After months of resisting, Air Canada was forced to give a partial refund to a grieving passenger who was misled by an airline chatbot inaccurately explaining the airline's bereavement travel policy. On the day Jake Moffatt's grandmother died, Moffat immediately visited Air Canada's website to book a flight from Vancouver to Toronto. Unsure of how Air Canada's bereavement rates worked, Moffatt asked Air Canada's chatbot to explain. The chatbot provided inaccurate information, encouraging Moffatt to book a flight immediately and then request a refund within 90 days. In reality, Air Canada's policy explicitly stated that the airline will not provide refunds for bereavement travel after the flight is booked.

In the summer of 1956, the Dartmouth Research Project on Artificial Intelligence would legitimise the field, turning AI from a subject of absurd fiction to a scientific pursuit that looked set to change the world. And yet, 60 years on it feels like AI is only just beginning to reveal its true potential. Recent advancements in connectivity and the IoT have triggered an explosion in the volume of data, and AI is becoming an essential tool in handling this. Just two years ago, Stephen Hawking told the Independent that creating successful AI would be "the greatest event in human history". However, he went on to say that "unfortunately, it might also be the last". Concerns about the autonomous power given to AI technology, as well as the sensitive data that it is able to access, have raised serious questions on how AI should be managed.