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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 warne

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 like "Warning: the information you receive may be incorrect and irrelevant." Getting correct and relevant information from a human will be impossible.

unsupp0rted 3y ago
That's why I get all my questions answered by CC'ing legal@example.com and privacy@example.com
mathgradthrow 3y ago
the standard disclaimer for fraud
OnionBlender 3y ago
If that is such a perfect way to avoid getting sued, why don't they put that on every page of their website and train all of their customer service staff to say that when they talk to customers?
- effingwewt 3y ago
  ....Because an actual judge hadn't said it yet. I still.remember when Microsoft updated thr 360 TOS to force arbitration the day after it was deemed legal in a completely separate case. Rest assured there is an incoming flood of TOS updates.
- waveBidder 3y ago
  Don't know if you've had the pleasure of interacting with US health insurance, but they do this for coverage and cost estimates all the time, so there is unfortunately precedent in the States.
- add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  Humans aren't perfect but they're reliable enough to be trusted with customer service work. Humans (generally) have a desire and need to keep their jobs and therefore hold themselves to a high enough standard of performance to keep their job. And maybe employment contracts have language that offloads liability to an employee if they go rogue and start giving away company resources. Chatbots aren't accountable in any way and we don't know yet if their creators ever will be either. And disclaimers are used in lots of contexts too.
- frud 3y ago
  I used to work for a company that sold factory automation technology, and had hundreds of manuals for all the products they sold. In the front matter of every manual was a disclaimer that nothing in the manual was warranted to be true. This was automation equipment running things like steel mills, factories, petroleum plants, where failures could result in many deaths and grave financial losses.
  - MichaelZuo 3y ago
    I could see that for paper manuals or normal pdfs since once they leave the premises of the company anyone could alter the pages of the manual.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  Well, if the information on the website is too inaccurate to trust then it is also too inaccurate for purposes of contract. The logical next step is to say that all contracts made with chatbots are unenforceable as they lack any trustworthy meeting of the minds.
- rnewme 3y ago
  Because you would choose someone else for things that really matter to you, probably the same person you would chose in that kind of scenario anyway. Eg. for my initial llc where I was single employee, I didn't care about my accounting basically saying in the contract "we ll do our best but can't be liable for anything", whereas now that I have bigger llc with many employees I picked (what I perceived) the best option on the market, for a premium price. They take the liability for their work and have insurance.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  Because it is a bad look, I assume. If I'm interacting with a company that constantly disclaims everything they say as probable bullshit, I'll go find a competitor that at least pretends to try harder.
yieldcrv 3y ago
or its buried on the 4th page of the disclaimer if you read them there is often stuff like that, the most flagrant one I read said “everything above should be considered apocryphal”
deegles 3y ago
much like Tesla's Autopilot which cannot be responsible for an accident because you're supposed to be hands-on-wheel and alert at all times while using it.
- w0m 3y ago
  That issue is media mostly optics I think. Once you sit down with it, it's simply a better cruise control. Now, if you are talking about 'Full Self Driving' - then yea, there's a waiver and a point there.
  - efitz 3y ago
    It's not optics. It's regulatory intervention: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2023/RCAK-23V838-3395.pdf https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2023/RCAK-23V838-3395.pdf I think the recall is dumb. If you are not paying attention and have an accident, then you are at fault. You already have to click-through agree to use the feature properly, and Tesla has an interior camera to capture a photo of the person agreeing and telemetry to send it to the mothership. For that matter, Tesla could make you read the waiver on camera and capture that before enabling autopilot or FSD.
dheera 3y ago
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?
- more_corn 3y ago
  Also, the chatbot proposed a very reasonable solution. Book the fight, send us a death certificate when you have it and you’ll get the discount. That’s actually what the policy should be and it’s a quite reasonable error for a human to make too.
