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Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors

ft.com

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Re: Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors

#11

Post by conartist6 »

WrongAssumption wrote: post #10
conartist6 wrote: post #4

Man I wish I could get insurance like that. "Accountability insurance" You were responsibile for something, say, child care, and you just decided to go for beer and leave the child with an AI. The house burns down, but because you had insurance you are not responsible. You just head along to your next child care job and don't too much worry about it.

Being covered does not mean you are not responsible.

That was basically my whole point.

Would you want to insure people who think they have no responsibility because they've delegated it to an AI? They might as well have delegated the responsibility to a child or a dog. To sell them insurance, you as the insurer are making a financial bet on the ability of the dog to take care of anything that does go wrong.

And still as the insured, using the AI imbued with your responsibility risks horrible outcomes that could still ruin your life. The AI has no life to ruin. It was never really responsible.

Re: Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors

#12

Post by Justin_K »

conartist6 wrote: post #4

Man I wish I could get insurance like that. "Accountability insurance" You were responsibile for something, say, child care, and you just decided to go for beer and leave the child with an AI. The house burns down, but because you had insurance you are not responsible. You just head along to your next child care job and don't too much worry about it.

It's called errors and omissions and it's as basic an insurance as it gets.

Re: Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors

#13

Post by wat10000 »

conartist6 wrote: post #11
WrongAssumption wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being covered does not mean you are not responsible.

That was basically my whole point. Would you want to insure people who think they have no responsibility because they've delegated it to an AI? They might as well have delegated the responsibility to a child or a dog. To sell them insurance, you as the insurer are making a financial bet on the ability of the dog to take care of anything that does go wrong. And still as the insured, using the AI imbued with your respo…

It's just a numbers game. Set your premiums such that you take in more than you pay out. If losses due to dumb use of AI are common then the premiums will be high, but there's no reason to refuse to issue such policies altogether.

Re: Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors

#14

Post by loeber »

Insurance tech guy here. This is not the revolutionary new type of insurance that it might look like at first glance. It's an adaptation of already-commonplace insurance products that are limited in their market size. If you're curious about this topic, I've written about it at length: https://loeber.substack.com/p/24-insurance-for-ai-easier-sai...

Re: Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors

#15

Post by FireBeyond »

jpc0 wrote: post #7
alexriddle wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of insurance covers these types of situation which are the result of careless acts... Don't take the right safety precautions and burn down a customers house - liability insurance Click on a link in a phishing email and open up your network to a ransomware attack - cyber insurance Forget to lock your door and get burgled - property insurance Write buggy software which leads to a hospital having to suspend operat…

> Forget to lock your door and get burgled - property insurance I’m pretty sure this will be the same for the other insurance you mentioned but for property insurance if you left your front door open you will have a hard time getting the insurance to actually pay out your claim. At least here they require a burglar alarm and they require it to be armed when nobody is on site or they will absolutely decline the claim.…

> At least here they require a burglar alarm

Is that commercial or residential?

I've never seen a residential insurance that requires an alarm system, let alone a monitored system. Though many carriers will offer a discount for having this.

Re: Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors

#16

Post by tedivm »

kube-system wrote: post #6
conartist6 wrote: post #4

Man I wish I could get insurance like that. "Accountability insurance" You were responsibile for something, say, child care, and you just decided to go for beer and leave the child with an AI. The house burns down, but because you had insurance you are not responsible. You just head along to your next child care job and don't too much worry about it.

Insurance can’t go to jail for you but it can and often does pay your legal fees and/or civil liabilities regardless of fault.

Yup, I have an umbrella policy to cover a variety of legal situations. It costs me $900 a year for a $3m (per incident) policy.

Re: Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors

#17

Post by omoikane »

loeber wrote: post #14

Insurance tech guy here. This is not the revolutionary new type of insurance that it might look like at first glance. It's an adaptation of already-commonplace insurance products that are limited in their market size. If you're curious about this topic, I've written about it at length: https://loeber.substack.com/p/24-insurance-for-ai-easier-sai...

Was it also commonplace to have insurances covering human errors? For example:

> A tribunal last year ordered Air Canada to honour a discount that its customer service chatbot had made up.

If a human sales representative had made that mistake instead of a chatbot, I wonder if companies will try to recover that cost through insurance. Or perhaps AI insurance won't cover the chatbot for that either?

Re: Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors

#18

Post by caulkboots »

conartist6 wrote: post #4

Man I wish I could get insurance like that. "Accountability insurance" You were responsibile for something, say, child care, and you just decided to go for beer and leave the child with an AI. The house burns down, but because you had insurance you are not responsible. You just head along to your next child care job and don't too much worry about it.

Not sure insurance will take the rap for criminal negligence.

Re: Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors

#19

Post by loeber »

omoikane wrote: post #17
loeber wrote: post #14

Insurance tech guy here. This is not the revolutionary new type of insurance that it might look like at first glance. It's an adaptation of already-commonplace insurance products that are limited in their market size. If you're curious about this topic, I've written about it at length: https://loeber.substack.com/p/24-insurance-for-ai-easier-sai...

Was it also commonplace to have insurances covering human errors? For example: > A tribunal last year ordered Air Canada to honour a discount that its customer service chatbot had made up. If a human sales representative had made that mistake instead of a chatbot, I wonder if companies will try to recover that cost through insurance. Or perhaps AI insurance won't cover the chatbot for that either?

Yes, this is called Professional Liability or Errors & Omissions insurance. It's an important insurance category, but limited in market size. It's uncommon to have e.g. human sales representatives covered for this, but your doctor, lawyer, accountant, architect, etc. will all carry this kind of insurance.

Re: Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors

#20

Post by dghlsakjg »

omoikane wrote: post #17
loeber wrote: post #14

Insurance tech guy here. This is not the revolutionary new type of insurance that it might look like at first glance. It's an adaptation of already-commonplace insurance products that are limited in their market size. If you're curious about this topic, I've written about it at length: https://loeber.substack.com/p/24-insurance-for-ai-easier-sai...

Was it also commonplace to have insurances covering human errors? For example: > A tribunal last year ordered Air Canada to honour a discount that its customer service chatbot had made up. If a human sales representative had made that mistake instead of a chatbot, I wonder if companies will try to recover that cost through insurance. Or perhaps AI insurance won't cover the chatbot for that either?

The Air Canada case is interesting since it predates LLMs. If you read the details it was basically the chatbot had been programmed to respond to point at a policy that for some reason differed from what Air Canada claimed was its actual policy. Nothing was made up, Air Canada simply had two contradictory policies based on where you were on the site.

A customer trusted the policy that the chatbot provided to make a decision, and the tribunal said that it was reasonable for the customer to make a decision based on that policy, and that the airline had to honor that policy.

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