4 ms·

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

by Arrath 3y ago

itsmartapuntocm 3y ago
They want to have their cake and eat it too. To use AI to get rid of paying for labor, but also not assume any of the risks that go along with it.
- washadjeffmad 3y ago
  At least they could claim it as a training issue.
arcticbull 3y ago
Surprised they didn't try and claim it was an independent contractor.
dmurray 3y ago
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 contracts for the company - otherwise someone might agree to sell their whole stock to an accomplice for $1. The same applies to Air Canada, my buddy there can't "advise" me I get free flights for life and have that honoured. So where is the line? Is it about good faith by the customer, or about what a reasonable person might think the company would offer them? [0] https://twitter.com/ChrisJBakke/status/1736533308849443121 https://twitter.com/ChrisJBakke/status/1736533308849443121
- tomrod 3y ago
  > 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.
  - kelseyfrog 3y ago
    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 https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/consideration 2. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unconscionability https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unconscionability
    - jowea 3y ago
      I found this article which indicates this legal protection relates to the doctrine of unilateral mistake: https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol75/iss2/9/ https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol75/iss2/9/
      - kelseyfrog 3y ago
        Thank you. It seemed like there would be some kind of legal principle at play.
  - dmurray 3y ago
    This is nonsense. Can you imagine the chaos of a world where what you said is even close to true? I'm a cashier at Walmart. One day I sell to you for $100 - not just everything in the store, but the building, the local distribution centre and even the corporate headquarters. And in your view - Walmart has no legal recourse against me or against you? They should just peacefully vacate the buildings and hand over the keys? Their remedy to this is to discipline me according to their internal controls - maybe put me on a PIP and remind me that the company handbook forbids these deals? No, this just isn't a deal that can happen. It's not about reasonableness, consideration or unconscionability - the deal is void even if the buyer agreed to pay $100 million. It's not about good faith on the buyer's side - it's void even if you thought I was the VP of Real Estate. I can't sell Walmart's property at any price, even though I'm otherwise empowered to do business on behalf of the company.
- fbdab103 3y ago
  I think there is already established case law that a deal can be too-good-to-be-true. If you see a 90" TV on Amazon for $1, even if the order went through, Amazon is within their rights to cancel it as a mistake in pricing.
  - skissane 3y ago
    I’ve seen before “too good to be true” offers that were actually scams. They offer you an (allegedly worth $99) hair dryer for only $3.95. In the fine print you don’t read, it says you are signing up to a monthly subscription (to what????), with an introductory low price of $3.95 the first month and $39.95 a month thereafter. They are hoping you won’t notice the recurring charge. And you never get the hair dryer (or at least, one person I know who got scammed this way never did-the bank even refused to reverse the initial $3.95 charge, since it had been authorised through their mobile app, although they did reverse the subsequent ones.)
  - jowea 3y ago
    Quick search found this article discussing it : https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol75/iss2/9/ https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol75/iss2/9/
- SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
  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.
- overstay8930 3y ago
  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.
- ryandrake 3y ago
  Somehow, I bet if the sales rep or a chatbot convinced the guy to pay $200K for a Chevy Tahoe, the full force of GM's legal team would ensure the customer was held to that. But, when it goes the other way, and the sales rep or chatbot is convinced to sell it for $1, suddenly it's not "sensible."
jowea 3y ago
It really seems absurd because even if it was, isn't Air Canada responsible? Imagine it was a human employee who made the same mistake, surely it's still Air Canada's problem? Anyway, let's take a moment to thank Air Canada for this progressive stand for the individual legal autonomy of artificial persons.
Aachen 3y ago
The article doesn't say (imo an omission), but I assume the argument wasn't that level of stupid More likely, they blamed a third party vendor that developed, configured, or hosts the bot Which sounds like a similar situation to when your taxi breaks due to a mechanic's shoddy work: it's not the passenger's fault that your mechanic sucked, you were contracted to get them from A to B and may be on the hook if you stated you'd get them there on time. Here, it's not the user's fault that the chat bot was shoddy and stated something that they now don't want to fulfil. If AirCan wants to blame their vendor, they can go right ahead but this person has a right to this reduced flight price independently of whether AirCan gets the money from their vendor But explaining all that instead of saying "haha they claimed the chat bot is an independent entity!" probably gets shared less (it's yesterday's top comment after all) and thus fewer conversions from website readers into subscribers
- erhaetherth 3y ago
  If they dragged the customer into court, they already screwed up. They should have paid the customer immediately and then took it up with their vendor. If they want to take their vendor to court, they can do that separately.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    Yeah, we all agree on that. I'm just saying the article appears to exaggerate it further for comedic effect