- saintfire 3y ago
  I would assume the average salary of a customer support worker is dramatically lower than that. The point is still valid regardless.
  - recursive 3y ago
    Salary is always lower than the employer's total cost to employ, so that tracks.
- passwordoops 3y ago
  You think front-line support staff account for $100k in compensation?
  - dheera 3y ago
    Total overhead. Compensation + benefits + payroll taxes + all the per-employee real estate and equipment to support them on the job
    - passwordoops 3y ago
      Exactly. They are paid under $20/hr pre-tax ($40K) benefits (LOL for that job) won't exceed, what $5K of I'm betting mega generous. Phone jockeys don't need real estate but in the event they do go to an office an individual employee would account for what, $50 a month of that expense? And equipment is trivial maybe a couple of hundred at most (laptop and headset). We're not talking anything near $100K
hypocrticalCons 3y ago
[flagged]
- pavel_lishin 3y ago
  The story is about a Canadian airline, in a Canadian civil resolution tribunal.
  - hypocrticalCons 3y ago
    And? Using American technology, huffing American propaganda, voting for American political ideals. I'm Canadian and I see us as no different from Americans. We are Americans.
nimbius 3y ago
choosing to accept an unnecessary quantifiable liability and wrapping it in a disclaimer as part of a critical business process is not a recipe for sustained growth or profit. AC and other corporations would do well to put the brakes on this instead. identify ways to transfer risk (AI Insurance for example) or avoid risk (scrap the AI bot until the risk is lowered demonstrably.) savvy advertisers would jump on this opportunity to show just how much AC cares about the customer and eat the loss quietly before it ever went to trial.
_thisdot 3y ago
Can’t they link to sources? Like Perplexity.ai or Arc Search does. I don’t even need it to tell me anything. Links are all that is relevant. Google Analytics on the Web does something similar. You can ask questions in the search box and it takes you to a relevant page. “Can I get refund on my flight 2 hours in advance?” “Here is a link to refund policies w.r.t time before flight”
- Sayrus 3y ago
  Air Canada's chatbot returned sources along with its answer. Quotes from another article[1]. > Air Canada’s argument was that because the chatbot response included a link to a page on the site outlining the policy correctly, Moffat should’ve known better. [1] https://techhq.com/2024/02/air-canada-refund-for-customer-who-used-chatbot/ https://techhq.com/2024/02/air-canada-refund-for-customer-wh...
  - ncallaway 3y ago
    Yes, but: "The answer is yes, you may receive a refund within 2 hours of departure. More details are here: (link)" is _entirely_ different from "Our refund policy is here: (link)"
rwbhn 3y ago
Part of disclaimer at irs.gov for their interactive assistant: "Answers do not constitute written advice in response to a specific written request of the taxpayer within the meaning of section 6404(f) of the Internal Revenue Code."
Silhouette 3y ago
Presumably this is why there is a trend in consumer rights legislation towards being explicit that anything a buyer has been told by a seller or actively told the seller before the sale is material to the contract of sale regardless of the seller's small print that says "This contract of sale we wrote by ourselves and won't negotiate with you and only this contract means anything". Then they can't promise the world to get the sale and then wash their hands of any resulting commitments two seconds after they get your money. Which seems entirely fair and reasonable to me, whether the promise came from a real person or a chatbot.
AlbertCory 3y ago
IANAL, but AFAIK you can't disclaim liability that you actually have. I'd love to hear an actual lawyer who knows (not a know-it-all amateur) declaim on this, but: A Ferris Wheel operator cannot make you sign a disclaimer that they're not responsible if it collapses and kills you. Or rather, they can, but it will not hold up in court. Similarly, you can say in your manual, "We're not responsible for anything we say here" but you still are. I don't know about chatbots, but I'd expect that judges will look for other precedents that are analogous.
- astolarz 3y ago
  Personal anecdote: A few years back I left my car at a dealership for some warranty work that was going to take a few days. It has a soft top and they left it in their gated lot overnight, where it got broken into (slashed the top, ripped open the glove box, stole a cheap machete I got from a white elephant exchange). They claimed that they weren't liable at all since I signed a waiver and should go through my own insurance. After a little push back, they caved and covered it under their insurance like they should have from the beginning. I don't go to that dealership for anything anymore, for that and other reasons.

