Air Canada must pay damages after chatbot lies to grieving passenger about discount – Airline tried arguing virtual assistant was solely responsible for its own actions

ylai@lemmy.ml to Not The Onion@lemmy.world – 618 points –
Air Canada must pay after chatbot lies to grieving passenger
theregister.com
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Why would air Canada even fight this? He got a couple hundred bucks and they paid at least 50k in lawyer fees to fight paying those. They could have just given him the cost of the lawyer's fees and be done with it

Because now they have to stop using the chatbot or take on the liability of having to pay out whenever it fucks up.

Which is fascinating, that they themselves thought there was any doubt about it, or they could argue such a doubt.

This is the same like arguing "It wasn't me who shot the mailmen dead. It was my automated home self defense system"

Agree 100%--i mean who are you gonna fine, the bot? The company that sold you the bot? This is a simple case of garbage in, garbage out--if they set it up properly and vetted its operation, they wouldn't be trying to make such preposterous objections. I'm glad this went to court where it was definitively shut down.

Fuck Canada Air. The guy already lost a loved one, now they wanna drag him through all this over a pittance? To me, this is the corporate mindset--going to absolutely any length necessary to hoover up more money, even the smallest of scraps.

Most likely to fight the precedent of them being liable for using an ai chatbot that gives faulty information.

A settlement would cost less, can be kept private, and doesn't set precedent. Now they have an actual court case judgement, and that does set precedent.

I think some companies have a policy of fighting every lawsuit and making everything take as long as possible, simply to discourage more lawsuits.

Because there is something far nastier in the world than self interest. This airline seems to me like it was operating from a place of spite.

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Just how Air Canada does things now. I think it largely stemmed from the pandemic where people gave them leeway on things being a bit messed up. But now they've fallen into a habit of not taking responsibility for anything.

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