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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

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the part I never got. How does using a computer suddenly wash away any responsibility? Like if Air Canada's desk agents were all a separate company and they told the guy the wrong information isn't Air Canada still on the hook for training their sub-contractors?

At the end of the day humans make these screwups too (even in my own anecdotal experiences with dealing with airlines), and it doesn’t matter because there is no hook to be on in the first place. If they tell me x and come to find out the policy is actually y, I’m the one thats shit out of luck and should have done the due dilligence of thoroughly reading whatever legalese this is scrawled in. These ais are at least…

> If they tell me x and come to find out the policy is actually y, I’m the one thats shit out of luck and should have done the due dilligence of thoroughly reading whatever legalese this is scrawled in.

Why are you saying this as a comment to an article where literally the opposite thing happened?

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

#352
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"The system" for you and me, not the system for those at the top. They'll maintain their wealth. You're presuming the rich care about "the system". That they have morals or ethics. They do not.

They don't have any wealth in the system you're projecting.

Wealth is the ability to trade with people. If there were somehow only 10 "employed" people in the world, then the economy is 10 people big, which means none of them are wealthy.

One way to see that this scenario is absurd is that it's literally the plot of Atlas Shrugged.

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

#353

What are the chances that companies take the easy way out and slap a EULA on the chatbots like "by engaging in conversation with our automated agent you agree to "?

Nothing preventing them from doing it. But then customers will very quickly learn to not use the chat bots and instead call in or use other means. Would you use a company tool that even the company doesn't have faith in? And if companies remove human reps from the equation and only offer chatbots, then I'm sure eventually the regulatory agencies will step in.

A rational actor, given a selection of alternatives, would not. Being stuck on hold when calling them is a frequent complaint though. And if there was real competition, stuff like this would've killed them long ago:

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/air-canada-apologizes-af...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/cta-fine-air...

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/dog-that-escap...

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

#355
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The key word is “once.” The doom of american society will not be in the timespan of a single business quarter. And on top of that the short position improves the whole way down. People at the top of the economy aren’t concerned about the rag being wrung dry because they will be the ones doing it, which will give them such a lopsided resource advantage it hardly will matter to them what happens next for the rest of us…

Economies aren't about "resources" or "wringing things dry", they are about trading. If you're not trading you don't have an economy and you aren't rich.

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

#356

What are the chances that companies take the easy way out and slap a EULA on the chatbots like "by engaging in conversation with our automated agent you agree to "?

I think the length of such agreements works against them

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

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think people underestimate the amount of imagined LLM use cases that require accurate responses. To the point that hallucinations will cost money in fines & lawsuits. This is a new frontier in short sighted customer service staffing (non-staffing in this case). The people who are on the frontline communicating with customers can convert unhappy customers to repeat customers, or into ex-customers. There's a few…

>that hallucinations will cost money in fines & lawsuits. Sure. They are now out about $600. They probably already laid off 500+ customer service jobs costing conservatively 30k a year each. Not including mgmt,training,health,ect. I don't think it will make a difference to the ivory tower C levels. We will just all get used to a once again lower quality help/product. Another great "enshitification" wave of the future…

> Another "new normal" How come anything that is "new normal" is never good?

If it allows them to reduce costs (and there's enough competition to force them to pass that on as reduced prices), I'm fairly happy with a new normal.

See also how air travel in general used to be a lot more glamorous, but also a lot more expensive.

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

#358

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 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'm trying to interact with a company and they direct me to a chatbot, I expect to get useful help 0% of the time, because…

Honestly, that's pretty similar to dealing with front-line level 1 human support.

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

#359

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 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.

Depends. Saying "thing X should not fail" is factually incorrect, when you called because thing X failed.

However I would not expect an airline customer support to make up a completely fictional flight that has never existed. Maybe they could confuse flights or read a number wrong, but making one up?

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