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Comment by manicennui | Hacker News Reader

This line of argument is crazy and infuriating. "Air Canada essentially argued, 'the chatbot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions,' a court order said." Do they expect people to sue the chatbot? Are they also implying that people have to sue individual agents if they cause a problem?

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> 27. Air Canada argues it cannot be held liable for information provided by one of its agents, servants, or representatives – including a chatbot. It does not explain why it believes that is the case. In effect, Air Canada suggests the chatbot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions. This is a remarkable submission. While a chatbot has an interactive component, it is still just a part of Air Canada’s website. It should be obvious to Air Canada that it is responsible for all the information on its website. It makes no difference whether the information comes from a static page or a chatbot. > https://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bccrt/doc/2024/2024bccrt149/202...

Real legal comedy. Since this was in small claims court maybe it was an amateur on Air Canada's side?

If they could reasonably expect to be able to hire people who would agree to accept all liability incurred during their work for the company, they absolutely would.

Same with chatbots. Even better, because once it's "trained", you don't have to pay it.

There's a few instances of expecting digital entities to shoulder the entirety of legal liability here in the last few years; DAOs are another example of this in the crypto space.

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