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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

#261

Post by SuperNinKenDo »

dmurray wrote: post #223
Arrath wrote: post #208

Quite a sensible judgement, it seems. Pretty outrageous for the airline to try to claim the chatbot was its own legal entity.

The guy who bought the Chevy Tahoe for $1 [0] isn't going to get it, though. And that's also perfectly sensible. But at some point we're going to see more cases in the grey area in between. What's the important difference? In both cases I think the result would be the same if the chatbot had been a human. GM doesn't have to honour every promise a sales rep makes, even if that rep is nominally entitled to enter into c…

There's multiple ways to deal with those issues of course, but in those cases there is an actual legal entity who can be held accountable. If the chatbot on their website is its own legal entity, how exactly does one sue it, and who actually pays damages?

This judgement remains in the sensible part of law and in doing so, sidesteps a massive, unexplored, and highly problematic can of worms.

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

#262

Post by kevin_b_er »

qayxc wrote: post #256
metalliqaz wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are salivating at the idea of being able to get humans off their payroll. The future is mass unemployment with all resources being split between a handful of trillionaires who control the AIs.

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.

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

#263

Post by kjkjadksj »

ndjshe3838 wrote: post #226

I hate the whole attitude the industry has towards AI models, it just seems so sloppy compared to software of the past It’s like “yeah we don’t really know what it’s going to do and it might screw up but whatever just launch it” Really surprised me that so many companies are willing to jump into LLMs without any guarantee that the output won’t be something completely insane

Its because the stakes have fallen just that low. Its a chat bot we are talking about. Those have been terrible since forever. Retooling your junk tool with the new popular junk tool at least signals to your shareholders you are willing to keep up with the joneses on the latest stupid thing, without much risk to your actual product at least not yet.

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

#264

Post by ametrau »

qayxc wrote: post #256
metalliqaz wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are salivating at the idea of being able to get humans off their payroll. The future is mass unemployment with all resources being split between a handful of trillionaires who control the AIs.

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.

Well yeah that’s common sense but it hasn’t prevented that exact reason being behind all economic collapse (bleeding the host too fast, too greedily).

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

#265

Post by overstay8930 »

dmurray wrote: post #223
Arrath wrote: post #208

Quite a sensible judgement, it seems. Pretty outrageous for the airline to try to claim the chatbot was its own legal entity.

The guy who bought the Chevy Tahoe for $1 [0] isn't going to get it, though. And that's also perfectly sensible. But at some point we're going to see more cases in the grey area in between. What's the important difference? In both cases I think the result would be the same if the chatbot had been a human. GM doesn't have to honour every promise a sales rep makes, even if that rep is nominally entitled to enter into c…

The line has been defined a long time ago, AI chat bots are considered regular customer service agents because no law has said otherwise, and they represent themselves as such, and we already know that reasonable things said by customer service agents can be taken as fact.

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

#267

Post by ianferrel »

londons_explore wrote: post #242
ceejayoz wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Chevy dealerships had $1 bereavement Chevy Tahoes as a normal business practice, I think that one would've gone the other way. In the Air Canada case, it was a clear good-faith effort to understand the rules of a fare he was legitimately entitled to.

I think eventually courts will decide that whatever a chatbot or employee says while working for the company is binding on the company, as long as there was no malicious intent on either the part of the employee or the customer.

Probably not "whatever", but anything that passes a "reasonableness" standard. It's totally reasonable to expect that if an airline offers bereavement fares that you could file the paperwork a month later because, like, there's a lot going on if you need a bereavement fare and getting the paperwork together can take time.

There are lots of things that an employee might say that would not be reasonable, even if they had no malicious intent.

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

#268

Post by kjkjadksj »

lesuorac wrote: post #252
bhaney wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too much money on the line to bother with due diligence

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 highlighting there are many segments of customer facing interactions where it just doesn’t affect the bottom line how poorly you treat these people. Flights especially are a captive audience, considering how airlines lord over their schedules and gate positions, where especially outside major airports there might not be any redundant options for you beyond one flight.

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

#269

Post by ryandrake »

SuperNinKenDo wrote: post #257
brentm wrote: post #216

I just can't believe it took a lawsuit to get an airline to fork over a few hundred bucks on something that was obviously their fault.

Probably because they felt confident they could set a precedent would be my guess. Of course the argument is absurd, but this is exactly where companies like this would love to go. Virtually free support staff that incur the company absolutely no liability whatsoever.

Maybe companies are so used to their $multimillion dollar legal teams winning against broke Average Joes that their legal departments are starting to just assume that it will always happen and that all court precedents are going to be favorable. They've been sniffing their own farts for so long they think it's fresh air.

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

#270

Post by kelseyfrog »

tomrod wrote: post #231
dmurray wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy who bought the Chevy Tahoe for $1 [0] isn't going to get it, though. And that's also perfectly sensible. But at some point we're going to see more cases in the grey area in between. What's the important difference? In both cases I think the result would be the same if the chatbot had been a human. GM doesn't have to honour every promise a sales rep makes, even if that rep is nominally entitled to enter into c…

> GM doesn't have to honour every promise a sales rep makes, even if that rep is nominally entitled to enter into contracts for the company - otherwise someone might agree to sell their whole stock to an accomplice for $1 The law doesn't protect a company in the world you laid out, internal compliance and controls do. A sales rep in a company with bad controls may well do exactly what you laid out.

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

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