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Comment by beambot | Hacker News Reader

Recall when the Chevy dealership's chatbot agreed to sell a Chevy Tahoe for $1...

https://www.businessinsider.com/car-dealership-chevrolet-cha...

If Chevy dealerships had $1 bereavement Chevy Tahoes as a normal business practice, I think that one would've gone the other way.

In the Air Canada case, it was a clear good-faith effort to understand the rules of a fare he was legitimately entitled to.

I think eventually courts will decide that whatever a chatbot or employee says while working for the company is binding on the company, as long as there was no malicious intent on either the part of the employee or the customer.

Australian consumer law basically already does this (for employees) esp. in the context of e.g. assuring fitness for purpose etc.

Probably not "whatever", but anything that passes a "reasonableness" standard. It's totally reasonable to expect that if an airline offers bereavement fares that you could file the paperwork a month later because, like, there's a lot going on if you need a bereavement fare and getting the paperwork together can take time.

There are lots of things that an employee might say that would not be reasonable, even if they had no malicious intent.

Yeah, reasonableness is the usual requirement in law unless otherwise specified. The ruling we're talking about here uses reasonableness several times:

"Generally, the applicable standard of care requires a company to take reasonable care to ensure their representations are accurate and not misleading."

"I find Air Canada did not take reasonable care to ensure its chatbot was accurate."

"Mr. Moffatt says, and I accept, that they relied upon the chatbot to provide accurate information. I find that was reasonable in the circumstances."

Yep. Intent matters.

If it hasn't happened yet for employees, why do you think it will happen for chatbots?

A clear "paper" trail.

What is described here do happen when employees send mails with explicit promises, but gets harder when only the company has proof of the exchange (recording of the call). Chatbots bridge that gap.

Some people do record calls to companies. I choose to understand "Calls may be recorded" as permission and say "Thank you", even if perhaps that's not always how it was intended. When calling small very sketchy companies (such as my last landlord before I bought somewhere to live) I ask for permission and hang up if they refuse. Oh you don't want your words recorded? Fine, you're getting a letter, hope you weren't in a hurry.

But Chat Bots often provide a "Save transcript" feature, or even default to emailing you a copy if you're in a Customer Service type environment where it knows your email. So those are both a lot easier than setting up call recording.

Yes. iOS and default android are really doing a disservice by blocking call recording when in this day and age most real phone calls are done towards corporations or non private settings.

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