unsupp0rted 3y ago

That's why I get all my questions answered by CC'ing legal@example.com and privacy@example.com

mathgradthrow 3y ago

the standard disclaimer for fraud

OnionBlender 3y ago

If that is such a perfect way to avoid getting sued, why don't they put that on every page of their website and train all of their customer service staff to say that when they talk to customers?

effingwewt 3y ago
....Because an actual judge hadn't said it yet. I still.remember when Microsoft updated thr 360 TOS to force arbitration the day after it was deemed legal in a completely separate case. Rest assured there is an incoming flood of TOS updates.
waveBidder 3y ago
Don't know if you've had the pleasure of interacting with US health insurance, but they do this for coverage and cost estimates all the time, so there is unfortunately precedent in the States.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
Humans aren't perfect but they're reliable enough to be trusted with customer service work. Humans (generally) have a desire and need to keep their jobs and therefore hold themselves to a high enough standard of performance to keep their job. And maybe employment contracts have language that offloads liability to an employee if they go rogue and start giving away company resources. Chatbots aren't accountable in any way and we don't know yet if their creators ever will be either. And disclaimers are used in lots of contexts too.
frud 3y ago
I used to work for a company that sold factory automation technology, and had hundreds of manuals for all the products they sold. In the front matter of every manual was a disclaimer that nothing in the manual was warranted to be true. This was automation equipment running things like steel mills, factories, petroleum plants, where failures could result in many deaths and grave financial losses.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  I could see that for paper manuals or normal pdfs since once they leave the premises of the company anyone could alter the pages of the manual.
sandworm101 3y ago
Well, if the information on the website is too inaccurate to trust then it is also too inaccurate for purposes of contract. The logical next step is to say that all contracts made with chatbots are unenforceable as they lack any trustworthy meeting of the minds.
rnewme 3y ago
Because you would choose someone else for things that really matter to you, probably the same person you would chose in that kind of scenario anyway. Eg. for my initial llc where I was single employee, I didn't care about my accounting basically saying in the contract "we ll do our best but can't be liable for anything", whereas now that I have bigger llc with many employees I picked (what I perceived) the best option on the market, for a premium price. They take the liability for their work and have insurance.
rootusrootus 3y ago
Because it is a bad look, I assume. If I'm interacting with a company that constantly disclaims everything they say as probable bullshit, I'll go find a competitor that at least pretends to try harder.

yieldcrv 3y ago

or its buried on the 4th page of the disclaimer if you read them there is often stuff like that, the most flagrant one I read said “everything above should be considered apocryphal”

deegles 3y ago

much like Tesla's Autopilot which cannot be responsible for an accident because you're supposed to be hands-on-wheel and alert at all times while using it.

w0m 3y ago
That issue is media mostly optics I think. Once you sit down with it, it's simply a better cruise control. Now, if you are talking about 'Full Self Driving' - then yea, there's a waiver and a point there.
- efitz 3y ago
  It's not optics. It's regulatory intervention: https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2023/RCAK-23V838-3395.pdf https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2023/RCAK-23V838-3395.pdf I think the recall is dumb. If you are not paying attention and have an accident, then you are at fault. You already have to click-through agree to use the feature properly, and Tesla has an interior camera to capture a photo of the person agreeing and telemetry to send it to the mothership. For that matter, Tesla could make you read the waiver on camera and capture that before enabling autopilot or FSD.

dheera 3y ago

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?

