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Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

wired.com

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Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#81

Post by bluGill »

quartz wrote: post #4

> "Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives—including a chatbot," Rivers wrote. "It does not explain why it believes that is the case" or "why the webpage titled 'Bereavement travel' was inherently more trustworthy than its chatbot." This is very reasonable-- AI or not, companies can't expect consumers to know which parts of their digital e…

I expect employees to know the correct answers and give them to me. When an employee says something that contradicts other policy pages I'm expecting that to be a change to company policy to me - they represent the company.

If the company doesn't agree to that, then they need to show the employee was trained on company policy and was disciplined (on first offense maybe just a warning, but this needs to be a clear step on the path to firing the employee) for failing to follow it. Even then they should stand by their employee if the thing said was reasonable (refund you $million may be unreasonable, but refund purchase price is reasonable)

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#82

Post by liendolucas »

Good. I hope people out there also discover chatbot holes and exploit them. Chatbots are one of the most useless and time wasters things out there, they literally serve for absolutely no purpose. And most of them work exactly like nested dropdowns where you select one option after the other. Oh and when you really want to talk to a human being in almost every scenario that option is not available. What a wonderful world powered by "AI".

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#83

Post by emaro »

VHRanger wrote: post #17

Why are we posting this when it's just rephrasing an Ars Technica article? It's even mentionned at the bottom: "This story originally appeared on Ars Technica." Give the clicks to the original article: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/air-canada-must-...

I don't like Ars Technica because they break reader mode and load articles chunk by chunk – I consider it hostile towards the user and am glad since Wired work much better.

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#84

Post by denton-scratch »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #10
Aardwolf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That didn't work It worked in the British Post Office Scandal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

I think this is a very different kind of thing. IIUC: With Air Canada, the question is whether or not a chat bot can be treated as a company representative that makes binding commitments. With the British Post Office, the issue is whether or not a software system is inscrutable during legal proceedings.

> With the British Post Office, the issue is whether or not a software system is inscrutable

Not sure what "inscrutable" means in that context. Is it supposed to mean it can't be scrutinized?

A law was passed some years ago that says evidence obtained from a computer system should be accepted as true, unless evidence is provided that opens it to question. That means, in the Post Office case, that postmasters couldn't demand that the Post Office prove that Horizon was working correctly. They had to prove that it was defective, which was difficult; they were kicked out of their shops, and denied access to their own records, including the Horizon terminals they had been using.

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#85

Post by bluGill »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #10
Aardwolf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That didn't work It worked in the British Post Office Scandal: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

I think this is a very different kind of thing. IIUC: With Air Canada, the question is whether or not a chat bot can be treated as a company representative that makes binding commitments. With the British Post Office, the issue is whether or not a software system is inscrutable during legal proceedings.

Of course if the chatbot cannot what is the point of them - I'll have to get something else to verify anything the chatbot says. Sure the chatbot can say "hello" in 10,000 words or whatever, but it can't do anything useful.

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#86

Post by dheera »

floatrock wrote: post #36

Here's the real punchline: > Experts told the Vancouver Sun that Air Canada may have succeeded in avoiding liability in Moffatt's case if its chatbot had warned customers that the information that the chatbot provided may not be accurate. Here's a glimpse into our Kafka-esque AI-powered future: every corporate lawyer is now making sure any customer service request will be gated by a chatbot containing a disclaimer li…

OR they could just honor what the chatbot said and forget the legal battle.

The chatbot's error cost them what, $200? And it probably replaced at $100000/year employee?

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#87

Post by bluGill »

logicalmonster wrote: post #50

Would a company be liable to uphold its promises if a rogue human customer service agent promised something ridiculous such as 1 million dollars worth of free flights?

The company would have to prove the human was knowingly acting outside of their job/training and was disciplined for that. Such discipline must be on the path to firing the employee if the behavior isn't corrected. Note that training is important here, an employee who isn't trained is assumed to have more authorization than someone who is.

Or in this case they need to take the AI out of service immediately until they can get a corrected version that does not do such a thing. I will accept that the AI can be tricked to do such a thing and remain in service, but only if they can show the tricks are something an honest human wouldn't attempt. (I don't know what this is, but I'll allow the idea for someone else to propose in enough detail that we can debate if a honest people would ever do that)

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#88

Post by grotorea »

dataflow wrote: post #76
wing-_-nuts wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once ordered a gift for my father for christmass. The order page indicated that it would arrive on time. When it didn't arrive, I requested a refund. They then pointed to their FAQ page where they said that orders during the holidays would incur extra processing time, and refused the refund. I wrote back that unless they issused a refund, I would issue a charge back. You don't get to present the customer with one t…

This actually sounds like an interesting case to me because the details make a huge legal difference in my mind. (But IANAL, maybe I'm entirely off base here.) E.g., did they tell you the shipping date after you placed the order, or before? If it was afterward, then it can't have invalidated the contract... you agreed to it without knowing when it would ship. If they told you before, then was it before they knew your…

Why would they tell the date after placing? Every online shopping I ever used shows the shipping date together with shipping price and shipping options if there are any.

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#89

Post by kroltan »

RajT88 wrote: post #78
gray_-_wolf wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The motorola android I have has phone recording in the stock phonecall app, so I just use that.

Nothing like that on the Samsungs I've owned. Next phone will be a Pixel, so we'll see.

At least GrapheneOS does have a built-in recording function.

Re: Air Canada Has to Honor a Refund Policy Its Chatbot Made Up

#90

Post by denton-scratch »

bitmasher9 wrote: post #28
danpalmer wrote: post #2

I'm glad to see that cases are starting to be decided about the liability of using AI generated content. This is something the general public should not need to second-guess.

Honestly LLMs aren’t ready for customer service. If I’m talking to a company I need to have a high degree of accuracy. LLMs are less accurate than trained humans.

Me: Chatbot, are you speaking for $COMPANY? Are you $COMPANY's agent? Can I take your statements as being $COMPANY's legal position?

Chatbot:

Me: Please put me through to a person that can articulate $COMPANY's legal position. This conversation can serve no more purpose.

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