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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

#361

Post by gregmac »

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.

Would this situation have been handled differently if a human support rep gave them incorrect information? I suspect they would have honored it and then put the rep (or all reps) through more training.

Another thought experiment: If a portion of the company's website was at least partially generated with an LLM, does that somehow absolve the company of responsibility for the content they have on their own site?

I think a company is free to present information to their customers that is less than 100% accurate -- whether by having chatbots or by doing something else silly like having untrained, poorly-paid support reps -- but they have to live with the risks (being liable for mistakes; alienating customers) to get the benefits (low operating cost).

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

#362

Post by atoav »

citizenpaul wrote: post #304
steveBK123 wrote: post #260

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…

Depends how long it takes to get the 600$ and whether you need to be a customer to get it. I know many people who would happily ask for that money once a week.

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

#363

Post by Aachen »

ssnistfajen wrote: post #343
Aachen wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Civil/Continental Law jurisdictions AKA the actual world-wide (excl. Anglosphere) norm for legal systems, do not automatically follow precedent rulings: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)#Origi... They may consider precedent rulings as factors in the decision, but those earlier rulings themselves do not automatically become law for all future cases on the same subject.

> world-wide (excl. Anglosphere)

Not quite that simple. The word we use is jurisprudentie but it means the same. Opening up the Dutch Wikipedia article and clicking on the English version of the article with thst name, you end up with "Case law, also used interchangeably with common law, is a law that is based on precedents"

I dove into this when I first heard of the difference between continental law and common law, and found it to be mostly a matter of wording. The principles are opposite but the effects very similar. It's not as though common law countries have no politicians making legislation, or as though there is no precedence in continental law countries.

Dutch foundational law (I think the very first article) says "everyone is treated equally given equal circumstances": such an equality principle would be incompatible with different rulings in identical situations. I imagine most countries have equality as a foundational principle, hence I'd be interested to learn: In which country would rulings not set precedence?

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

#364

Post by frabjoused »

The header "Company claimed its chatbot ‘was responsible for its own actions’ when giving wrong information about bereavement fare" is such a great example of an article giving misleading information to up sensationalism. Later on it's explained "Air Canada argued that despite the error, the chatbot was a “separate legal entity” and thus was responsible for its actions."

That's a completely different argument and much less alarming.

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

#365

Post by nequo »

I don’t believe that the traveler mentioned in TFA did this but using a screenshot as evidence will not be viable in the longer run.

Editing the HTML code of a webpage that is open in the browser is a key step in one of the popular IT support scams that are covered by YouTubers.

But how else to present evidence of chatbot misinformation, I’m not sure.

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

#366

Post by kelseyfrog »

jowea wrote: post #307
kelseyfrog wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure consideration[1] and unconscionability[2] don't form the basis for that type of legal protection? 1. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/consideration 2. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unconscionability

I found this article which indicates this legal protection relates to the doctrine of unilateral mistake: https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol75/iss2/9/

Thank you. It seemed like there would be some kind of legal principle at play.

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

#367

Post by potatolicious »

dataflow wrote: post #342
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-…

> then what's the point of using the chat bot in the first place? The point is quite literally to make you give up trying to contact customer service and just pay them money, while getting their legal obligations as close to a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose situation as possible. That's not the mysterious part. The mysterious part is, why did they even let this drag into court for such a small sum?!

> "The mysterious part is, why did they even let this drag into court for such a small sum?!"

Because most people wouldn't bother taking it to court.

If they rolled over and paid up every time their chatbot made a mistake, that gets expensive, and teaches customers that they can easily be compensated if the chatbot screws up.

If they fight it tooth and nail and drag it all the way to court, it teaches customers that pursuing minor mistakes is personally painful and probably not worth it.

Scorched-earth defense tactics can be effective at deterring anyone from seeking redress.

It's the same fundamental reason why customer support is so hard to reach for many companies - if you make it painful enough maybe the customer will just not bother. A valuable tactic if your company imagines customers as annoying fleshy cash dispensers that talk too much. Having flown many times with Air Canada I can confirm that they do seem to perceive their passengers as annoying cash dispensers.

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

#368

Post by mortenjorck »

kingo55 wrote: post #299
jorisboris wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially once we have ai lawyers ;)

Judge, I'll refer you to my legal chatbot. I rest my case.

Your selection of generative counsel has been confirmed.

Please do not navigate away from this page while the trial runs. You will receive a notification when the verdict has been reached. This may take up to a minute.

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

#369

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

wongarsu wrote: post #308
steveBK123 wrote: post #260

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…

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…

To me that’s totally fine. I don’t even particularly care whether the LLM is better or not. The only thing they really matters is if you are gonna use that LLM, when it inevitably messes up you don’t get to claim that it wasn’t your fault because computers are hard and AI is an emerging field. IDGAF. Pay up. The fact that you dabble in emerging technologies doesn’t give you any excuse to provide lesser services
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