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

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

#91
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Oman Air is trying to offer good service in a tight, extremely cut-throat market (the Middle-East) where its competitors are giants (Qatar and Emirates) or cash drunk (Saudi Airlines).

I flew through them last year. Check-in was a bit of a hassle but the plane/service and the layover were great. The price was very competitive (cheapest) and yet the plane was empty. I expected them to either fold or downsize.

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

#92

Companies should be responsible for the information they give customers, regardless of how they do it. "Give me a real human" is usually what I say when it seems like I'm talking to a bot. Unfortunately, there have been times when I later discovered that the "bot" was actually a real human that was just acting like a bot! While AI may seem to be improving, I always keep in mind the possibility that the opposite is al…

That's why I start with "are you a human or a robot", then "what's your favorite color"

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

#93
post #74

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…

Most likely they will just add to the chat bot answers a "Please make sure to double check our policy at $URL - Only our policy applies".

Fortunately, the tribunal rejected that tactic in this instance.

The chatbot included a link to the detailed rules, which contradicted what the chatbot told the customer.

> "While a chatbot has an interactive component, it is still just a part of Air Canada’s website ... It should be obvious to Air Canada that it is responsible for all the information on its website ... There is no reason why Mr. Moffatt should know that one section of Air Canada’s webpage is accurate, and another is not."

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

#94
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - my house (was) full of Samsung appliances - Stove, Fridge, Microwave, Washer, Dryer. All garbage. They are all falling apart now or became became uneconomically repairable within 5 years. Every single appliance repair businesses I called flat out wouldn't touch the fridge for example.. Apparently they don't provide service information or parts to 3rd parties (at least for the fridge). I have moved onto a differ…

When we were purchasing a clothes washer and dryer, Samsung had a special promotion. The sales rep at the store told us that the Samsung machines got the most complaints and she would recommend the LG machines. But we wanted that promotion, it was oh so nice. We bought a 5-year warranty just in case. Sure enough, it's year 3 and the washer has stopped working. Repair guy came and decided he needs to order new parts t…

Get SpeedQueen next time. There’s still quality out there, need to stop listening to sales and do research.

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

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Are chat bots synonymous with LLMs now? I sure hope not because then this sort of scenario only gets worse. You're right. LLMs are now the de facto standard implementation for Support Chatbots. Almost every chatbot platform offers a AI Chatbot product in some form. - they're also frequently shown to be prone to hallucinations - and also shown to be tricked - and can be gamed into breaking it's prompt cage https://t…

I don't think that's true. I do think it is a bit of a slippery slope.

Replicable, intelligent but fallible and disposable minds have incredible potential to positively impact our society. But somewhere there is an ethical and moral boundary to be crossed.

It's the journey, not the destination.

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

#96

I just want to give a shoutout to BC's Civil Resolution Tribunal. They take their job seriously, and make it as easy as possible for plaintiff to submit a complaint. I once had the misfortune of generating a batch of defective enterprise-grade SSD from a S company. That S company requires all RMA to go through the sales channel you bought the SSD from, but the sales company we used was out of business. S has refused…

This isn't Harry Potter and they aren't Voldemort! Are all the replies correct in assuming this is Samsung? You can say their name.

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

#98

I just want to give a shoutout to BC's Civil Resolution Tribunal. They take their job seriously, and make it as easy as possible for plaintiff to submit a complaint. I once had the misfortune of generating a batch of defective enterprise-grade SSD from a S company. That S company requires all RMA to go through the sales channel you bought the SSD from, but the sales company we used was out of business. S has refused…

Hmm, browsing through some of those cases, I'm starting to notice a pattern of Air Canada not taking these tribunal proceedings entirely seriously. From this case: > I find that if Air Canada wanted to a raise a contractual defense, it needed to provide the relevant portions of the contract. It did not, so it has not proven a contractual defence. [...] > In its boilerplate Dispute Response, Air Canada denies “each an…

Actually doing all of that would be quite expensive, so they don't and rely on people giving up or not knowing how to exert their rights.

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

#99
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes - my house (was) full of Samsung appliances - Stove, Fridge, Microwave, Washer, Dryer. All garbage. They are all falling apart now or became became uneconomically repairable within 5 years. Every single appliance repair businesses I called flat out wouldn't touch the fridge for example.. Apparently they don't provide service information or parts to 3rd parties (at least for the fridge). I have moved onto a differ…

When we were purchasing a clothes washer and dryer, Samsung had a special promotion. The sales rep at the store told us that the Samsung machines got the most complaints and she would recommend the LG machines. But we wanted that promotion, it was oh so nice. We bought a 5-year warranty just in case. Sure enough, it's year 3 and the washer has stopped working. Repair guy came and decided he needs to order new parts t…

The long-term brand you want is Miele. They're not cheap but my parents' dishwasher is approaching 30 years old.

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

#100

Companies should be responsible for the information they give customers, regardless of how they do it. "Give me a real human" is usually what I say when it seems like I'm talking to a bot. Unfortunately, there have been times when I later discovered that the "bot" was actually a real human that was just acting like a bot! While AI may seem to be improving, I always keep in mind the possibility that the opposite is al…

>if you don't want your job replaced by a bot, perhaps you should not be acting like one.

Call center folks, especially the first couple of layers of them, are on scripts. They have decision trees and what to say written down. Bots can be much more dynamic than them. It's a pretty terrible job unless you're fairly uniquely predisposed to liking that kind of work.

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