Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal • Hacker News Board

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#51

Post by MBCook » Thu, Feb 15, 2024, 4:20 AM UTC

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #24

ilaksh wrote: post #16

November 2022.. might have been a pretty weak model or just out of date info. This to me is a cautionary tale against deploying cheap small LLMs instead of using larger models. I think 7b models are very tempting to many business people who may value profits over just about anything else.

There is no evidence they used a small LLM. There is no evidence that LLM size is the issue. Environmentally bad to use a large model when a smaller one could work just as fine.

There’s no evidence it was even an LLM at all.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#52

Post by xyzzy_plugh » Thu, Feb 15, 2024, 4:22 AM UTC

petesergeant wrote: post #29

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What difference does it make? If it happened today with an LLM the outcome should be the same.

> What difference does it make? In liability, none, but it'd at least be more understandable if it was an LLM, rather than something that should have been hard-coded with the right answers.

I'm not sure I follow. I wrote an "AI" chatbot in highschool and it certainly didn't reproduce hard-coded "right answers".

LLMs don't somehow invalidate the work of their predecessors. Chat bots aren't new.

I'm not really sure why you brought up LLMs at all. Are chat bots synonymous with LLMs now? I sure hope not because then this sort of scenario only gets worse.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#53

Post by apapapa » Thu, Feb 15, 2024, 4:29 AM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #30

Good. Company outsources customer “service” to a completely unreliable piece of software, which goes to show how much they care about their customers. And then they argue in court that customers shouldn’t even trust their own software! So essentially they have increased profits by cutting customer service jobs, replaced humans with a stochastic parrot, and now don’t want to be responsible for the drawbacks of this de…

In their defense, I never seen an airline company caring about their customers... Otherwise they wouldn't be late 25% of the time.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#54

Post by fumeux_fume » Thu, Feb 15, 2024, 4:31 AM UTC

jannyfer wrote: post #34

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #13

Yo what was air Canada thinking here... 1 week after the flight, and he even provided the death certificate? How'd anyone let this go to 'court' (I'm not Canadian, it's a tribunal idk what that is) for $600. And I'm guessing it's Canadian so it's more like $400 US. What kind of point were they trying to prove here. I legitimately think you could talk amazon support into giving you that over a broken product.

> And I’m guessing it’s Canadian so it’s more like $400 US. FYI, to a Canadian, $600 CAD feels like what $600 USD feels like to an American. Canadian wages aren’t 30% higher in numerical value than US wages.

Granted, I’m an American and I’ve had a couple glasses of wine tonight, but I’ve read this comment like 8 times and it still makes no sense to me.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#55

Post by muro » Thu, Feb 15, 2024, 4:39 AM UTC

calamari4065 wrote: post #46

anamexis wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is a S company?

Samsung

Could be Seagate and SanDisk too ...

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#56

Post by dmix » Thu, Feb 15, 2024, 4:46 AM UTC

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #14

dmix wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it probably threatens a whole new customer support system they spent 100x developing / migrating to vs what they spent in lawyers for this case

Out of court settlements have no effect on precedent. We would even be here if the manager this got escalated to at some point had just done their job and made an exception.

So it wouldn’t make other lawsuits easier in civil law? I don’t know the law well here

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#57

Post by D13Fd » Thu, Feb 15, 2024, 4:48 AM UTC

fumeux_fume wrote: post #54

jannyfer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I’m guessing it’s Canadian so it’s more like $400 US. FYI, to a Canadian, $600 CAD feels like what $600 USD feels like to an American. Canadian wages aren’t 30% higher in numerical value than US wages.

Granted, I’m an American and I’ve had a couple glasses of wine tonight, but I’ve read this comment like 8 times and it still makes no sense to me.

The currency is worth 30% of a U.S. dollar but the cost of living is also significantly lower, so to a person living in either country $600 feels like about the same amount of money.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#58

Post by CaptainZapp » Thu, Feb 15, 2024, 4:51 AM UTC

apapapa wrote: post #53

janalsncm wrote: post #30

Good. Company outsources customer “service” to a completely unreliable piece of software, which goes to show how much they care about their customers. And then they argue in court that customers shouldn’t even trust their own software! So essentially they have increased profits by cutting customer service jobs, replaced humans with a stochastic parrot, and now don’t want to be responsible for the drawbacks of this de…

In their defense, I never seen an airline company caring about their customers... Otherwise they wouldn't be late 25% of the time.

Not necessarily so.

A couple weeks ago Oman Air cancelled the return leg of a long distance flight due to a change in schedule.

They offered to reroute me with the Qataris via Doha.

I preferred to cancel the (in principle non-refundable) flight and make different arrangements.

The money,~2'500$, was credited to my card 4 days later. Including fees paid for preferred seats.

It's a shame that they stopped service to my city. Beause it's a great airline, which always provided stellar service.

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#59

Post by petesergeant » Thu, Feb 15, 2024, 4:53 AM UTC

xyzzy_plugh wrote: post #52

petesergeant wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What difference does it make? In liability, none, but it'd at least be more understandable if it was an LLM, rather than something that should have been hard-coded with the right answers.

I'm not sure I follow. I wrote an "AI" chatbot in highschool and it certainly didn't reproduce hard-coded "right answers". LLMs don't somehow invalidate the work of their predecessors. Chat bots aren't new. I'm not really sure why you brought up LLMs at all. Are chat bots synonymous with LLMs now? I sure hope not because then this sort of scenario only gets worse.

> I'm not really sure why you brought up LLMs at all

I didn't

> I wrote an "AI" chatbot in highschool and it certainly didn't reproduce hard-coded "right answers"

Sounds like it would have been a poor choice for a customer-service bot then?

Re: Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal

#60

Post by anonymousab » Thu, Feb 15, 2024, 4:59 AM UTC

D13Fd wrote: post #57

fumeux_fume wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted, I’m an American and I’ve had a couple glasses of wine tonight, but I’ve read this comment like 8 times and it still makes no sense to me.

The currency is worth 30% of a U.S. dollar but the cost of living is also significantly lower, so to a person living in either country $600 feels like about the same amount of money.

> but the cost of living is also significantly lower,

You can look at random things like groceries, homes or car insurance to see that this isn't really true. 600 USD (or even 600 CAD) goes a heck of a lot further in most of the USA.