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

bc.ctvnews.ca

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

#121

Post by weego »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #117
ooboe wrote: post #116

"In an argument that appeared to flabbergast a small claims adjudicator in British Columbia, the airline attempted to distance itself from its own chatbot's bad advice by claiming the online tool was "a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions." "This is a remarkable submission," Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) member Christopher Rivers wrote."" From https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbi…

How is this different from me getting one of my friends to work at Air Canada and promise me a billion dollars to cancel my flight? Will Air Canada be legal for my friend going against company policy?

Likely because the claim was considered to be within the reasonable expectations of real policy.

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

#122

Post by nrmitchi »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #117
ooboe wrote: post #116

"In an argument that appeared to flabbergast a small claims adjudicator in British Columbia, the airline attempted to distance itself from its own chatbot's bad advice by claiming the online tool was "a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions." "This is a remarkable submission," Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) member Christopher Rivers wrote."" From https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbi…

How is this different from me getting one of my friends to work at Air Canada and promise me a billion dollars to cancel my flight? Will Air Canada be legal for my friend going against company policy?

What you are describing is 1) fraud, 2) conspiracy, and 3) not a policy that a reasonable person would take at face value.

It is very different than if an employee were to, in writing, make a statement that a reasonable person would find reasonable.

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

#123

Post by carlosjobim »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #117
ooboe wrote: post #116

"In an argument that appeared to flabbergast a small claims adjudicator in British Columbia, the airline attempted to distance itself from its own chatbot's bad advice by claiming the online tool was "a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions." "This is a remarkable submission," Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) member Christopher Rivers wrote."" From https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbi…

How is this different from me getting one of my friends to work at Air Canada and promise me a billion dollars to cancel my flight? Will Air Canada be legal for my friend going against company policy?

Law and justice is not like a computer program that you can exploit and control without limits by being a hacker.

If the chatbot told them that they'd get a billion dollars, the courts would not hold Air Canada responsible for it, just as if a programmer put a decimal wrong and prices became obviously wrong. In this case, the chat bot gave a policy within reason and the court awarded the passenger what the bot had promised, which is a completely correct judgement.

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

#124

Post by BiteCode_dev »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #117
ooboe wrote: post #116

"In an argument that appeared to flabbergast a small claims adjudicator in British Columbia, the airline attempted to distance itself from its own chatbot's bad advice by claiming the online tool was "a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions." "This is a remarkable submission," Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) member Christopher Rivers wrote."" From https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbi…

How is this different from me getting one of my friends to work at Air Canada and promise me a billion dollars to cancel my flight? Will Air Canada be legal for my friend going against company policy?

Your friend is not trained by Air Canada. The bot is Air Canada property.

If they decide it is reliable enough to be put in front of the customer, they must accept all the consequences: the benefits like having to hire less, and the cons, which is that they have to make it work correctly.

Otherwise, woopsy, we made our AI handle our accounting and it cheated, sorry IRS. That won't fly.

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

#125

Post by [deleted] »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #117
ooboe wrote: post #116

"In an argument that appeared to flabbergast a small claims adjudicator in British Columbia, the airline attempted to distance itself from its own chatbot's bad advice by claiming the online tool was "a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions." "This is a remarkable submission," Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) member Christopher Rivers wrote."" From https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbi…

How is this different from me getting one of my friends to work at Air Canada and promise me a billion dollars to cancel my flight? Will Air Canada be legal for my friend going against company policy?

[deleted]

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

#126

Post by willcipriano »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #117
ooboe wrote: post #116

"In an argument that appeared to flabbergast a small claims adjudicator in British Columbia, the airline attempted to distance itself from its own chatbot's bad advice by claiming the online tool was "a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions." "This is a remarkable submission," Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) member Christopher Rivers wrote."" From https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbi…

How is this different from me getting one of my friends to work at Air Canada and promise me a billion dollars to cancel my flight? Will Air Canada be legal for my friend going against company policy?

You didn't get your friend to do it, an employee just decided to. There is no conspiracy.

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

#127

Post by vkou »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #117
ooboe wrote: post #116

"In an argument that appeared to flabbergast a small claims adjudicator in British Columbia, the airline attempted to distance itself from its own chatbot's bad advice by claiming the online tool was "a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions." "This is a remarkable submission," Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) member Christopher Rivers wrote."" From https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbi…

How is this different from me getting one of my friends to work at Air Canada and promise me a billion dollars to cancel my flight? Will Air Canada be legal for my friend going against company policy?

>How is this different from me getting one of my friends to work at Air Canada and promise me a billion dollars to cancel my flight?

There is a common misconception about law that software engineers have. Code is not law. Law is not code. Just because something that looks like a function exists, you can't just plug in any inputs and expect it to have a consistent outcome.

The difference between these two cases is that even if a chat bot promised that, the judge would throw it out, because it's not reasonable. Also, the firm would have a great case against at least the CS rep for this collusion.

If your friend of a CS agent promised you a bereavement refund (As the chatbot did), even though it went against company policy, you'd have good odds of winning that case. Because the judge would find it reasonable of you to believe and expect that after speaking to a CS rep, that such a policy would actually get honored. (And the worst that would happen to the CS rep would be termination.)

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

#129

Post by nneonneo »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #117
ooboe wrote: post #116

"In an argument that appeared to flabbergast a small claims adjudicator in British Columbia, the airline attempted to distance itself from its own chatbot's bad advice by claiming the online tool was "a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions." "This is a remarkable submission," Civil Resolution Tribunal (CRT) member Christopher Rivers wrote."" From https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbi…

How is this different from me getting one of my friends to work at Air Canada and promise me a billion dollars to cancel my flight? Will Air Canada be legal for my friend going against company policy?

Because that would not be reasonable, and nobody would be surprised if Air Canada reneged on that. See, for instance, Leonard vs. PepsiCo.

If your friend promised you something reasonable in the course of carrying out their duties, and you honestly believed them, I think that would be legal and enforceable just as this case suggests.

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

#130

Post by roncesvalles »

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.

I just don't understand why companies don't use something like Algolia on their KB articles with some careful manual keyword curation.

Imagine all the person had to do was type "bereavement" in a search bar and it instantly matched with the bereavement policy. What more does a person need?

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