know when this changed, I guess over the last 5-8 years.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#146

Post by jfengel »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #106
jfengel wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it work if it were real time? You light up, and five minutes later a manager knocks. Dunno about the legality of refusing to open the door, but it does sound like a way to get banned from a hotel chain.

Yeah, that’s totally fair. At least they’ll have testimony that the smoking was actually witnessed. Most people aren’t going to even bother fighting that since it actually happened. I just worry about abuse cases and the most obvious one here is false positives being assumed true by everyone who profits from them. Edit: Sorry, that’s from the wrong point of view but I don’t think the answer changes. It seems Rest wil…

The great thing about that kind of human validation is that if they get a lot of false positives, the managers will start ignoring all of the alerts.

It would be unfair to charge people with just a black box algorithm. But a few door knocks could fix that, one way or the other.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#147

Post by chii »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #4

Synopsis and excerpt: [Rest] markets itself as a way to "unlock a new revenue stream" with the help of a "robust algorithm" for detecting smoking. Hotels where these sensors are installed rack up complaints and negative reviews, after Rest sensors register false positives - thereby unlocking that revenue stream for the hotels. The awesome thing about black-box algorithms is they can't be challenged when they're wrong…

> The awesome thing about black-box algorithms is they can't be challenged when they're wrong

I want to call this "responsibility laundering". You get money, but wash away any responsibility, thus cleaning it.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#148

Post by hansvm »

lxgr wrote: post #132

There has got to be a way to penalize companies for attempting this kind of thing. Even just removing the charge without discussion isn't enough, as some people will be traveling on a corporate card they don't necessarily monitor closely, will confuse the charge for something else etc. Otherwise, I'd love to be able to preemptively and without any prior communication charge (way in excess of the room rate, of course!…

The big problem is the power imbalance. There's a reason they start your stay by putting a hold on a credit card. And even if you could charge them, they can afford a legal battle better than you.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#149

Post by photonthug »

DudeOpotomus wrote: post #100

If I got one of these I'd pay it and never, ever, ever stay at any hotel owned by the entity again. Being that I spend $25k-50k a year on hotels, their loss is a small hotel's gain. In fact, whoever does this will lose my business ahead of time as I will never stay at any hotel that uses this service. A few minutes on Tripadvisor and you'll know. Such incredible business myopia. Hotels are one of the few businesses t…

> Without brand loyalty, hotels suffer.

Executive decision makers won't though. It's clear that consolidation in many sectors has gotten to the point that consumer power is an absolute joke and "ignore them, abuse them, and just defraud them" is a standard business model. Even if there's litigation.. this crap just overwhelms services so that basically the public pays twice. Witness the situation where various attorney generals have said that Facebook outsources customer support to the taxpayer when the attitude for handling everything is simply "don't like it? so sue us, good luck"

For anything smaller than Facebook though, it's hard to understand why brands/investors/business owners tolerate their decision makers encouraging wild abuse and short-term thinking like this, knowing that after brand loyalty is destroyed the Hyatt leadership will still get a bonus and fail upwards to another position at another company after claiming they helped to "modernize" a legacy brand. Is the thinking just that destroying everything is fine, because investors in the know will all exit before a crash and leave someone else holding the bag? With leadership and investors taking this attitude, I think it's natural that more and more workers get onboard with their own petty exploitation and whatever sabotage they can manage (hanging up on customers, quiet-quitting to defraud their bosses, etc). And that's how/why the social contract is just broken now at almost every level.

Re: Hyatt Hotels are using algorithmic Rest “smoking detectors”

#150

Post by FireBeyond »

gpm wrote: post #117
leoedin wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would CO2 be caused by vaping? And surely the amount of CO2 caused by a cigarette is dwarfed by the amount exhaled by a person?

A person outputs about 1kg of CO2 per day, which is less than 1 gram per minute. A cigarette weighs roughly a gram, which means it probably emits roughly 3 grams of CO2... or less... (The O2 comes from the environment, and weighs 32 to carbons 12, but the cigarette isn't actually pure carbon). I don't know... that's maybe detectable? You'd need a pretty sensitive CO2 sensor and to be tying it to other signs to avoid…

> A person outputs about 1kg of CO2 per day, which is less than 1 gram per minute.

I'm skeptical about this. Normal adult tidal volume is about 500mg, with a normal respiratory rate of 12/min, so 6L/min. Normal air is about 0.05% CO2, so you're at 3 grams/minute atmospherically that is inspired and expired.

We actually output closer to 4% CO2. 240ml/minute. With the windows and doors closed in my 10x20 living space and 4 people, CO2 can easily go from a baseline 4-500PPM to over 1000 in an hour. That's not 240 grams of CO2 doing that.

https://airly.org/en/the-composition-of-inhaled-and-exhaled-...

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