Air Canada chat bot is not trustworthy!. As an result Air Canada recently lost a case in court. British Columbia resident Jake Moffatt needed to get a flight to visit his grandmothers funeral. The AI on Air Canadas homepage told him that he could buy a full fare ticket and then get it discounted afterwards. How ever Air Canadas chat bot was wrong and Jake toke Air Canada to court.
In court Air Canada tried to explain that their chat bot was a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions. How ever and with al right, the court found that the airline most be hold responsible fort al information that they provide thru their web page. In this case the badly controlled chat bot costs Air Canada 800 dollar. First of al I do think the judgement is right. Airlines should not be free from responsibilities just because they use AI. This is a technical choose the airlines makes and should be hold responsible for.
This case shows that disconnecting humans from the tech like AI and chat bots can get expensive. 30% of al AI answers are fictional that means that they are giving wrong answers. Airlines using chatbots must use human guardrails that highlight fictionals such as hallucinations, inaccurate, and illegal information. To not do this can become more expensive then the cost of human overview.
It looks like Air Canada was to tech friendly and launched the chat bot to the public before it was trustworthy. A better way is to start using AI and chat bots for internal use. On this way they will have a great learning tool where fictional answers get’s corrected over time. But instead they launched their chat bot to public with out human overview.
Good AI is a question of public good
If Air Canada had won the case and a chat bot would have been considered as an legan entity by it self we as passengers would have no possibilities to trust airlines or any other service provider who use AI in their contact with the public. With this judgement we as passenger can continue to trust the information given to us on company websites. Airlines and other companies will continue to be hold responsible for the information they gove us. I don´t write this post because I’m against AI, I just want it to be good for the public. As an example ChatGPT is an excellent travel concierge
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