Insurers launch cover for losses caused by AI chatbot errors
At best, this screams, “you’re doing it wrong.”
We know this stuff isn’t ready, is easily hacked, is undesirable by consumers… and will fail. Somehow, it’s still more efficient to cover losses and degrade service than to approach the problem differently.
Insurance tech guy here. This is not the revolutionary new type of insurance that it might look like at first glance. It's an adaptation of already-commonplace insurance products that are limited in their market size. If you're curious about this topic, I've written about it at length: https://loeber.substack.com/p/24-insurance-for-ai-easier-sai...
Was it also commonplace to have insurances covering human errors? For example:
> A tribunal last year ordered Air Canada to honour a discount that its customer service chatbot had made up.
If a human sales representative had made that mistake instead of a chatbot, I wonder if companies will try to recover that cost through insurance. Or perhaps AI insurance won't cover the chatbot for that either?
Yes, this is called Professional Liability or Errors & Omissions insurance. It's an important insurance category, but limited in market size. It's uncommon to have e.g. human sales representatives covered for this, but your doctor, lawyer, accountant, architect, etc. will all carry this kind of insurance.
I worked in this market for a few years. It was fascinating. I still have some ACORD documentation from that. I learned very quickly that standards aren’t. :)
The Air Canada case is interesting since it predates LLMs. If you read the details it was basically the chatbot had been programmed to respond to point at a policy that for some reason differed from what Air Canada claimed was its actual policy. Nothing was made up, Air Canada simply had two contradictory policies based on where you were on the site.
A customer trusted the policy that the chatbot provided to make a decision, and the tribunal said that it was reasonable for the customer to make a decision based on that policy, and that the airline had to honor that policy.
Man I wish I could get insurance like that. "Accountability insurance"
You were responsibile for something, say, child care, and you just decided to go for beer and leave the child with an AI. The house burns down, but because you had insurance you are not responsible. You just head along to your next child care job and don't too much worry about it.
Lots of insurance covers these types of situation which are the result of careless acts...
Don't take the right safety precautions and burn down a customers house - liability insurance
Click on a link in a phishing email and open up your network to a ransomware attack - cyber insurance
Forget to lock your door and get burgled - property insurance
Write buggy software which leads to a hospital having to suspend operations - PI (or E&O) insurance
Fail to adequately adhere to regulatory obligations and get sued - D&O insurance
Obviously there will be various conditions etc which apply but I've been in Insurance a long time and cover for carelessness and stupidity is one of the things which keeps the industry going. I've dealt directly with (paid) claims for all of the above situations.
It doesn't absolve responsibility though, it just protects against the financial loss. I suspect if you leave a child alone with an AI and the house burns down that's going to be the least of your problems.
> Forget to lock your door and get burgled - property insurance
I’m pretty sure this will be the same for the other insurance you mentioned but for property insurance if you left your front door open you will have a hard time getting the insurance to actually pay out your claim. At least here they require a burglar alarm and they require it to be armed when nobody is on site or they will absolutely decline the claim.
Insurance insures against risk, but there’s a threshold to that and if you prove to be above it they will decline your claim or void your insurance in totality.
In the UK where I am, most standard (not budget) property policies would cover theft from an unlocked entry point.
Two main exceptions:
1 - if you are letting the property to someone else, e.g a lodger or have paying guests staying with you then this is typically excluded.
2 - if you have had previous theft claims, live in a high crime area, or you have a particularly high risk (e.g lots of valuables), the Insurer will add an endorsement that you need a minimum standard of locks and have them engaged when the property is unoccupied.
Outside of those, if you accidentally leave a door unlocked, your claim will likely be paid. The situation obviously may be different in other countries. I worked for a property insurer and saw hundreds of these claims (entry via an unlocked entry point) paid during my time there - I also saw many declined because of the above.
I suspect that over time the number of policies in the 'budget' category will continue to increase as price continues to trump everything else for most people]
edit: it is the same for the other lines I mentioned as well -e.g a cyber policy I saw recently has no conditions relating to use of MFA. It will have been factored in when writing the risk (they will have said they use it) and if it turned out it was a lie then there would be an issue with cover but if it was just a case of an admin forgetting to include an OU in the MFA group policy the claim would almost certainly be covered. Policies aimed at the SME space are much more likely to have specific conditions though.
This sounds like a racket for residential properties. Alarms do nothing to prevent burglary. Where this is a requirement, I'm sure the insurance company gets kick backs from companies that make or install them. Or it's an easy out, designed to make it as hard as possible for people to get any value from their insurance...
> At least here they require a burglar alarm
Is that commercial or residential?
I've never seen a residential insurance that requires an alarm system, let alone a monitored system. Though many carriers will offer a discount for having this.
There is no insurance that will insure you against your own gross negligence.
Insurance will only pay out if you can show that you have done everything a reasonable person would be expected to do to avoid the loss/damage.
> Don't take the right safety precautions and burn down a customers house - liability insurance
You mean someone burnt a customers house down /because of something like an electrical or equipment malfunction that they could not have reasonably foreseen or prevented/, right?
> Forget to lock your door and get burgled - property insurance
That seems unlikely. Compare this: https://moneysmart.gov.au/home-insurance/contents-insurance
> It's worth checking what isn't included. For example, damage caused by floods, intentional or criminal damage, or theft if you leave windows or doors unlocked.
Happy to be shown that I'm wrong but please do not give people the impression that liability insurance or property insurance will absolve them of losses no questions asked.
Crime Insurance (Criminal Acts) is exactly what this is for - when an employee does something criminal while on the clock and the company is facing liability as a result of their actions.
It's called errors and omissions and it's as basic an insurance as it gets.
Insurance can’t go to jail for you but it can and often does pay your legal fees and/or civil liabilities regardless of fault.
Yup, I have an umbrella policy to cover a variety of legal situations. It costs me $900 a year for a $3m (per incident) policy.
Not sure insurance will take the rap for criminal negligence.
Being covered does not mean you are not responsible.
That was basically my whole point.
Would you want to insure people who think they have no responsibility because they've delegated it to an AI? They might as well have delegated the responsibility to a child or a dog. To sell them insurance, you as the insurer are making a financial bet on the ability of the dog to take care of anything that does go wrong.
And still as the insured, using the AI imbued with your responsibility risks horrible outcomes that could still ruin your life. The AI has no life to ruin. It was never really responsible.
It's just a numbers game. Set your premiums such that you take in more than you pay out. If losses due to dumb use of AI are common then the premiums will be high, but there's no reason to refuse to issue such policies altogether.
No mercy. Had to deal with one when looking for apartments and it made up whatever it thought I wanted to be right. Good thing they still had humans around in person when I went for a tour.
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