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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

#331

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

ado__dev wrote: post #246

If I am trying to interact with a company and they direct me to their chatbot, I expect that chatbot to provide me with accurate answers 100% of the time (or to say it can't help me in the event that I ask a question that it's not meant to solve, and connect me to a representative who can). If I have to double-triple check elsewhere to make sure that the chatbot is correct, or if anything the chatbot tells me is non-…

Unfortunately, my impression is that human customer support often works just as well as a current-generation chatbot: They'll tell you what you want to hear, because they get rated by customer satisfaction. You get the survey, indicate that your request was resolved to your satisfaction, the agent gets their bonus... and a week later you realize everything you have been told was a lie.

This got so bad that when a customer support agent at Amazon genuinely resolved my issue well once, I was surprised that it actually worked out as promised.

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

#332

Post by KiranRao0 »

itsoktocry wrote: post #326
wongarsu wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like human call center staff has never given anyone wrong information, or cost companies money in fines and lawsuits. The bar LLMs have to clear to beat the average front line support operations isn't that high, as your own experience shows. And compared to a large force of badly paid humans with high turnover, LLMs are pretty consistent and easy to train to an adequate level. They won't beat great costumer…

> It's not like human call center staff has never given anyone wrong information, or cost companies money in fines and lawsuit A human will be more likely to say "I don't know" or pass you along, rather than outright lie.

I find it common for human customer support people to give inaccurate information. I don't know about "outright lying", but I've had people tell me things that are factually incorrect.

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

#333

Post by Aachen »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #309
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.

At least the outcome is favourable to the customer who was misled, and since Canada is a Common Law country, this ruling will establish a precedent for future corporate negligence with their chatbots in Canada.

Is there a country where no precedent is set by court rulings?

It seems a little weird to be able to (and also practically do) rule differently in the same situation

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

#334

Post by jowea »

qayxc wrote: post #256
metalliqaz wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are salivating at the idea of being able to get humans off their payroll. The future is mass unemployment with all resources being split between a handful of trillionaires who control the AIs.

That wouldn't make sense though - once a sizable portion of the customer base is too poor to buy the services, there's no source of income anymore and the whole system collapses.

That only potentially makes sense at a societal level, not at an individual company level.

And the money saved with staff will end up in the stockholder's pockets, who will consume more.

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

#336

Post by tialaramex »

makeitdouble wrote: post #324
thfuran wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it hasn't happened yet for employees, why do you think it will happen for chatbots?

A clear "paper" trail. What is described here do happen when employees send mails with explicit promises, but gets harder when only the company has proof of the exchange (recording of the call). Chatbots bridge that gap.

Some people do record calls to companies. I choose to understand "Calls may be recorded" as permission and say "Thank you", even if perhaps that's not always how it was intended. When calling small very sketchy companies (such as my last landlord before I bought somewhere to live) I ask for permission and hang up if they refuse. Oh you don't want your words recorded? Fine, you're getting a letter, hope you weren't in a hurry.

But Chat Bots often provide a "Save transcript" feature, or even default to emailing you a copy if you're in a Customer Service type environment where it knows your email. So those are both a lot easier than setting up call recording.

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

#337

Post by data-ottawa »

Invictus0 wrote: post #297
kevin_b_er wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of AI, and the entire drive of investment in it, is to eliminate labor costs. There's no other purpose. It is not to advance science or make a better world, it is to make money. That money comes by the expense of the many and the gain of a few. And there will not be new jobs to replace the ones lost. There's no more "learn to code!". They're there to replace all jobs possible, make a more unequal society,…

I agree with everything except "there will not be new jobs". There will most definitely be new jobs.

Like what?

AI is cool, but the spoils are going to go to staggeringly few people and in most of the West there are no real safety nets for people to fall on.

If I lost my job tomorrow to AI then any desk job I aim for might be gone in another 2-3 years, before I even finish retraining.

Any content creation is going to be flooded out and most creators don't even make any money even today. It's a marketing role with strong Pareto distributions.

That mainly leaves physical labor and person to person jobs.

I would say great, freedom from labour, except that's not how it works.

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

#338

Post by Aachen »

MintPaw wrote: post #318

What actually happened? It said they could the refund window was 90 days, but why didn't it work? "But when he applied for a refund, Air Canada said bereavement rates did not apply to completed travel and pointed to the bereavement section of the company’s website." Does this mean they actually took flight with no issues, but then requested a refund afterwards because it was for a funeral?

I also found it very confusingly written, and as a non-native speaker, I initially took bereavement to refer to a flight delay (imagine my confusion about the claim "you can't apply for this refund on completed travel").

Then looked up the word and my initial association with something negative was correct: it's about death. The only explanation that I think fits all the article's statements is this:

0. AirCan offers a discounted rate if you fly to someone's death, probably because of the country's size (it's a weird concept to me as a Dutch person!)

1. Person asked the bot how to get this discounted rate, what papers AirCan needed to see

2. Bot said (not shown in article, the only relevant-looking link goes to some stupid news category page): you get your discount afterwards, not before. This seems to be phrased in the article as "refund", but I take it to mean "partial refund to the amount of the discount"

3. Person flies, then applies

4. AirCan now says: you can't apply for this anymore after the travel was completed

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

#339

Post by zmmmmm »

m_0x wrote: post #272
ado__dev wrote: post #246

If I am trying to interact with a company and they direct me to their chatbot, I expect that chatbot to provide me with accurate answers 100% of the time (or to say it can't help me in the event that I ask a question that it's not meant to solve, and connect me to a representative who can). If I have to double-triple check elsewhere to make sure that the chatbot is correct, or if anything the chatbot tells me is non-…

> 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.

then you can't have a chatbot

but if that is your standard, you can't have an airline either

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

#340

Post by notatoad »

xyst wrote: post #279

Wow, going through all of that for $650. I guess it’s better to send a message. Cost of Air Canada lawyers well exceed the judgement here. Why would they bother fighting this?

i'd assume they're just following a general policy of having somebody in their legal department respond with a rebuttal for every single claim that comes in. on balance, it probably saves them money over having somebody with decision-making power make a decision on whether or not to fight things on a claim-by-claim basis.
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