Accountability remains organizational even when decision-making is automated. When ownership is vague, support points to engineering, engineering points to the vendor, and the vendor points to the model. Air Canada tried a version of that argument in 2024, but a British Columbia tribunal still held the company responsible for information delivered through its website.

This session uses the Air Canada ruling to pressure-test accountability before an incident assigns it by proximity. We ask who can explain an automated decision, who can stop the system, what evidence survives, and how a customer gets a correction. The exercise separates executive accountability, operational ownership, technical responsibility, and vendor obligations without allowing the answer to dissolve across them. If you deploy AI where customers or regulators can feel the result, you'll leave with a one-page ownership record and concrete answers to the three questions every incident asks: who approved this, who owns it now, and how would we have known?