more_corn 3y ago
Also, the chatbot proposed a very reasonable solution. Book the fight, send us a death certificate when you have it and you’ll get the discount. That’s actually what the policy should be and it’s a quite reasonable error for a human to make too.
saintfire 3y ago
I would assume the average salary of a customer support worker is dramatically lower than that. The point is still valid regardless.
- recursive 3y ago
  Salary is always lower than the employer's total cost to employ, so that tracks.
passwordoops 3y ago
You think front-line support staff account for $100k in compensation?
- dheera 3y ago
  Total overhead. Compensation + benefits + payroll taxes + all the per-employee real estate and equipment to support them on the job
  - passwordoops 3y ago
    Exactly. They are paid under $20/hr pre-tax ($40K) benefits (LOL for that job) won't exceed, what $5K of I'm betting mega generous. Phone jockeys don't need real estate but in the event they do go to an office an individual employee would account for what, $50 a month of that expense? And equipment is trivial maybe a couple of hundred at most (laptop and headset). We're not talking anything near $100K

hypocrticalCons 3y ago

[flagged]

pavel_lishin 3y ago
The story is about a Canadian airline, in a Canadian civil resolution tribunal.
- hypocrticalCons 3y ago
  And? Using American technology, huffing American propaganda, voting for American political ideals. I'm Canadian and I see us as no different from Americans. We are Americans.

nimbius 3y ago

choosing to accept an unnecessary quantifiable liability and wrapping it in a disclaimer as part of a critical business process is not a recipe for sustained growth or profit. AC and other corporations would do well to put the brakes on this instead. identify ways to transfer risk (AI Insurance for example) or avoid risk (scrap the AI bot until the risk is lowered demonstrably.) savvy advertisers would jump on this opportunity to show just how much AC cares about the customer and eat the loss quietly before it ever went to trial.

_thisdot 3y ago

Can’t they link to sources? Like Perplexity.ai or Arc Search does. I don’t even need it to tell me anything. Links are all that is relevant. Google Analytics on the Web does something similar. You can ask questions in the search box and it takes you to a relevant page. “Can I get refund on my flight 2 hours in advance?” “Here is a link to refund policies w.r.t time before flight”

Sayrus 3y ago
Air Canada's chatbot returned sources along with its answer. Quotes from another article[1]. > Air Canada’s argument was that because the chatbot response included a link to a page on the site outlining the policy correctly, Moffat should’ve known better. [1] https://techhq.com/2024/02/air-canada-refund-for-customer-who-used-chatbot/ https://techhq.com/2024/02/air-canada-refund-for-customer-wh...
- ncallaway 3y ago
  Yes, but: "The answer is yes, you may receive a refund within 2 hours of departure. More details are here: (link)" is _entirely_ different from "Our refund policy is here: (link)"

rwbhn 3y ago

Part of disclaimer at irs.gov for their interactive assistant: "Answers do not constitute written advice in response to a specific written request of the taxpayer within the meaning of section 6404(f) of the Internal Revenue Code."

Silhouette 3y ago

Presumably this is why there is a trend in consumer rights legislation towards being explicit that anything a buyer has been told by a seller or actively told the seller before the sale is material to the contract of sale regardless of the seller's small print that says "This contract of sale we wrote by ourselves and won't negotiate with you and only this contract means anything". Then they can't promise the world to get the sale and then wash their hands of any resulting commitments two seconds after they get your money. Which seems entirely fair and reasonable to me, whether the promise came from a real person or a chatbot.

AlbertCory 3y ago

IANAL, but AFAIK you can't disclaim liability that you actually have. I'd love to hear an actual lawyer who knows (not a know-it-all amateur) declaim on this, but: A Ferris Wheel operator cannot make you sign a disclaimer that they're not responsible if it collapses and kills you. Or rather, they can, but it will not hold up in court. Similarly, you can say in your manual, "We're not responsible for anything we say here" but you still are. I don't know about chatbots, but I'd expect that judges will look for other precedents that are analogous.

astolarz 3y ago
Personal anecdote: A few years back I left my car at a dealership for some warranty work that was going to take a few days. It has a soft top and they left it in their gated lot overnight, where it got broken into (slashed the top, ripped open the glove box, stole a cheap machete I got from a white elephant exchange). They claimed that they weren't liable at all since I signed a waiver and should go through my own insurance. After a little push back, they caved and covered it under their insurance like they should have from the beginning. I don't go to that dealership for anything anymore, for that and other reasons.