Misidentification Incident: Chinese Facial Recognition System Erroneously Identifies Bus Ad as Jaywalker

A recent incident involving a Chinese facial recognition system highlights the need for responsible AI governance. The system, designed to enforce traffic laws, incorrectly identified a bus advertisement as a jaywalker. This misidentification could potentially lead to unintended consequences such as fines or other penalties for an innocent party. Incidents like these underscore the importance of safe and secure AI, particularly in public safety systems where mistakes can have real-world implications.

Matched TAIM controls

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

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.541, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.5 — similarity 0.536, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 1.4 — similarity 0.531, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/36

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.

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.