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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

#161

Post by mrweasel »

The article doesn't state what kind of chat bot this is. Is it an LLM, or a pre-LLM bot programmed to act on certain keywords?

If it's the latter, I'd assume that Air Canada would be able to go in and check why the bot would give a wrong answer, most likely outdated policy information, or a misreading from whomever entered the answer to that prompt.

However, if the bot is based on an LLM, then what's the point? It's apparently worse than an old school bot, in that it cannot be trusted to give correct answers, it's just better at understand queries.

There was a quote in the article "I'm an Old Far and AI Makes Me Sad":

  “If we open up ChatGPT or a system like it and look inside, you just see millions of numbers flipping around a few hundred times a second,” says AI scientist Sam Bowman. “And we just have no idea what any of it means.”
If that's true, then you can not use these systems for anything where you may need hold some one responsible for the output.

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

#162

Post by perihelions »

That airline policy is the kind of micro-optimization that no individual human would do, but distributed decision-making of large organizations effect all the time. There's profit to be found by targeting people in distress—like someone who just had a person close to them die—and abusing their distraction to confuse them into paying more money then they need to. Allowing a grace period to claim this "bereavement discount" is a human(e) policy. Making the client claim the discount immediately, or else lose it, is monstrous.

Today, the robot showed more humanity than Air Canada's human leadership. That was an accident; the future could be the opposite of that. You could program machines to be "better" employees than humans, more aligned with organizational goals like "maximize profit at absolutely any cost", or "win wars at absolutely any cost", or "win elections at absolutely any cost". We humans aren't completely aligned with our teams; we have moral scruples that limit us—we can't achieve the 100% "absolutely any cost" part. I think that might suddenly change, and we might find ourselves drowning in an unexpectedly in-human world.

(This was inspired by, I forgot who wrote it (?), a writer's observation about the evils of war being easier when morality is distributed. The commander who orders the atrocity, doesn't do it; the solider who commits the atrocity, has no agency in his actions. Both feel reduced culpability, and can go farther in effecting their goals than an individual acting alone).

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

#163

Post by baggy_trough »

wredue wrote: post #155
baggy_trough wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A random AC employee drinks too much and says "You are entitled to free flights for the rest of your life." Is Air Canada liable?

Since when are contracts enforceable when one party is drunk?

A random AC employee who is having a bad day and hates his employer says "You are entitled to free flights for the rest of your life." Is Air Canada liable?

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

#164

Post by [deleted] »

baggy_trough wrote: post #147
thsksbd wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fraud because you're in cahoots with your friend. If a random AC employee gave you a free flight, on the other hand, you'd be entitled to it. Anyway, the chat bot has no agency except that given to it by AC; unlike a human employee, therefore, its actions are 100% AC actions. I don't see how this is controversial? Why do people think that laws no longer apply when fancy high-tech pixie dust is sprinkled?

A random AC employee drinks too much and says "You are entitled to free flights for the rest of your life." Is Air Canada liable?

[deleted]

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

#165

Post by Drakim »

jasonjayr wrote: post #139
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…

IANAL, but it's astounding they took that as their defense, rather than pointing to a line (I hope?) in their ToS that says "This agreement is the complete terms of service, and cannot be amended or changed by any agent or representative of the company except by ... (some very specific process the bot can't follow)". I've seen this mentioned in several ToSs, I expect it to be standard boilerplate at this point ...

That does make sense, but on the flipside, let's say that they start advertising discounts on TV, but when people try to pay the reduced rate they say "according to our ToS that TV ad was not authorized to lower the price".

Obviously that wouldn't fly. So why would it fly with the AI chatbot's advertising discounts?

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

#166

Post by autoexec »

Zak wrote: post #150
thsksbd wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fraud because you're in cahoots with your friend. If a random AC employee gave you a free flight, on the other hand, you'd be entitled to it. Anyway, the chat bot has no agency except that given to it by AC; unlike a human employee, therefore, its actions are 100% AC actions. I don't see how this is controversial? Why do people think that laws no longer apply when fancy high-tech pixie dust is sprinkled?

And if a random AC employee said[0] they'd give you a billion dollars, you wouldn't be entitled to it because any judge or jury hearing the case would say a reasonable person wouldn't believe that. Unlike computers, which do exactly what they're told[1], the legal system applies sanity checks and social context. [0] perhaps because they're disgruntled and trying to hurt their employer [1] generative models are not an…

> And if a random AC employee said[0] they'd give you a billion dollars, you wouldn't be entitled to it because any judge or jury hearing the case would say a reasonable person wouldn't believe that.

I'm sure that if the bot had said that the airline would raise your dead relative from the grave and make you king of the sky or something equally unbelievable the courts wouldn't have insisted Air Canada cast a crown and learn necromancy.

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

#167

Post by paxys »

dataflow wrote: post #156
jasonjayr wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL, but it's astounding they took that as their defense, rather than pointing to a line (I hope?) in their ToS that says "This agreement is the complete terms of service, and cannot be amended or changed by any agent or representative of the company except by ... (some very specific process the bot can't follow)". I've seen this mentioned in several ToSs, I expect it to be standard boilerplate at this point ...

How do those clauses actually work? If a rep does something nice for you (like give you something for free), could the airline say it never agreed to that in writing or whatever and demand it back? How are you supposed to know if a rep has authority to enter into an agreement with you over random matters? But, to your question, my guess is that would basically be telling people not to avoid their chatbot, which they…

It's more to shield them from cases like a rep gifting you free flights for life.

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

#168

Post by Zak »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #145
thsksbd wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fraud because you're in cahoots with your friend. If a random AC employee gave you a free flight, on the other hand, you'd be entitled to it. Anyway, the chat bot has no agency except that given to it by AC; unlike a human employee, therefore, its actions are 100% AC actions. I don't see how this is controversial? Why do people think that laws no longer apply when fancy high-tech pixie dust is sprinkled?

>If a random AC employee gave you a free flight, on the other hand, you'd be entitled to it. The company would be entirely within their rights to say 'this employee was wrong, that is not our policy, goodbye!'. This happens all the time with more minor incidents.

That's far less likely to be true if the customer buys something based on the employee's erroneous statement. I suspect in an otherwise-identical case with a human customer service agent, the same judge would have ruled Air Canada must honor the offer.

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

#169

Post by dataflow »

paxys wrote: post #167
dataflow wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do those clauses actually work? If a rep does something nice for you (like give you something for free), could the airline say it never agreed to that in writing or whatever and demand it back? How are you supposed to know if a rep has authority to enter into an agreement with you over random matters? But, to your question, my guess is that would basically be telling people not to avoid their chatbot, which they…

It's more to shield them from cases like a rep gifting you free flights for life.

I realize the intention but I'm wondering how it works legally given what the terms actually say.

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

#170

Post by kube-system »

baggy_trough wrote: post #163
wredue wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since when are contracts enforceable when one party is drunk?

A random AC employee who is having a bad day and hates his employer says "You are entitled to free flights for the rest of your life." Is Air Canada liable?

Valid contracts usually require consideration
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