Air Canada is responsible for chatbot's mistake: B.C. tribunal • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by dataflow » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 2:51 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #367

dataflow wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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

Wait, couldn't they have tried to settle as soon as they realized it was actually going to court? I thought that was the modus operandi in the US... is it not a thing in Canada?

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

#372

Post by smegger001 » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 2:51 AM UTC

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?!

To disincentivize anyone from calling them on their be in the future. If I know I will have to drag them through court just to get even a low payout I will be less likely to fight as its not worth the hassle.

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

#373

Post by Affric » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 2:54 AM UTC

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #331

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 cus…

Really depends on the company. Generally, for high quality on shore call centres, you do not use customer satisfaction as a metric for individual agents.

You’d use first contact resolution, average handle time, and their ability to stick to the flow they’re meant to (like transferring the customer to a survey after the call).

Like you say, satisfaction encourages lies. Much like sales commissions.

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

#374

Post by subarctic » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 2:55 AM UTC

wlonkly wrote: post #106

qingcharles wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a lot of stuff like that in civil litigation in David v. Goliath situations. Usually the large entity puts in little effort and relies on the fact that its (much more expensive) lawyers generally have more sway with the court (judge), are more persuasive even when their arguments are nonsense, and can just drag cases on for years until the smaller party is burned out.

One nice touch about BC's CRT is that neither side is allowed to be represented by lawyers without specific approval by the tribunal.

That's interesting. What does that mean in practice, do they send people that have a lot of legal training and experience, but aren't bar members?

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

#375

Post by fivre » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 2:55 AM UTC

TechSquidTV wrote: post #296

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…

With RAG it's entirely possible to essentially eliminate 100% of hallucinations, given you are ok with responding with "I don't know" once in a while. These situations are likely coming from poorly implemented chatbot, or they decided that "I dont know" was not acceptable, and really that should be a queue to send you to a real human.

do the people managing the chatbot know that though?

this shit gets sold as a way to replace employees with, essentially, just the middle manager that was over them, who is now responsible for managing the chatbot instead of managing people

while managers are often actually not great at people management, it's at least a somewhat intuitive skill for many. interacting with and directing other humans is something that many people are able to gain experience with outside of work, since it's a necessary life skill unless you're a hermit. furthermore, as a hedge against managerial ineptitude, humans are adaptable creatures that can recognize their manager's shortcomings and determine when and how to work around them to actually get the job done

understanding the intricacies training a machine learning system is a highly specialized and technical skill that nobody is going to pick up base knowledge for in the regular course of life. the skill floor for the average person tasked with it will be much lower than that of people management, and they will probably fuck up, a lot

the onus is ostensibly on AI system vendors to make their systems idiot-proof, but how many vendors actually do so past the point of "looks good enough to close the sale in a demo"? designing such a system is _incredibly_ hard, and the unfortunate reality is that if you try, you'll lose sales to snake oil salesmen who are content to push hokum trash with a fancy coat of paint.

these systems can work as a force multiplier in the hands of the capable, but work as an incompetence magnifier in the hands of the incapable, and there are plenty of dunning-krugerites lusting to magnify their incompetence

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

#376

Post by smegger001 » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 2:56 AM UTC

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.

I would say meet or beat human custom support agent accuracy, 100% is in many case not acheivable for machine or human.

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

#377

Post by burnished » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 2:56 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #322

nicbou wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I love about German law is that lopsided contracts are generally not valid.

I don’t think a “don’t trust anything our chatbot says” contract is very lopsided. You can just not use it. It’s not as if it’s a highly important facet of your life.

Wrong thread, this one explicitly postulates a 100+ page EULA

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

#378

Post by ggm » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 2:57 AM UTC

frabjoused wrote: post #364

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 muc…

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

Actually, it's just as alarming. The entity behind the chatbot might be a separate legal entity, but that doesn't absolve the airline, who outsourced a function bound to their terms and conditions.

If they literally tried to absolve blame by assigning personhood and liability to the bot, that's insanely bad.

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

#379

Post by erhaetherth » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 2:59 AM UTC

atoav wrote: post #359

KiranRao0 wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Humans won't fabricate too much but when confronted with yes/no questions and they have a 50-50 shot of being right and any blowback will likely be on someone else....they'll answer whatever to get you out of their hair.

Case in point, I asked my bank if they had any FX conversion fees or markup. Guy said no. I asked if there was any markup on the spread. Said no. Guess what? They absolutely mark up that spread. Their exchange rates are terrible. Just because there isn't a line-item with a fee listed doesn't mean there isn't a hidden fee in there. He's either incompetent or a liar.

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

#380

Post by photonthug » Sat, Feb 17, 2024, 3:01 AM UTC

jorisboris wrote: post #294

jowea wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fines and lawsuits may be way cheaper than human staff.

Especially once we have ai lawyers ;)

This initially sounded pretty good until I thought it through. Democratizing access to council and forcing troll lawyers to deal with trolling bots seems good but it will shape up like other spam arms races while legal systems gear up to deal with the ddos attacks. Good for spammers and most entrenched players, bad for the public at large.

Already we can’t manage to prosecute ex presidents in a timely manner before the next election cycle. If delays seem absurd now what will it be like when anything and everything remotely legal takes 10+ years and already sky-high costs triple?