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

by Arrath 3y ago

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

itsmartapuntocm 3y ago

They want to have their cake and eat it too. To use AI to get rid of paying for labor, but also not assume any of the risks that go along with it.

washadjeffmad 3y ago
At least they could claim it as a training issue.

arcticbull 3y ago

Surprised they didn't try and claim it was an independent contractor.

dmurray 3y ago

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 contracts for the company - otherwise someone might agree to sell their whole stock to an accomplice for $1. The same applies to Air Canada, my buddy there can't "advise" me I get free flights for life and have that honoured. So where is the line? Is it about good faith by the customer, or about what a reasonable person might think the company would offer them? [0] https://twitter.com/ChrisJBakke/status/1736533308849443121 https://twitter.com/ChrisJBakke/status/1736533308849443121

tomrod 3y ago
> 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.
- kelseyfrog 3y ago
  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 https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/consideration 2. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unconscionability https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/unconscionability
  - jowea 3y ago
    I found this article which indicates this legal protection relates to the doctrine of unilateral mistake: https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol75/iss2/9/ https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol75/iss2/9/
    - kelseyfrog 3y ago
      Thank you. It seemed like there would be some kind of legal principle at play.
- dmurray 3y ago
  This is nonsense. Can you imagine the chaos of a world where what you said is even close to true? I'm a cashier at Walmart. One day I sell to you for $100 - not just everything in the store, but the building, the local distribution centre and even the corporate headquarters. And in your view - Walmart has no legal recourse against me or against you? They should just peacefully vacate the buildings and hand over the keys? Their remedy to this is to discipline me according to their internal controls - maybe put me on a PIP and remind me that the company handbook forbids these deals? No, this just isn't a deal that can happen. It's not about reasonableness, consideration or unconscionability - the deal is void even if the buyer agreed to pay $100 million. It's not about good faith on the buyer's side - it's void even if you thought I was the VP of Real Estate. I can't sell Walmart's property at any price, even though I'm otherwise empowered to do business on behalf of the company.
fbdab103 3y ago
I think there is already established case law that a deal can be too-good-to-be-true. If you see a 90" TV on Amazon for $1, even if the order went through, Amazon is within their rights to cancel it as a mistake in pricing.
- skissane 3y ago
  I’ve seen before “too good to be true” offers that were actually scams. They offer you an (allegedly worth $99) hair dryer for only $3.95. In the fine print you don’t read, it says you are signing up to a monthly subscription (to what????), with an introductory low price of $3.95 the first month and $39.95 a month thereafter. They are hoping you won’t notice the recurring charge. And you never get the hair dryer (or at least, one person I know who got scammed this way never did-the bank even refused to reverse the initial $3.95 charge, since it had been authorised through their mobile app, although they did reverse the subsequent ones.)
- jowea 3y ago
  Quick search found this article discussing it : https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol75/iss2/9/ https://scholar.smu.edu/smulr/vol75/iss2/9/
SuperNinKenDo 3y ago
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.
overstay8930 3y ago
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.
ryandrake 3y ago
Somehow, I bet if the sales rep or a chatbot convinced the guy to pay $200K for a Chevy Tahoe, the full force of GM's legal team would ensure the customer was held to that. But, when it goes the other way, and the sales rep or chatbot is convinced to sell it for $1, suddenly it's not "sensible."

jowea 3y ago

It really seems absurd because even if it was, isn't Air Canada responsible? Imagine it was a human employee who made the same mistake, surely it's still Air Canada's problem? Anyway, let's take a moment to thank Air Canada for this progressive stand for the individual legal autonomy of artificial persons.

Aachen 3y ago

The article doesn't say (imo an omission), but I assume the argument wasn't that level of stupid More likely, they blamed a third party vendor that developed, configured, or hosts the bot Which sounds like a similar situation to when your taxi breaks due to a mechanic's shoddy work: it's not the passenger's fault that your mechanic sucked, you were contracted to get them from A to B and may be on the hook if you stated you'd get them there on time. Here, it's not the user's fault that the chat bot was shoddy and stated something that they now don't want to fulfil. If AirCan wants to blame their vendor, they can go right ahead but this person has a right to this reduced flight price independently of whether AirCan gets the money from their vendor But explaining all that instead of saying "haha they claimed the chat bot is an independent entity!" probably gets shared less (it's yesterday's top comment after all) and thus fewer conversions from website readers into subscribers

erhaetherth 3y ago
If they dragged the customer into court, they already screwed up. They should have paid the customer immediately and then took it up with their vendor. If they want to take their vendor to court, they can do that separately.
- Aachen 3y ago
  Yeah, we all agree on that. I'm just saying the article appears to exaggerate it further for comedic effect