Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bc.ctvnews.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 434 posts

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

#281

Post by ryandrake »

dmurray wrote: post #223
Arrath wrote: post #208

Quite a sensible judgement, it seems. Pretty outrageous for the airline to try to claim the chatbot was its own legal entity.

The guy who bought the Chevy Tahoe for $1 [0] isn't going to get it, though. And that's also perfectly sensible. But at some point we're going to see more cases in the grey area in between. What's the important difference? In both cases I think the result would be the same if the chatbot had been a human. GM doesn't have to honour every promise a sales rep makes, even if that rep is nominally entitled to enter into c…

Somehow, I bet if the sales rep or a chatbot convinced the guy to pay $200K for a Chevy Tahoe, the full force of GM's legal team would ensure the customer was held to that. But, when it goes the other way, and the sales rep or chatbot is convinced to sell it for $1, suddenly it's not "sensible."

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

#283

Post by akira2501 »

brentm wrote: post #216

I just can't believe it took a lawsuit to get an airline to fork over a few hundred bucks on something that was obviously their fault.

It's a signal that the company has internally configured itself in such a way as to insulate the administrative section from the operational section. They've likely done this in an effort to avoid the types of information that would force them to spend money.

It's literally just corporate ignorance as a business strategy. What's sad is, on the large, it works in their favor.

In any case, it's an equally good signal that you don't want to fly with them.

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

#284

Post by briga »

brentm wrote: post #216

I just can't believe it took a lawsuit to get an airline to fork over a few hundred bucks on something that was obviously their fault.

The problem with Canadian airlines (and Canadian companies in general), is that if you don't like the service there aren't really any meaningful alternatives. The two largest carriers have a near total stranglehold on the market (+75%) of flights. They practically have zero incentive to improve because they are propped up by protectionist Canadian policies that prevent foreign companies coming in with any meaningful competition. Their main competitor WestJet is similarly bad. Story of the Canadian economy really

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

#285

Post by rjh29 »

DavidSJ wrote: post #237
brentm wrote: post #216

I just can't believe it took a lawsuit to get an airline to fork over a few hundred bucks on something that was obviously their fault.

I think they weren't worried about those few hundred bucks so much as precedent resulting in some future liability of millions of dollars when their chatbot misinforms tens of thousands of customers about something.

Wow that makes so much sense when you put it that way.

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

#286

Post by pluc »

brentm wrote: post #216

I just can't believe it took a lawsuit to get an airline to fork over a few hundred bucks on something that was obviously their fault.

We just bailed them out too. And covid relief. And they have the worst customer complaint resolution record of all the airlines. You can't get them to do shit, they just take take take. It's a national embarrassment, right next to mobile data and internet. Yet our hockey teams play in arenas named after them, with their logo on their sweaters.

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

#287

Post by simoncion »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #253

The worst case for these airlines is always just a refund for whatever money they took in the first place. Someone could make a killing making a fake airline, taking payments for flights, and then cancelling every single flight and only refunding the people who fight back hard enough.

> Someone could make a killing making a fake airline, taking payments for flights...

Given how (relatively) significantly-regulated airlines are in the US, I doubt that this would work for long, and I expect that the FAA would make sure that the company lost a substantial amount of money for trying that shit.

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

#288

Post by dukeyukey »

canadiantim wrote: post #280
m_0x wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't trust it 99% of the time A chatbot should be either 100% or 0%. Companies should not replace humans with faulty technology.

but humans aren't 100% either... seems ridiculous to demand 100% from any implementation

If a human customer support person told me something and I made purchases based on that, and it turned out they lied, yeah I'd want recompense for that as well. You're allowed to be wrong (AI or human), you just have to face consequences for it.

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

#289

Post by bmitc »

ndjshe3838 wrote: post #226

I hate the whole attitude the industry has towards AI models, it just seems so sloppy compared to software of the past It’s like “yeah we don’t really know what it’s going to do and it might screw up but whatever just launch it” Really surprised me that so many companies are willing to jump into LLMs without any guarantee that the output won’t be something completely insane

It's just proof companies don't care. The quicker they can turn their customers into little autonomous compute nodes, the better from their perspective.

I have also noticed an increase in automated call systems just flat out hanging up on me. As in: "We're experiencing higher than normal call volumes and cannot accept your call. Please call at a different time. Goodbye. " How am I supposed to get help in such cases?

We've allowed companies to scale beyond their means, and they're getting away with more and more.

UPS destroyed a suitcase of ours and basically told us to go f ourselves. We could have sued in small claims court, but that's what they're betting on, that most people just give up.

And the chatbots are just terrible. And these days, the human representatives available have even less information than what the chatbots are provided with.

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

#290

Post by ihattendorf »

canadiantim wrote: post #280
m_0x wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't trust it 99% of the time A chatbot should be either 100% or 0%. Companies should not replace humans with faulty technology.

but humans aren't 100% either... seems ridiculous to demand 100% from any implementation

Maybe don't demand 100%, but instead responsibility for incorrect information.
Post reply on HN