Robot kills worker at German Volkswagen plant
Jul 15, 2014
A tragic incident occurred at a Volkswagen plant where a robot, presumably governed by an AI system, inadvertently pinned a worker to a meta...
Read moreValues Statement: We believe AI should cause no harm, but enhance the quality of human life, by proactively adopting our AI Governance framework.
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AI Incidents
TAIM catalog Map Data source & citationTech Companies Reportedly Influenced Gig Workers' Behaviors Using Algorithms to Vary Pay for Same Amount of Work
May 8, 2014
A multiyear ethnographic study revealed that Amazon and Uber allegedly used algorithmic systems to determine pay for gig workers, offering l...
Read moreMisreading of an Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) Unverified by Police, Resulting in Traffic Stop in Missouri
Apr 16, 2014
An automated license plate reader (ALPR) camera misinterpreted a 7 as a 2, falsely alerting local authorities about a supposedly stolen Olds...
Read moreFacebook's Auto-Generated Targeting Ad Categories Contained Anti-Semitic Options
Mar 4, 2014
Facebook's automated advertising categories generated from users' declared interests inadvertently included anti-Semitic options like 'Jew h...
Read moreNest Smoke Alarm Erroneously Stops Alarming
Jan 21, 2014
Google Nest engineers discovered an issue in the Nest Wave feature of their Nest Protect: Smoke + CO Alarm, which may mistakenly silence act...
Read moreETS Used Allegedly Flawed Voice Recognition Evidence to Accuse and Assess Scale of Cheating, Causing Thousands to be Deported from the UK
Jan 1, 2014
The international testing organization, ETS, has admitted to using potentially flawed voice recognition as evidence of cheating for thousand...
Read moreExcessive Automated Monitoring Alerts Ignored by Staff, Resulting in Private Data Theft of Seventy Million Target Customers
Nov 27, 2013
Automated monitoring alerts about a data breach at Minneapolis' Target were reportedly ignored due to the high volume of potential false ale...
Read moreMichigan's Unemployment Benefits Algorithm MiDAS Issued False Fraud Claims to Thousands of People
Oct 1, 2013
Michigan’s MiDAS system, designed to cut costs, falsely accused over 34,000 people of unemployment fraud from 2013 to 2015. Without human ov...
Read moreFacial Recognition Researchers Used YouTube Videos of Transgender People without Consent
Sep 13, 2013
Researchers exploited YouTube videos featuring transgender people, using them unauthorized for facial recognition research during gender tra...
Read moreCompromise of National Biometric ID Card System Leads to Reverification and Change of Status
Sep 1, 2013
The revelation of a valid Afghan Taliban leader's ID in the Pakistani national biometric database sparked a nationwide re-verification campa...
Read moreCoffee Meets Bagel’s Algorithm Reported by Users Disproportionately Showing Them Matches of Their Own Ethnicities Despite Selecting “No Preference”
Jul 30, 2013
Users reporting biased ethnicity matches in Coffee Meets Bagel's algorithm were shown more potential matches of the same ethnicity, despite...
Read moreSexist and Racist Google Adsense Advertisements
Jan 23, 2013
Recent reports suggest that some advertisements selected by Google's Adsense platform are displaying sexist and racist content. For those in...
Read moreData source
Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).
When citing the database as a whole, please use:
McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.
Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide
We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.