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Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

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Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#391

Post by frollogaston »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #225
flaburgan wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the Spirit customers may not have a Gmail or even a Google account? I personally don't.

Sure, a Spirit customer with no Gmail account can absolutely complain and/or be wary of this. I didn't mean what I wrote as a complete counterargument -- just trying to indicate the "scale" of the privacy issue here, which is that it's something that many people already tacitly accept.

Even those customers probably have something that's neither self-hosted nor privacy-focused. If it's not gmail, it's one of the counterparts.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#392

Post by mattlondon »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #97
budman1 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this have value? Is any and every sentence in an e-mail considered 'fact' and thus to be fed into the AI? 90% of e-mails and Teams communications are inane. Polite banter, "thanks for taking care of that, I appreciate it" "please route the forms to Janet this week because Bill is on vacation" "unit will be un available until the parts come in" . I can't see the intrinsic fact value of this kind of communicat…

LLMs aren't a database. They're an attempt at brute-forcing an artificial mind. The who and what aren't really interesting there, it'll forget most of such details anyway. What matters is the patterns visible in the text at various scales. How people write. Why they write. To whom they write, in response to what. How does e-mails about mistakes correlate with PDFs they're referring to. How people work with ticketing…

This, and I think that it is not just the data but the way an interaction unfolded.

So you show the LLM messages 1,2 and 3 of a 15 email thread. What happens in message 4? 5? 6? Etc.

So it's not just training the model on what these things look like, it's prediction.

Having an entire business, that contains loads of nice time stamped data points from across the entire business is a bit of a gold mine as it can be scrubbed backwards and forwards in time and the AI can predict the outcomes at any stage.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#393

Post by xyst »

dopamean wrote: post #243
xrd wrote: post #19

About twenty years ago, I was taking a flight back from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to the US. In the middle of the night the pilot got on the loudspeaker and said "hi! Having some engine trouble, so we are landing in Manaus." Manaus is in the middle of the Amazon. Needless to say, a bit scary to hear that, but we landed without issue. They told us we had two choices: the nice hotel with a shared room, or the lesser nice…

I'll never understand this attitude toward airlines. What did you want them to do in this situation? Keep flying the plane with engine issues so you could make your important meetings? It sounds like the airline did the right thing here but you were still mad?

Op clearly wasn’t mad at the pilot for doing their job. Op is mad at the company for trying to downplay the situation with $100.

Insane bruv

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#394

Post by roncesvalles »

jbstack wrote: post #304
dopamean wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never understand this attitude toward airlines. What did you want them to do in this situation? Keep flying the plane with engine issues so you could make your important meetings? It sounds like the airline did the right thing here but you were still mad?

I'll flip this around and say I've never understood why an airline is viewed as a special case. In the general case, if you enter into a contract and pay for a service, then don't receive that service, you're entitled to sue the service provider for your losses. For example, if I turn up to a hotel I booked only to find that the room isn't available, I'm entitled to sue the hotel for my cost in finding a reasonable l…

My understanding is that there is no arrival time SLA when you buy a plane ticket (barring the compensation ladder set by EU regulators). All they owe you is getting you and your stuff to the destination.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#395

Post by ngriffiths »

teachrdan wrote: post #382
stephenhuey wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airlines are quite a special case. Learned a lot from this a few months ago: https://davidoks.blog/p/why-airlines-are-always-going-bankru... I've had plenty of bad airline experiences and wished they gave me more for my trouble, but clearly they are unable to at current margins. If you want the market to provide a better service, it already does: you can pay tons more to fly private, either a charter or your own jet…

> I've had plenty of bad airline experiences and wished they gave me more for my trouble, but clearly they are unable to at current margins. It's weird to see people simp for the airline industry. A cursory google search shows that United Airlines, to take one example, made $4,300,000,000 in profits before taxes last year. This is money that could easily be spent on things like better maintenance, more pilots and cre…

This was a fantastic year for United, and the margin is ~6%! They lost a similar amount in 2020. The earnings history definitely backs up the story of relatively low margins, weak growth and a fair amount of volatility to deal with.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#396

Post by andybak »

mring33621 wrote: post #242
vkou wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument generally doesn't demonstrate that. The argument generally goes: 1. Google could do it. 2. 3. Therefore, Google is doing it! (Step 2 needs to be filled in a bit for it to be a good argument. Generally, analogies don't quite make the cut.)

You are ignoring the value of previous experience: Please replace 'Google' with 'Profit-driven legal entity in the USA' and reread your argument. The parent is making an assumption, based on past experience, but is also Most Likely correct.

At the risk of posting without adding anything substantive, I find this an exceedingly convincing argument.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#397

Post by epgui »

dopamean wrote: post #243
xrd wrote: post #19

About twenty years ago, I was taking a flight back from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to the US. In the middle of the night the pilot got on the loudspeaker and said "hi! Having some engine trouble, so we are landing in Manaus." Manaus is in the middle of the Amazon. Needless to say, a bit scary to hear that, but we landed without issue. They told us we had two choices: the nice hotel with a shared room, or the lesser nice…

I'll never understand this attitude toward airlines. What did you want them to do in this situation? Keep flying the plane with engine issues so you could make your important meetings? It sounds like the airline did the right thing here but you were still mad?

I think you’re failing to identify the important part of the story.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#398

Post by tengbretson »

xrd wrote: post #19

About twenty years ago, I was taking a flight back from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to the US. In the middle of the night the pilot got on the loudspeaker and said "hi! Having some engine trouble, so we are landing in Manaus." Manaus is in the middle of the Amazon. Needless to say, a bit scary to hear that, but we landed without issue. They told us we had two choices: the nice hotel with a shared room, or the lesser nice…

> But, this is the kind of information I'm worried about when a vendor sells my data. If Google wanted to sell a product to the airlines that offered to keep annoying people like me from purchasing flights

How can I help them accomplish this goal?

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#399

Post by im3w1l »

jbstack wrote: post #304
dopamean wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll never understand this attitude toward airlines. What did you want them to do in this situation? Keep flying the plane with engine issues so you could make your important meetings? It sounds like the airline did the right thing here but you were still mad?

I'll flip this around and say I've never understood why an airline is viewed as a special case. In the general case, if you enter into a contract and pay for a service, then don't receive that service, you're entitled to sue the service provider for your losses. For example, if I turn up to a hotel I booked only to find that the room isn't available, I'm entitled to sue the hotel for my cost in finding a reasonable l…

You are basically arguing that travelers with little to lose from a delay should subsidize travelers with a lot to lose, they would pay the same ticket prize but end up with different payouts.

I don't think that's reasonable. If you have a lot to lose then extra insurance should be a premium offering.

Re: Google has acquired the data of failed US airline Spirit

#400

Post by mikeweiss »

letmetweakit wrote: post #278
xrd wrote: post #19

About twenty years ago, I was taking a flight back from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to the US. In the middle of the night the pilot got on the loudspeaker and said "hi! Having some engine trouble, so we are landing in Manaus." Manaus is in the middle of the Amazon. Needless to say, a bit scary to hear that, but we landed without issue. They told us we had two choices: the nice hotel with a shared room, or the lesser nice…

It seems like you had a nice, unexpected experience due to the incident. I didn't expect your story to end up in you threatening to take them to court.

Agree. Some people really fail to see the bright side of things. Sad.
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