“Amazon’s Choice” Algorithm Failed to Recommend Functional Products and Prone to Review Manipulation

December 15, 2016

The Amazon’s Choice algorithm has been found wanting in its recommendations, promoting poor-quality defective products that can potentially harm consumers. Furthermore, the system appears vulnerable to manipulation via inauthentic reviews, undermining trust in AI-driven product rankings.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.689, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.659, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
GOVERN 6.1 — similarity 0.654, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: amazon
Alleged developer: amazon
Alleged harmed parties: amazon-users

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/330

Data 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.

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